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The Taming of the Tarasque, from the Hours of HenryVIII (c1500)

Copyright The Financial TimesLimited 2018. All rights reserved.

Ariella Budick JUNE 23, 2018

Who doesn’t love a monster? Ghastlycreatures are endlessly fascinating —unless of course it’s your plumbingthey slither through to emerge fromthe shower drain, or your brain theyslurp out like an oyster. A delightfullygruesome exhibition at the MorganLibrary and Museum draws animplicit connection betweenmedieval terrors and our own —between the scaly dragons of yoreand Guillermo del Toro’s amphibiousheartthrob from The Shape of Water.

True to its title, Medieval Monsters:Terrors, Aliens, Wonders twinkleswith wonderfully creepy images.Nightmare-ready visions ofmartyrdom, hell or distant landsanimate the galleries. Adorablyimpossible little beings illuminate theindispensable catalogue. But theshow’s curators, Sherry Lindquistand Asa Mittman, have more to offerthan just geeky fantasy; they presentan analysis of human fear andaspiration. The show digs into thetenderness and murderous rage withwhich we confront the products ofown imaginations. Why do weconjure such life forms, only to killthem? Which of our psychic burdensare they born to bear?

Many of the creatures in the Morganshow are lovable mashups: hairy,beaked things with untrimmed talonsand size 19 paws. And yet themedieval mind took them moreseriously, believed in them morefervently, and understood them moreliterally than we (well, most of us) dotoday. To them, demons really didinfiltrate the minds of the mentally illand had to be physically expelled.Portraying the tormentors of Christas slobbering, scowling, beardedgnomes (as the Master of the Jean deSy Bible did around 1375) made self-evident sense: surely Jews wereexactly like that. And of course Africaresembled the continent in the 15thcentury Livres des merveilles dumonde, complete with lizard-eatersand headless natives wearing theirfaces on their chests. These mixturesof the familiar and the fantasticalmake us shudder, but they shouldalso prod us to consider what sorts ofaliens we caricature or demonise insimilarly ignorant and preposterousways.

Then as now, artists usedgrotesquerie and exaggeration torepresent opposite extremes. Whatwe know, revere and hate; what wedon’t know but flinch at anyway;what we secretly wish for, invent andfear within ourselves — all theseconstructs of the mind translate intoa menagerie worthy of Star Wars.Mutants are projections of collectiveanxiety.

It’s revealing to see how medievalartists portrayed a particular kind ofbeing, not foreign or alien, butfamiliar even to monks: women. TheAbuses of the World, a bookfashioned for King James IV ofScotland, stars a lethal siren, withshapely breasts, a scaly tail, and twopairs of wings. She holds a harp inone hand and a trumpet in the other,the tools of her musical seductions(though the painting is unclear on thelogistics of playing them). But it’s heravian claws that reveal her truepurpose, shoving men beneath thewaves.

Siren from 'The Abuses of the World' (c1510)

More horrifying even than womenwere people of undetermined gender,and some of the artists representedhere delighted in their misery. Onedecorative, disturbing scenerepresents the death of SaintWilgefortis, whose father had hercrucified for growing a beard.Hanging on the cross, a mauve gowncovering ample hips and smallbreasts, she is undeniably femalefrom the waist down, but her three-day stubble and long jaw make herresemble the crucified Jesus on adifferent page in the same volume.She is a trans martyr.

The deformities of the demonic andthe damned teach moral lessons, butso does the repulsive suffering of thepure. The Morgan devotes significantwall space to bloodcurdlingmartyrdoms of saints, ghoulishheroes who continue to profess theirfaith even with their heads tuckedunder their arms or their skinsloughing off. Being killed was oneroute to immortality; killing wasanother. A knight who felled a(presumably nonexistent) dragonearned glory and power, possiblyeven sainthood. Manuscriptsabounded with images of theArchangel Michael skewering asatanic demon, and St Georgespearing a serpent that subsisted on adiet of human flesh. These sceneswere rendered in brilliant miniature,the tiny struggles of good versus evilbordered by floral motifs. A 16th-century Book of Hours illustrated byJean Poyer shows an unflappable StMartha, lassoing a man-crunchingbeast known as the Tarasque. Shedoesn’t break a sweat and her indigorobe, crimson mantle and whiteheadscarf all remain — yes,miraculously — pristine.

Among the most intriguing of thesemonstricides is Margaret of Antioch,an early Christian virgin who wastossed into prison, with Satan for acellmate. The devil, in reptilian guise,swallowed her whole. Fortunately shewent down with difficulty, clutching across that burst his stomach, and sheemerged undigested and unbowed.(The Church considers this storydubious.) A 15th-century rendering,also by Jean Poyer, is a smallmasterpiece of inter-species struggle.The now-sainted Margaret kneels inprayer, a study in unblemished whiteand gold. Beside her lies an alligator-ish fiend, its ribcage split and torsohollowed out, eyes lifeless yetendearing. Instead of a virgin mothergiving birth to a deity, here a demongives birth to a virgin. Distressingly,she became the patron saint ofpregnant women, suggesting that togestate is monstrous.

Detail from 'Tapestry with Wild Men and Moors' (c.1440)

Like spiritual history, unchartedphysical terrain, too, served as afertile source of ogres and trolls. Oneof the most astonishing objects at theMorgan is a 16-foot Alsatian tapestrypurporting to chronicle a battle scenein Africa. Wild men with long beards,big sticks and talon toes, their bodiespainted with psychedelic squiggles,lay siege to a castle defended by dark-skinned Moors. The strangeness of asociety beyond a European’s kenexplodes into every inch of the scene:wondrous flora, whimsical towers,and a sky aquiver with quasi-Moorishpatterns.

The attackers might remindcontemporary viewers of MauriceSendak’s “wild things”, dancing inorgiastic abandon. His bestiary is theprojections of a child’s unconscious,giving flesh to his young hero Max’spain and powerless rage. Thesewarriors, too, displace homegrownsavagery to a safe distance. TheCrusades and international trade hadmade Moors exotic but well-knownadversaries, and in the tapestry theydefend themselves with elegance andpoise. The wild men, on the otherhand, are both weirder and morerecognisable. They might be someimaginary tribe from deep inside amysterious continent, more terriblethan any actual army. But they alsolook oddly familiar: brutish, whitish,and rather . . . European. Thatresemblance invites the mosthorrifying thought of all: I am themonster I fear most.

Until September 23, themorgan.org

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2 hours agoBell47G

Extraordinary and sensitive piece. One reason I

keep my FT subscription is the arts section.

Thank you!

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