Conrad Gesner - Historiæ Animalium

This gallery contains all 416 pages from a giant collection of underwater lifeforms. Mixed in with the intricately detailed illustrations of fish and crabs are the odd creatures of legend and imagination. Click the links below to see some of the stranger illustrations.

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You'll notice many of the same illustrations shown below colorized in these books.

Topsell's "The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents"
Here is another collection of real life animal illustrations mixed with creatures of the imagination. Below is a selection of some of the stranger and fantastic beasts from the collection...

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And one of the oddest illustrations I've ever seen of a crocodile.

Both links found thanks to BibliOdyssey.

Giovanni da Udine - 7 Headed Monster





















Here is an incredible drawing made in pen and ink wash on paper from the 16th century. And below is a watercolor/ pen and ink drawing of yet another intepretation of the Temptation of Saint Anthony by Jan Thomas Van Kessel, dated between the 17th and 18th century.

Marcus Behmer










































The top image was found here. The rest are etching illustrations for "Vom Morgenlandischen" or what I think is "Aladdin's Dragons" translated from the German text. Some sort of weird board game.

Click the numbers below to view more of the fantastic works by Marcus Behmer..

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

Additional works can be viewed here.

Richard Doyle

"Moonlit landscape, with an apparition of a woman and a host of winged monsters" - image found here.


"A Flight by Night of Bats and Elves" - image found
"Queer Folk" - image found here.

More works by Doyle, most of which fall under the surreal fairy tale kind, can be found here and here. Check out this peculiar image of two characters jousting on top of bugs.
Learn more about this Victorian era illustrator here.

And I stumbled across this image below by the artist Jean Bérain in my hunt for Doyle artworks, a stage design for Hell.

Matti Hagelberg


The Sinful Ways of Simpli City
Some comics in English
Article at Lambiek
Print at Le Dernier Cri