Bleating innocents or matted satans: the goat in art

Spring Pasture, Camille Pissarro (1889)
OK, let's stare at some goats. It's not only psychological operations specialists in US intelligence who have strange traffic with these hairy, horned pastoral beasts. Artists have been fixing their eyes on goats for thousands of years, with some equally weird and wonderful results Photograph: Barney Burstein/ Burstein Collection/Corbis

Let's start with an introduction to the goat. This grazing mammal that seems to have evolved in the Middle East (ironically perhaps, given the military context of The Men Who Stare at Goats) was one of the first animals that human beings domesticated. Its geographical origins are indicated by this beautiful Mughal painting from 1607 Photograph: Philip Spruyt/ Stapleton Collection/Corbis

… and, funnily enough, by Borat's poster for the Kazakh tourist board Photograph: Twentieth Century Fox

An illustration from The Natural History of Animals by Adam White (1859)
As agriculture and cities developed in the neolithic period, so did goat-herding Photograph: PoodlesRock/Corbis

An encampment of shepherds, Tassili N'Ajjer, Algeria (4000-1500BC)
Art exploded in the eastern Mediterranean region, evolving from cave paintings and figurines to the more complex art of the first civilisations Photograph: Pierre Colombel/ Pierre Colombel/Corbis

The goat became a cultural icon Photograph: Bloomimage/Corbis

You can already see it in an Egyptian painting from Tomb 24, Giza, that dates from the 12th century BC, which portrays domesticated goats as part of Egypt's agricultural splendour Photograph: Philip de Bay/ Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS

A book illustration of Noah's Ark by E Boyd Smith (1905)
But the goat has a darker side, too: its reputation for unruliness is reflected in this Edwardian watercolour, which focuses on a recalcitrant billy being manhandled on to Noah's Ark Photograph: Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis

Goats, it seems, irritated their shepherds – here's one in the 11th century. They were odd. They were naughty. They were oversexed. Or perhaps it is just the phallic horns that male, and some female, goats possess that gave the goat its lustful image Photograph: Alfredo Dagli Orti/ The Art Archive/Corbis

16th-century Fresco Depicting Silenus Leading the Triumph of Bacchus with Satyrs and Maenads
In ancient Greek myth goats are associated with the lewd and the wild. There is the great god Pan with his goat legs; there are the fauns, followers of Bacchus, who in Roman times acquired goat legs of their own. Pan and the fauns are associated with misrule, drunkenness, "panic" and sex Photograph: Araldo de Luca/Araldo de Luca/Corbis

In paintings of Bacchic revels, like The Triumph of Bacchus by Charles Joseph Natoire, you'll always find them, sticking their suggestive horns in the air Photograph: The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Constellation of Capricorn by Alexander Mair
In 16th-century art half-human, half-goat monsters loiter about, satiating their bestial needs Photograph: Stapleton Collection/Corbis

Portrait of a Young Boy Wearing Classical Dress and His Brother Seated on a Goat in an Extensive Landscape by Christoffel Pierson (1670)
And yet, to classically minded painters, a goat was also an appropriate creature to put in a portrait of a child as an emblem of the classical tradition itself Photograph: Christie's Images/Corbis

Jacob with the Daughters of Laban by Louis Gauffier (1787)
Starting as a symbol of lust, it becomes an emblem of the classical as such – the survivor of the pastoral Golden Age Photograph: The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Lithograph of Mountain Goat, by H Weir, dated 1871
Other artists are more severe. The classical association of goats with Pan made them fair game when Pan in turn transmogrified into the Christian image of Satan Photograph: Trolley Dodger/Corbis

In Ambrogio Lorenzetti's great fresco of Bad Government and its Effects (1338–1340) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, a horned Satanic tyrant is accompanied by a goat as his familiar Photograph: Alinari Archives/Corbis

The symbol survives in modern satanism Photograph: Public Domain

Most chilling of all is Goya's nightmare of witches playing with a goat, Wait Until You've Been Anointed (1797–1798) – the distillation of a rich and terrible European iconography of the devil's sabbath Photograph: Barney Burstein/ Burstein Collection/Corbis

Chevre-Feuille by JJ Grandville (1847)
So, in staring goats to death the psychic operatives tracked down by Jon Ronson may subliminally have believed they were staring down the devil Photograph: Cynthia Hart/ Cynthia Hart Designer/Corbis

Or perhaps they just like picking on bleating innocents like the mountain goats portrayed in Jessie Wilcox Smith's 1923 children's book illustration. Here, Heidi and one of her flock share a stare so intense a passing gamboller feels the need to look away Photograph: Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis