Among patterns of ivy, one might find centaurs, penitent monkeys whipping themselves, and other fantastical animals playing musical instruments-long before Marc Chagall ever put them in his paintings.
#Weird art in medieval manuscripts full
Originally written to preserve knowledge and the word of God, these illuminated manuscripts-“manuscript” comes from Latin, meaning “handwritten,” while “illuminated” traditionally refers to the addition of gold leaf to the pages-eventually became highly sought-after objets d’art created for wealthy patrons.Īlong with the familiar saints and gold leaf, their pages are crammed full of monstrous, humorous, and sometimes smutty flights of fancy. Look at any of the lavish illuminated manuscripts and books made in medieval Europe from approximately 600 to 1500 A.D., transcribed and painted by monks and then, later, by professional craftsmen and craftswomen. But wouldn’t the monks themselves be distracted from prayer by all the gargoyles dotting the cloisters? These monks, however, were incorporating such “distractions” into their own godly work producing and decorating religious texts, a practice that fed back into the development of art as we know it. These embellishments were all well and good for the general congregation, who needed something superficial to drag them to church. Over there on a fish we see the head of a quadruped.”
“Here on a quadruped we see the tail of a serpent. “What is the point of those unclean apes, fierce lions, monstrous centaurs, half-men, striped tigers, fighting soldiers and hunters blowing their horns?” he wrote. In his “ Apologia ad Guillelmum” of 1125, the Cistercian monk Saint Bernard of Clairvaux attacked what he saw as superfluous decoration in the day’s art and architecture.
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