Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Dreams of Pantagruel
Here are 120 woodcuts of characters from 1565 that would fit perfectly in a Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Brueghel picture. These are some of the most fascinating and unusual depictions of characters and creatures that I've ever seen. There seems to be some confusion as to who actually made these. Officially these were made by François Rabelais, but according to BibliOdyssey they might have been made by François Desprez.

Click here to see a selection of these reinterpreted by none other than Salvador Dali.
Click the following numbers to see some monsters done in a similar style to those linked to above. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

Artworks found at BibliOdyssey.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had never seen them all before. Thank you for that link, Aeron!

Anonymous said...

Published by Dover Books, "Curious and Fantastic Creatures" in the Pictorial Archive series. Also called "Fantastic Creatures 122 bizarre beings" Paul.

Anonymous said...

PS... Francois Desprez...there is also a Louis Desprez who created one of the best monsters in the history of art, his Chimera, a skeletal dragon with three heads and with a rotting corpse carried in its ribcage.
Nothing like a "real" Chimera which has head and body of a lion, snake for a tail and a goat head breathing fire in the middle of its back.
Scientists call thier genetic hybrids chimeras, like the spider-goat which has spider web in its milk, looks like a normal goat unfortunatly, I want them to have 8 legs and live in trees in giant webs.....Paul.