45 Alarming Examples of Creatures in Medieval Art

When I set out to write a post about the creatures in Medieval art, I assumed I would present a photo gallery of monsters and somewhat disturbing beings. I didn’t expect to get sucked into learning all about these Medieval art creatures, and now I’m even more enthralled with them than when I started out.

My first encounter with creatures in Medieval art was Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

If you’ve ever spent time poking around this triptych, you’ll know it’s riddled with all sorts of questionable goings-on. We’ll just be looking at the creatures today, but if you haven’t had a chance, do take a closer look at each of the panels.

Hieronymus Bosch triptych: The Garden of Earthly Delights featuring humans and strange creatures

The Garden of Earthly Delights from the left panel to the right:

Left: The Garden of Eden, where Adam realizes he is about to get lucky.

Center: All sorts of primal and sexual goings-on in the feveriest fever dream ever.

Right: Hell! Silly, weak, amoral, lusty humans couldn’t keep themselves out of Hell, and the weird creatures down there are fabulous.

Creatures From The Garden of Earthly Delights

Let’s have a look at some of the Medieval creatures from The Garden of Earthly Delights. Yay!

Left Panel Creatures

The small dog on 2 legs with the glassy eyes is by far one of my favorites of the creatures found in this artwork. Although the 2 bird-things in the bottom right image are inspiring as well.

collage of made up creatures from Hieronymus Bosch's painting Garden of Earthly Delights

Center Creatures

It’s hard to look past all of the human frolicking, but the beasts in the center panel are fun, too. Those sea creatures are the stuff of nightmares.

Right Panel Creatures

It gets really dark and scary in the third panel. The bottom row here is my favorite with those gaping, murderous mouths, ready to – or in the act of – consuming the evil humans.

More Creatures in Medieval Art

This is fun, right? We’re just getting started with all of these new friends. It’s hard to beat the creatures from Bosch’s painting, but there are still some more fascinating Medieval art creatures to explore.

Bestiaries

The following were taken from Medieval Bestiaries – illustrated books that described all of the living creatures, including their religious significance. Real and imaginary beasts share the pages indiscriminately. As they should.

basilisk drawing from Medieval art — A Basilisk, the serpent king | source

These fellows are called Blemmyes, and for hundreds of years were believed to exist in areas like Ethiopia and India. They popped up frequently on Medieval maps and in travel memoirs and were said to be 7 or 8 feet tall.

medieval illustrations of blemmyes, or headless humans with their faces in their chests

Other common beasts of the Middle Ages included unicorns, griffins, onocentaurs (body of man head of donkey), pegasus, draconcopedes (woman-faced snakes), and so many more. SO many more.

From everything I’ve read, it seems that while some of these creatures were believed to be real, most were symbolic representations of moral ideas, and were used for teaching and reinforcing these social values.

4 illustrations of creatures in Medieval art a manticore, bird with snail on its head, creature with a crown, and fish that looks like a monk — Clockwise from top left: Illustration from *Omnium fere gentium nostrae que aetatis nationum, habitus et effigies, et in eosdem epigrammata* by Johannes Sluperius, 1572, a creature wearing a crown by author Giraldus Cambrensis, Manticore, with the head of a man and the body of a lion.

The next 3 sets of images are all from The Flower of Nature, a natural history manuscript by Jacob van Maerlant (circa 1235-1300). Most of the creatures I saw in the manuscript had the same growly/grin and after you look at enough of them you naturally try on that face and growl a little.

Also! Tell me if you think the very last creature in this grouping looks like it could have been the inspiration for Cindy Lou Who.

collage of many strange creatures from a Medieval manuscript by Jacob van Maerlant - examples of made up monsters in Medieval art

collage of made up sea creatures from a Medieval manuscript by Jacob van Maerlant - examples of monsters in Medieval art

If you’re looking for a regular dose of Medieval creature art inspiration, follow Viktor Athelstan on Instagram. He shares the most wonderful illustrations there, to accompany his Medieval blog.

These images are 4 of my favorites from his feed, featuring creatures in hats! Impressive that these primitive beings would take such care in dressing themselves.

4 combinations of animals with human heads from Medieval art - all with hats on — Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, Comites Latentes 15 f. 7v, A hybrid creature with a wimple and bells (Source: The British Library), Stowe MS 17 f.37v (Source: The British Library), Two hybrid creatures, (Source: The British Library).

Tell me which is your favorite? Or do you love them all? I think my favorites are the orange-striped thingy in the orange circle wearing a crown, and the fish grabbing its own lower jaw. I also think some of these will make fabulous t-shirts.

If you enjoy Medieval art creatures, you’ll like the illustrations of Pedro Correa, and Darla Jackson’s haunting ceramic birds.

Thanks for sharing! 😍

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