“Working on a broad canvas, Martin Kemp explores the relationship of mankind to the animal world a perceived in the West since the Renaissance. The book demonstrates wide reading in science and its history, but its firm basis is in Kemp’s knowledge of the visual arts. His original and compelling use of visual evidence makes The Human Animal in Western Art and Science far more than just a beautiful coffee-table book.”

David M. Knight, Durham University

 "In The Human Animal in Western Art and Science, Martin Kemp displays

characteristic erudition and rigour. Anyone fascinated by humans and animals

will be enriched by his narrative."

Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature

“This fascinating and unprecedented study is a model of true interdisicplinarity, illuminating a strain of thought that has received little attention. It compellingly demonstrates how utterly central questions about the relationship between humans and animals have been and continue to be within larger philosophical debates. A significant contribution to the history of ideas.”

Rachael Ziady DeLue, Princeton University

"How much of the animal is there within us? Conversely, how much is human in animals? . . . Kemp answers these questions. Science, from Darwin to the latest neuroscience and genomics, has shown that there is no sharp animal–human divide, only a sliding scale. And in guiding us to this conclusion, Kemp’s six chapters deviate through an amusing and erudite visual history, drawing from art, philosophy, literature, film and other cultural media."

Alison Abbott | Nature

“Beginning with a lucid (and rather gruesomely illustrated) discussion of the four humours, which humans and animals were thought to share, Mr. Kemp moves through the centuries. Dürer, Cranach, Da Vinci, and Rembrandt may occupy pride of place, and rightly so, but many fascinating, lesser known figures appear as well. . . . Although Mr. Kemp is steeped in the works of the great masters of Western art, he has an endearing taste for kitsch that he draws on to enliven his discussion. . . . Through such images, high and low, Mr. Kemp illumines the shadowy interchanges between the realms of man and beast to show, yet again, that however parallel they may seem, they constantly intersect.”--Eric Ormsby, New York Sun

Eric Ormsby | New York Sun

“The animal and the human are not just allegorical companions; Darwin showed how close they really are. . . . Martin Kemp shows just how powerful the theme is, and how essential it is to Western traditions of art and science. The animal is used to reveal the human, the human to reveal the animal.”

Edward Rothstein | New York Times

"Wonderfully written, erudite, beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated. . . . The Human Animal would be important and absorbing even if it were only a contribution to intellectual history. . . . It is this, of course; but it is much more than this, if only because many of the ideas he explores are currently in the ascendant. . . . Kemp’s magisterial investigation of one of the fundamental metaphors pervading man’s thought about himself is consequently of immense inmportance."

Raymond Tallis | Brain