Why does Medieval art look so weird?

[00:00:00]Why does medieval art look like that?

[00:00:02]You've got killer snails, weird little creatures, babies with receding hairlines, demon shenanigans, and people doing, well, whatever that was supposed to be. Sure, some paintings might look normal on the surface, but upon closer inspection, you begin to notice things are a little off. Why does that dog have a human face? Is she cheating on her husband with a dragon? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is that?

[00:00:27]So, join me, dear viewers, as today we explore some of our ancestors' more creative liberties as we attempt to answer the question, why was medieval art so weird?

[00:00:44]In order to understand the origins of some of the strangest pieces of medieval art, we first need to take a look at books.

[00:00:51]During the Middle Ages, making books was a complicated and lengthy process.

[00:00:55]Manuscripts were written by hand, often involving multiple people at various stages. Because it took so much time and effort to create them, books were an incredibly expensive luxury good, with many being commissioned by either the church or nobility. The most expensive type of all was the illuminated manuscript, a handwritten book where the text was accompanied by elaborate details. This included illustrations, those fancy medieval letters, and embellishing the writing itself with materials like gold or silver, giving the entire thing a shimmering effect as though it were illuminated, hence [music] the name. These manuscripts also included something called marginalia, a type of artwork that was added in the margins of the page, which became popular around the 13th century.

[00:01:37]Marginalia could take many forms.

[00:01:39]Usually, they were illustrations that accompanied the subject of the text itself. For example, a medical text would involve medical illustrations. But sometimes drawings were used in a way to contrast the text, adding to it, providing social commentary, or even making fun of it. Since manuscripts were so precious that they were passed through many different sets of hands over the years, >> [music] >> sometimes marginalia would be added later on, which gives a fascinating insight into the way that medieval culture and ideas changed over time. And it is within the margins of these illuminated manuscripts that we find many of our strangest examples of medieval art.

[00:02:14]Drolleries, for example, were marginal illustrations that were supposed to be humorous, often following the idea that within these illustrations the world was turned on its head. Here we can find mythical creatures, animals doing human activities, and just general depictions of weirdness. And as these manuscripts began to circulate over the years, being gradually added to, we can see that a few common themes arose.

[00:02:44]One of the most popular and perhaps bizarre examples of marginalia is the case of the snail. During the late 13th century, for reasons that are not entirely clear, manuscript illuminators began creating illustrations that followed a common theme, fighting snails. These pictures vary slightly depending on the instance, but many depict knights or the peasantry engaging snails in combat. Others have men begging for their lives in front of the shelled menace. And occasionally snails even have weapons of their own or are depicted as these strange little man-snail hybrids.

[00:03:18]This bizarre imagery can be found in over 70 examples across 29 different books. So, this was not the case of one guy that was really into snail combat.

[00:03:26]This was a recurring theme that spanned over two decades. But, historians aren't really in agreement as to what the snails mean. Some suggest that they were a metaphor for the nobility, hiding out in a shell the same way that the rich isolated themselves inside their homes.

[00:03:41]Others think that the menacing nature of the snail is a metaphor for cowardice, with the imagery of a brave knight begging for mercy in front of this garden pest acting as a funny subversion to the expectations of knighthood.

[00:03:53]The historian Lillian Randall suggests that the snails might actually be a form of political commentary and depict a group of Germanic people known as the Lombards, who were generally associated with being rude and cowardly.

[00:04:05]A lot of these illustrations also come from France, a place where the Lombards had a particularly bad reputation during the Middle Ages.

[00:04:13]Similar to snails, killer rabbits are another curious case of strange marginalia. Now, the rabbit was tied to a few different meanings. One of the oldest, which spans all the way back to ancient Greece, is the association of rabbits with fertility. After all, they're very fast-breeding animals.

[00:04:29]But around the Middle Ages, Christian theology also started associating them with the Virgin Mary, often being used as a symbol for purity or salvation.

[00:04:38]Many depictions of rabbits in marginalia, however, are anything but pure and innocent. We've got rabbits stabbing knights, beating up this poor guy while he prays for his life, rabbits jousting, executing their prisoners, and even riding war hounds. And oh damn, look, they even brought the snails.

[00:04:56]That's how you know they mean business.

[00:04:58]So, how did a weak prey animal associated with fertility and purity end up terrorizing people in manuscript pages? Well, obviously they didn't have access to Watership Down yet, so we can cross that one off the list. Don't worry, Watership Down, I still love you.

[00:05:14]My first thought when researching this topic was that these illustrations are supposed to communicate the fact that rabbits were a terrible pest to your crops. But this wouldn't actually be a major problem, at least in England where a lot of these killer rabbit pictures come from, until much later. One possible explanation could come from associating the rabbit with a symbol for cowardice, similar to the snail.

[00:05:34]In his writings between 397 and 400 CE, Saint Augustine describes rabbits as weak and cowardly, comparing a fearful man to the equivalent of a rabbit. And since drolleries were supposed to depict the world's and opposites, then rabbits hunting men makes a lot more sense.

[00:05:55]>> [music] >> Religious artwork is another place where we can find a lot of imagery that looks just a little bit off. Case in point, balding baby Jesus. Now, the reason that medieval artists were painting Christ as though they had never seen a real human baby before is because they were following a certain artistic and religious trend at the time. The concept of the homunculus, meaning little man in Latin. A homunculus is a term to describe an artificially created human-like creature, one that was usually made as a fully formed man.

[00:06:27]Since Jesus was a divine being, the church eventually adopted the idea of a homuncular Jesus, one who emerged from the womb not as a baby, but as a tiny fully grown man. Hence, babies with a weird face or receding hairline. Though this idea was initially only supposed to apply to depictions of Jesus, it did eventually bleed into other artistic renditions of children. Paintings of homuncular Jesus would eventually die out around the Renaissance, when art became less focused on depicting symbolism and instead chose to focus on realism. But ugly babies are hardly the only example of strange religious art that emerged during this time. The Bible was a wealth of inspiration for people creating their own renditions of hell or imagining what fantastical monsters such as the Leviathan might look like.

[00:07:14]Medieval art also had a fascination with depicting scenes of death or memento mori, works that remind the viewer death is inevitable and eventually comes for us all. This trend became particularly popular in the years following the Black Death, after Europe lost roughly 1/3 of its population. Being surrounded by death so frequently during outbreaks of plague eventually led to medieval society putting a lot of focus on the concept of dying. These works were meant to remind people not only that was inevitable, but also to inspire them to live a good life so that in turn they could have a good death. Common themes in memento mori artwork included death looming over his unsuspecting victims, demons tempting people into sin, and animal imagery of worms, snakes, toads, and frogs, all creatures that were associated with the grotesque.

[00:08:09]One of my personal favorite aspects of strange medieval art is all of the weird ways that people draw animals. Now, sometimes the pictures were pretty decent, especially if they were animals that people were encountering every day.

[00:08:21]Horses, for example, might look a little strange, but you can always tell that it's a horse. But then there's some more questionable choices, like an elephant with a trumpet nose, some very very ugly dogs, and wait, what is that?

[00:08:36]You're telling me that's supposed to be a crocodile? Okay, it looks like some of you understood the assignment better than others. You know what? How about we play a fun little game? It's time for guess that animal, medieval edition.

[00:08:49]>> [applause] >> Does anybody know what this is supposed to be?

[00:08:54]It's a hedgehog, easy, right?

[00:08:57]How about this one?

[00:08:58]That's right, it's a hippopotamus.

[00:09:01]What about this little freak?

[00:09:04]Yes, he's an octopus. See the eight legs are right there.

[00:09:09]And the final contestant is also a hippopotamus. So is this one for that matter. Artists seem to really struggle with hippos.

[00:09:19]Now, at first glance, it might be quite easy to dismiss all of these terribly inaccurate animals as a result of artists just not having any references to use. It can be pretty hard to draw an octopus when you've never seen one before.

[00:09:31]But that wasn't the case for every animal. Exotic animals in particular were sometimes given as a gift to European rulers like Henry III who had an elephant living in the Tower of London. So, it was possible that an artist could see what they looked like.

[00:09:45]>> [music] >> But, a lack of access isn't a very good excuse when it comes to other things like cats and dogs. Really, the reason for all these inaccurate animals is because when it came to art, people valued different things during the Middle Ages. Realism was not usually the goal, but rather symbolism and stylistic preference. As we've seen with a lot of the cases in this video, a lot of times artists drawing in illuminated manuscripts and bestiaries had a lot of creative freedom when it came to how they portrayed things. As funny as some of their work might look to our modern eyes, it isn't fair to assume that medieval artists were any less skilled or capable than ones later in history. I think this article by Sarah Laskow on Atlas Obscura really describes this well when she says, "They were communicating facts and ideas using a language we no longer understand." Unfortunately for them, that language has now been turned into memes. So, that's what's going on with medieval art. But, I want to know what you guys think. Do you have a favorite one of these weird little drawings? I personally like this guy that was breaking it down way too hard to the fiddle. Also, if you want to see more examples of strange ways that people used to draw animals, the website bestiary.ca has an entire catalog of images for tons of creatures. I'm going to drop a link for it in the video description. And, as always, thank you for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please consider leaving a like or a comment down below. If you want to see more content like this, you can also subscribe to my channel and keep up to date on all the fun history videos of the future. But for now, I bid you farewell.