Bestiary

This print was made for ABC (Artists Book Club) Bestiary project.

For this year’s collaborative project, ‘Bestiary’, you will channel this explorative mindset into
illustrating a page featuring an original, fantastical beast. This creature will be accompanied by a
descriptive passage, written as though you are an explorer documenting a newly discovered species.

When we got the brief (above) I started by looking at Medieval Bestiaries and approached the discovery of fantastical beasts from the medieval point of view.

There was a lot of misunderstanding regarding wildlife and also various myths surrounding this including the myth of Barnacle Geese – they appear in several bestiaries hanging from trees. People did not understand bird migrations and because Barnacle Geese just seemed to appear from nowhere it was believed they grew from trees.

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood creatures is the Bat. They were classified as birds because they were capable of flight, yet people were puzzled at their similarity to mice and couldn’t understand why a creature that did not have feathers could fly.

There are lots of names for Bats in various European languages based on fluttering mice – I really love Rattle-Mouse which goes back as far as 1589. I was worried that this name might appear derogatory, but I see it more as a term of endearment and affection.

There are numerous Bat images in Medieval Bestiaries and my favourite is from the Aberdeen Bestiary (Folio 51v) 

(There is also a very similar Bat image found in The Ashmole Bestiary (Folio 63r)

This is a translation of the description from the Aberdeen Bestiary.

The bat, a lowly animal, gets its name from vesper, the evening, when it emerges. It is a winged creature but also a four-footed one, and it has teeth, which you would not usually find in birds. It gives birth like a quadruped, not to eggs but to live young. It flies, but not on wings; it supports itself by making a rowing motion with its skin, and, suspended just as on wings, it darts around. There is one thing which these mean creatures do, however: they cling to each other and hang together from one place looking like a cluster of grapes, and if the last lets go, the whole group disintegrate; it a kind of act of love of a sort which is difficult to find among men.

I made a drawing from the image and chose text from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This is an extract describing the Daughters of Minyas being transformed into Bats, yet further illustrates that the misunderstanding and puzzlement surrounding these lovely creatures goes back centuries.

Not with feathered plumes they ride the air,
but keep themselves aloft on parchment wings;
and when they try to speak they send a tiny sound that suits their size,
and pour their plaints in thin high squeaking cries.
Houses they haunt, not woods; they loathe the light;
from dusk they take their name, and flit by night.

 

From Ovid – Metamorphoses, Book IV, 389-418, The Daughters of Minyas Transformed (into Bats)

(“from dusk they take their name” – vespertilio, derived from the Latin term vesper meaning ‘evening’; they are termed “evening bats” and were once referred to as “evening birds”)

The image is a hand carved rubber stamp printed using pigment ink pads onto Somerset Satin 250gsm. The text was typed on an Olivetti Lettera 35 (Manual Typewriter).

I am not sure what it is about this image but every time I look at the original and my version it makes me laugh (even when I was carving it). There is something about Bats that just brings me joy.