Extremely rare gold saxon ring with a flat circular bezel engraved with a champlevé zoomorphic pattern inlaid with black niello, displaying a fantastic beast, the sinuous body shown in profile with only two legs visible, Y-shaped paws, turned-back head, biting it’s own tail.
The hoop is formed by a single wire twisted like a torque, a typical early saxon design, the shoulders terminating in foliate motifs.
Source: artfinding.com
To finish with this MFA Boston spam, a beautiful German plaque with beasts. (Look at those lines and colors!)
(about 1185)
Two dog-like beasts crouch facing toward the center with noses to the ground and long tails tucked under their bodies. The central beast, resembling a ram, faces right.
Source: mfa.org
Illustration of Lucifer, taken from a French manuscript of the fifteenth century
The devil in the centre of the picture and those round the sides combine elements of the human form with those of pigs, cats, angels, dragons and carry hooks and instruments of torture, they are shown in different colours, with snarling faces and huge fangs, and are intended to instill terror and fear of hell and damnation into the beholders.
Source: english.cam.ac.uk
Gospels of Henry the Lion
Unknown Miniaturist, German (active 1175-1188 in Helmarshausen)
Between 1175 and 1188
340mm x 245mm
***The gospel book, preserved completely intact, with 50 full page miniatures, is kept in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, and for security reasons is displayed only once every two years.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Image 551 A page (fol 23v) from the Trinity Apocalypse (for a fuller description of this MS, see Image 553) illustrating verses from Chapters 19 and 20 of the Book of Revelation.
The page illustrates the battle against the beast and his defeat and imprisonment.
The first miniature depicts the casting into the lake of fire, represented as the mouth of Hell in the form of gaping jaws of an animal. The birds are feeding on the soldiers who are attempting to follow the beast.
In the lower panel, the three events of the imprisonment of the dragon are illustrated. The figure of St John appears at the left hand margin of the bottom margin, as he does in many of these illustrations, indicating that the events described in the book are his visions. Marks and Morgan 1981, p.65
Source: english.cam.ac.uk
XVI century map of Iceland (detail)
XVI century map of Iceland (detail)
Well, how much for a kidney? You can live with just one. £1,550.00?
Eight English medieval floor tiles, 14th century, variously decorated with fleur-de-lys, heraldic beasts and roundels, oak framed as one
Price: £1,550.00
Can be purchased here
Source: chinese-porcelain-art.com
The Dragon is most greatest of all serpents, and oft he is drawn out of his den, and riseth up into the air, and the air is moved by him, and also the sea swelleth against his venom, and he hath a crest with a little mouth, and draweth breath at small pipes and straight, and reareth his tongue, and hath teeth like a saw, and hath strength, and not only in teeth, but also in his tail, and grieveth both with biting and with stinging, and hath not so much venom as other serpents: for to the end to slay anything, to him venom is not needful, for whom he findeth he slayeth, and the elephant is not secure of him, for all his greatness of body.
Antelope
Latin name: Antalops
Other names: Antula, Antule, Aptalon, Aptalops, Autalops, Autula, Entulla
General Attributes
The antelope is so wild that hunters cannot catch it, except in one instance: When the antelope is thirsty it goes to the Euphrates River to drink, but as it plays in the thickets of herecine trees there, its horns get caught in the branches and it cannot free itself. The hunter, hearing its cries, comes and kills it.
Its horns are like saws, and with them it can cut down trees.
The antelope of the Physiologus and the bestiaries is not the animal now called antelope. Medieval writers were unsure of its identity, hence its many names.
Allegory/Moral
The antelope’s two horns represent the biblical Old and New Testaments, with which people can cut themselves free of vice. People are also warned not to play in the “thickets of worldliness” where pleasure kills body and soul.
Illustration
Antelope illustrations vary considerably, depicting the animal as anything from dog-like to horse-like. They are almost always given horns; in some cases the saw-like nature of the horns is minimal, while in others it is greatly exaggerated.
Heraldry
The antelope was not much used in heraldry, though the antelope head alone was more common. On his badge King Henry IV used a white antelope with gold horns, tusks and hooves. Kings Henry V and VI also used the antelope. It is thought that this beast was the badge of the Bohun family in England.
![The dragon, a north German work of about 1200, stands upright on its two feet with its wings extended back to take some of the weight and provide balance. The long, hollow tail curls up to the back of the neck and divides into two sections. A square hole in the tail allows the aquamanile to be filled with water; the hinged cover for this opening is now missing. The upper half of a cowled male figure emerges from the dragon’s mouth—the folded hood serves as the water spout—and he grasps the upper lips of the dragon. It is unclear whether the figure, possibly a monk, is in the process of being swallowed or, perhaps less likely, successfully escaping the beast. Struggles between men and beasts, both real and fantastic, can be found throughout twelfth- and thirteenth-century art. Although the hapless figure in the jaws of our dragon is not absolutely identifiable as a monk, it is likely that the aquamanile functioned to some degree as a reminder of life’s many perils.Source:Aquamanile in the Form of a Dragon [North German] (47.101.51) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lih49vKuoL1qfg4oyo1_500.jpg)
The dragon, a north German work of about 1200, stands upright on its two feet with its wings extended back to take some of the weight and provide balance. The long, hollow tail curls up to the back of the neck and divides into two sections. A square hole in the tail allows the aquamanile to be filled with water; the hinged cover for this opening is now missing. The upper half of a cowled male figure emerges from the dragon’s mouth—the folded hood serves as the water spout—and he grasps the upper lips of the dragon. It is unclear whether the figure, possibly a monk, is in the process of being swallowed or, perhaps less likely, successfully escaping the beast. Struggles between men and beasts, both real and fantastic, can be found throughout twelfth- and thirteenth-century art. Although the hapless figure in the jaws of our dragon is not absolutely identifiable as a monk, it is likely that the aquamanile functioned to some degree as a reminder of life’s many perils.
Source:Aquamanile in the Form of a Dragon [North German] (47.101.51) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est et speculum
Each creature of this world
is a picture and a word
and a true mirror to us
