The ancient cousin of man’s best friend, Wolves are something of an enigma. 

If someone identifies with the figure of the wolf — that usually suggests that they stand out from the crowd, are fiercely independent, and maybe a little misanthropic. 

But this idea of the ‘lone wolf’ is a very modern interpretation of the animal. The reality is that, at different times, across different cultures, wolves have come to mean many, many things — from kinship and loyalty, to greed and danger, to freedom and wildness.

The ancient Roman myth of Romulus and Remus associates the figure of the she-wolf with maternity. She is a divine, natural force which suckles the Imperial spirit of Rome. Yep: in Roman terms, the she-wolf is associated with nobility, divinity, and the birth of civilisation. 

But not all Classical interpretations of the wolf are positive. In Aesop’s fables, a series of allegorical animal stories passed down from the Ancient Greeks, wolves are violent and threatening. They embody a moral type: greedy, evil, and hypocritical. This archetype of the villainous wolf reappears later in fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs…).

Renaissance and Baroque paintings of wolves are often more realistic depictions from courtly hunting culture. In these contexts, the wolf is understood as a noble adversary: a wild, untamed animal, that represents a challenge to human order. 

Thereafter, with the emergence of Romanticism, the concept of the ‘lone wolf’ emerges as symbolic of the isolated individual. Neither a villain, nor prey, the wolf in this context is now an emblem of alienation, and of freedom. 

Modern media tends to endorse the Romantic idea of the wolf.

I’m put in mind of the scene in Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, in which the cultivated, humane Mr. Fox is faced with his feral counterpart. The two animals acknowledge one another — one, clothed, riding a motorcycle; the other, naked and gloriously free. 

Apparently — that scene was the reason Wes Anderson made the movie!

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Pictures shown:

Frans Snyders, Wolf in a Rocky Landscape (1650)

Peter Paul Rubens, Romulus and Remus (1615)

Allart van Everdingen, The Wolf Accuses (1650)

Jean-Baptiste Oudry, The Wolf Hunt (1725)

Alfred von Wierusz-Kowalski, The Lone Wolf (1880s)

Wes Anderson, Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)