The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages

animals in the art of the Middle Ages

Plot

Abbeville Press, 1992. Hardcover with dust jacket. (ISBN 1-55859-133-8) Printed in Italy. Lavishly illustrated in color and black and white. Very good tight copy, unread, good jacket. From unicorns and dragons to elephants, lions, and monkeys, medieval society was fascinated with animals, whether they truly existed or not. Indeed the more fantastic the creature, the greater its hold seems to have been on the fertile imaginations of medieval men and women. Both art and literature abound with vividly concocted examples of such chimerical monsters as unicorns and griffins along with bizarre ideas about real if exotic beasts — lions, for instance, were believed to be born dead and then resurrected by their fathers after three days. Strange visions of composite creatures also poured out of the medieval ark, among them a widely accepted animal believed to be a cross between an ant and a lion. Richly illustrated with the splendid and amusing beasts found in medieval painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and manuscripts, "The Medieval Menagerie" thoroughly explores for the first time the depiction of real and imaginary animals in medieval art. As its fascinating text reveals, fabulous creatures ordinarily found only in the distant reaches of the human mind came to full flower on the pages of bestiaries and on the capitals of cloisters across Europe. Two-headed birds, flying fish, royal blue monkeys, and fire-breathing dragons — these and other dazzling members of the animal kingdom fill the pages of this beautifully designed book and demonstrate the rich, vivid complexity of the medieval world. Art history.