If animals painted themselves, perhaps this is the way they would want to do it. Here in Raffaella Torresan's beautiful book, there is a connection or an affinity between the paintings of animals and the written word. Bernard Smith asks which came first: painting or poetry. I think painting came first, because then from the paintings the poets knew how to write. The poems were already in their minds, but they did not know the shape of them until they saw the paintings. Raffaellas paintings give colour to the poems, and they echo back to the animals.