Illuminated Manuscripts

Why don't we illuminate our manuscripts anymore?

Because everyone knows about the Christian ones, here are a few others first:


From the Lisbon Bible:

Here are some illuminated qurans:







From the Adysh Gospels:

An 18th century Ethiopian Bible:



From a 13th century bestiary (catalog of animals):

Composite Creatures

When I started this post, I actually had no idea what a "composite creature" was: I honestly thought Composite Creatures was the name of some artist's collective or something. It turns out, a composite creature is a mythical animal/humanoid that combines features from different animals. Spooky.

In Greeks class, we learned about this crazy idea that the ancient Greek monsters were inspired by dinosaur bones. I don't trust a word that Cary says, but with an idea this juicy, I couldn't resist biting in.

A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that Adrienne Mayor (the historian who formulated the idea) has written a book on the topic, and that it is now "widely accepted." Hmmm....this is starting to look more plausible.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Greek monsters and also dinosaur bones and pictures:

T-Rex:




The Hydra:



Mammoths and Mastodons:





Sphinxes:





Harpies:



I'm sure this artist had a positive relationship with the women in his life /s



 Pterodactyls!:






Centaurs:













These are not the prettiest centaurs :(