Came across this and had to share. Beautiful hi-res scans of the 1775 book, Compendium Of Magic And Demonology. Crazy to think these monsters were drawn hundreds of years ago, their influence is still clearly relevant today! Really love the first guy in particular Rest of the scans here: http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2014/12/compendium-of-magic-and-demonology-1775.html
this is my favorite from those fiends: well also you might enjoy stufs from hundred years before that as well, here are some terms to search: Aristotle (ca. 384-322 B.C.). De Generatione animalium Galen (131-201 A.D). De usu partium corporis humani Pliny, the Elder (23-79 A.D.). Historia naturalis Avicenna (980-1037). Canon medicinae Albertus Magnus (1193-1280). Physica Pierre Belon (1517-1564). Les obseruations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502). De abditis non nullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationum causis Julius Obsequens. Des prodiges Konrad Lykosthenes (1518-1561). Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon Konrad Gesner (1516-1565). Historia animalium Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576). Somniorum Synesiorum Jakob Ruff (1500-155. De conceptu et generatione hominis Arnaud Sorbin, Bishop of Nevers (1532-1606). Tractatus de monstris Pierre Boaistuau (d. 1566). Histoires prodigieuses Ambroise Paré (1510-1590). Les oevvres de m. Ambroise Paré Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg (1530-159. Observationum medicarum rariorum This in particular always made me giddy as a kid: Johannes-Georg Schenck von Grafenberg. Monstrorum historia Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605). Monstrorum histori Fortunio Liceti (1577-1657). De monstrorum caussis Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605). Musaeum metallicum Ole Worm (1588-1654). Museum Wormianum Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731). Thesaurus anatomicus Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). The Diary of Samuel Pepys Johann Friedrich Meckel (1781-1833). De duplicitate monstrosa commentarius would be nice if modern day artists would look back in time more than a decade to get inspiration for making 'monsters' instead of making crap- you know who you are!
Don't forget Hieronymus Bosch! 1450 - 1516 http://www.hieronymus-bosch.org/ Just so weird and fascinating at the same time, what an imagination. Boy, I would've really liked to have met him!
A demonic lady with a vagina dripping menstrual blood into the mouth of a snake... Any normal person would think "Well, that's enough Internet for me today!" Thanks so much for sharing, this is great inspiration for a series of demons I'm working on! And oh my goodness, Bosch... We just looked at his stuff in Art History class, especially The Garden of Earthly Delights. Can't believe all of that stuff came from his head! We spend a good amount of time pointing out weird/hilarious things in that one.
There were other Flanders painters of his era that painted similar fantastic paintings of Hell and demons, but Bosch is understandably the best known. When I was a kid I had a teacher who said that he was crazy ... "whenever they let him out of his straitjacket, he'd paint." Later I learned that this popular belief was completely untrue. He was just working within the context of his very devout religious belief. Those paintings were probably terrifying in their day but as you say there are lots of details that are pretty funny today. One such detail is musical notation written across the buttocks of someone being tortured. A Spanish early music ensemble actually managed to perform the music on Renaissance instruments, calling the notation "Codex Gluteo."
One thing I noticed about Bosch. He seems a little over obsessed with sticking things up people's butts.
