Researchers have identified a rock shown in a French Renaissance painting as the earliest depiction of a prehistoric stone-axe.
Since ancient times people working in the fields occasionally stumbled over strange-looking objects made from stone. With an overall teardrop shape and pointy end, their true nature remained a mystery.
In some of the earliest written records dating back to the mid-1500s they were described as „thunderstones“ and explained as rocks falling from the clouds during a storm. Swiss physician and naturalist Conrad Gessner included a print showing thunderstones in his De Rerum fossilium (1565) and classified them as „jokes of nature.“ The figure, despite being of poor quality, has long been regarded as the earliest artistic representation of a prehistoric hand-axe.
But researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Cambridge have identified a strange object in the „The Melun Diptych“ as possible stone-age axe. Painted by French artist Jean Fouquet around 1455, this painting predates Gessner’s print by over one century.
The Melun Diptych was commissioned by Étienne Chevalier, who was from Melun, France, and served as treasurer for King Charles VII of France. The diptych is comprised of two oil paintings on wood panels: „Étienne Chevalier with Saint Stephen“ on the left, and „Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels“ on the right. In the left panel, Chevalier is depicted wearing a crimson robe with his hands folded together as if he were praying while Saint Stephen, his patron saint, is standing next to him holding the New Testament and a—at a first glance—strange-looking object.
