Cover Image: Book of Beasts

Book of Beasts

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

This is not a bestiary, but rather a scholarly examination of the history of some medieval bestiaries and their influence on the world. The writing in this book is extremely dense with information and often gets rather boring. I was expecting more of a collection of bestiaries, rather than scholarly debates and theories. I was also unimpressed with the quality of the photographs taken, the angles are off-center in a way that looks more amateur than artful.

I'm sure this is a brilliant book for those who are looking to examine the historical importance of medieval bestiaries, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I had anticipated.

Was this review helpful?

Books of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World brings together the ‘largest number of medieval bestiaries ever’ [vii] exploring creation, existence and legacy of the bestiary. This should be the opening to a thrilling text, but I was quickly moved to disappointment as the note to the readers announces that all ‘illuminators, scribes and other artists’ [xiv] will be referred to with male pronouns. This is an ignorant choice as their is a vast amount of literature on the contributions of women to medieval illumination. The deliberate erasure of their efforts in a modern text – particularly one accompanying an exhibition – is infuriatingly ignorant. They is a convenient neutral pronoun, use it.

The text then allows us to discover the fifteen most ‘compelling animals’ [9] within the medieval bestiary which was bright and exciting, but all too soon we move into a series of tangential essays. The first two are rather inaccessible, which would be off putting to a newcomer to the subject. I’m well seasoned and I struggled – when will people remember that research and academia are supposed to be fun and engaging? The third essay, however, is fantastic and an absolute asset to the book! I do hope that Elizabeth Morrison publishes ‘Accommodating Antlers, Making Room for Hedgehogs and Other Problems of Page Design in the Medieval Bestiary’ as an essay that’s easily sourced. The following essays failed to match ‘Accommodating Antlers’ in terms of content and style, but they were a definite improvement on the first two.

In the successive essays, there is a shift in the presentation and the text becomes smaller and shifts from a wide layout to being formatted in columns. Personally, I found that this resulted in it being difficult to follow the text and I would often lose where I was as I was reading an e-pub. I would have preferred for the format to remain consistent as this would heighten the value.

The bestiary maps injected joy back into my reading experience and were beyond fascinating! There was also a short section on calligrams (text turned to a thematically similar/related image) which was wonderful as it’s not often that you come across these.

The epilogue was somewhat disjointed and would have benefitted from fully integrating the art with the text as it discussed modern examples of bestiaries in various art forms.

Overall, Book of Beasts falls short at almost every hurdle. If it could have settled on a tone, academic level, and presentation style, it would have had a much more cohesive feel. That said, the images were excellent and cannot be faulted, this book becomes a treasure trove thanks to them. Revisits to the book would definitely be based on the images rather than the text.

Was this review helpful?

A slow read, but my interest in the topic kept me going. The book is worth it for the images alone, but I can see how if one has only superficial interest in the topic, it would be a bit too dry.

Was this review helpful?

Not for the casual reader. If you're a scholar of bestiaries then all the talk of what manuscripts are possibly related and the hypotheticals of their creation should fascinate you. If, like me, you simply had an idle curiosity about bestiaries, you will struggle to slog through about 2/3rds of this book (it felt like I was reading it for months).

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.

Was this review helpful?

Let me get the easy part out of the way. As would be expected from a Getty title, this is a magnificently illustrated and informative book on bestiaries. The publisher tells us there are 270 illustrations in the book and each of them is a joy, meticulously reproduced and almost jumping off the printed page.
This is a catalog of an on-going show at the Getty which must be a marvel to behold. Bestiaries are a peculiar genre of book which are to be enjoyed for the fantastical elements of the work, how the folks of a distant age envisioned and cataloged their world to the best of their abilities. Seeing how ordinary animals that we are closely familiar with is often a surprise as we try to understand how the creatures we know were distorted through the telling to finally end up on the page of a bestiary.
T. H. White, in his book "The Bestiary," makes the point that we can find these illustrations quaint and amusing but we have to credit the monks and scholars who are working from descriptions of frequently unknown creatures that have been recorded by travelers doing their best to comprehend what they have never seen before. (I recommend the White book as a companion to this one as it quotes directly from animal descriptions in bestiaries which this volume only infrequently does.)
The last section of the book deals with more recent books of animals, primarily artist's books and fine press titles. While the portrayal of animals is obviously more accurate, the illustrations have much of the same charm of discovery.
I recommend this book highly for anyone interested in medieval art or merely the inventiveness of man.

Was this review helpful?

Thanks for sharing this one. I loved looking through the illustrations and reading about the background behind them. My full review appears on A Comfy Chair.

Was this review helpful?

A lovely catalog of most common animals/beasts in medieval bestiaries. Sometimes it gets a bit uninteresting, but mostly it kept my attention.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

Was this review helpful?

Thanks to Getty Publications and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is an absolutely lovely book and my only regret is that I will not be able to see the exhibition it accompanies.

Contained within are beautiful images drawn by Medieval artists of animals (both real and mythical) and other subjects. It's perhaps clear that the artists never saw some of these animals, and the illustrations are often fanciful at best but are all the more interesting and fun for it. The colours and details are reproduced in stunning detail and the book is laid out in a coherent and engaging way.

The history and context is provided in an interesting and engaging way but may slant too much towards the academic for some. Despite the level of detail and sources provided, the editors of this book have let the pictures take centre stage.

Overall, a gorgeous book with stunning imagery. Yes, some of them are amusing to the modern eye (that whale, come oooooon) they are all the more charming for it.

Was this review helpful?

A lovely and fun collection of the creatures that adorn medieval manuscripts, tapestries, and other media. A great source for teachers, artists (including needleworkers, stained class-makers, and sculptors in addition to the more obvious illustrators), and writers and gamers. The context and explanations for the different mythological and real animals is useful and interesting.

Was this review helpful?

"Book of Beasts" is a great collection of stories and pictures. There is a lot to love in this collection. I'll definitely recommend it to patrons.

Was this review helpful?

This book had beautiful artwork in it that added to the whole feel and really brought you into what this book was all about. It took me a bit to get into it, but once I did I couldn't put the book down. I just had to know what the next page said! I had the book done in two sittings. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in history or animals in general. Very good and enlightening read.

Was this review helpful?

To me the book appears aimed more at an academic audience. Some of the essays interested me more than others and this might not be the place to start in discovering bestiaries. There is a lot of information here and it’s not something that can be absorbed in one reading. I do wish I were nearer to the museum to be able to see these in person but with the lavish illustrations included, I think I have the next best thing. B-

Was this review helpful?

This was a hard book to review, because it was so difficult to read – every time I picked it up I had difficulty moving past the glorious images – vibrant, curious and compelling – that required hours of browsing and musing. Even a non specialist would find this one massively and persistently compelling.
It is intended as a catalogue to the exhibition this year at the John Paul Getty Museum of medieval bestiaries – an exhibition that will be an extraordinary cultural experience in itself. But it has been supported by a series of articles by leading scholars in the field, gathered here to provide latest thought in developing research in their (and closely related) field. So expect a series of images – wonderful images - specialist articles on both broader and tighter themes and detailed individual descriptions of the hundred plus pieces that will be on display.
The bestiaries have been gathered from leading collections around the world and this represents the largest gathering of its type ever undertaken. They cover the earliest to the latest, Latin to vernacular and strictly religious to more secular. This allows their history to be tracked from pre-Christian origins to the very recent bestiary inspired art, with linkage to both Jewish and Islamic images.
There will be samples of all the beasts, both real and imagined, in glorious and somewhat unexpected colours – blue tigers are memorable! From exemplary drawings used to indicate each animal to later images that reflect a wider cultural background, court life, hunting, agriculture, and some decidedly determined cats. Each animal could symbolise a moral, morals, or allegorical tales. All beast types are covered. This catalogue carefully selects a range of first rate images to illustrate both this aspect and the wider academic understandings of the pieces.
The articles reflect this understanding too – and it is an important volume in that respect as it allows detailed examination of links between individual bestiaries, their possible place of creation and the transmission of ideas and designs. Bestiaries were developed as an educational tool for a religious context to inform on specific and detailed Christian morals and beliefs – each, at least, an impactful aide memoir, at greatest, a route to deeper spiritual thought and understanding. The academic review could be considered enough in itself, but even for a non specialist it allows one to think through exactly what one is looking at – and take time to focus on the individual images – which, it must be remembered, are some of the great glories of medieval art, culture and creativity.
Another whole sub-set of the display and volume is the same beasts and presentations in their wider usage across a huge range of other items, all of them intriguing in their own right – books, architecture, glass, metalwork, embroideries, jewellery and caskets among others. Thus creating a window on aspects of the medieval past – lived at least by the wealthy.
The exhibition will no doubt be a wonderful experience for visitors – regretfully not including me – but the catalogue is another window of opportunity, albeit in a different dimension and with the option of a different timescale and perspective, to view and understand the pieces. Not just as art pieces but as cultural jewels and spiritual aids. What a brilliant book.

Was this review helpful?

I want to thank Netgalley and Getty Publications for providing a free e-book copy for my true and honest opinion.

Words cannot explain how excited I was when I was approved to get this book. I love books that accompany exhibitions and because I won't be able to see the actual exhibition; it was amazing to get this (p.s The exhibition is on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center May 14 to August 18, 2019.)

This book is beautiful! It has 270 colour illustrations and well-written collection of essays by twenty-five experts. The essays focuses bestiary and its widespread influence on medieval art and culture. It is fascinating look at the sub-genre of medieval manuscripts. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is fascinated or interested in Medieval history or just a history buff.

5 stars

Was this review helpful?

A fascinating look at the history behind the bestiary, which is a specific form of early illustrated manuscript.

In each bestiary, readers found gorgeous illustrations of a wide variety of beasts - both real and imagined - along with a lot of religious moralizing and so-called scientific information of a highly dubious nature. For example, many people still believe the myth that elephants don’t have knee joints (or knees at all), which is easily traced back to these books, as is the false statement that elephants don’t lie down.

Prepared to accompany a museum exhibit, this book displays hundreds of illustrations, along with a translation of the original text. At times humorous, absurd, and infuriating, these early works show many misunderstandings of nature and life. They also capture a lot of bigotry and tend to show any “villains” with dark faces. The example of apes is particularly disturbing in its very thinly veiled reference to people of color.

As a museum book filled with commentary from experts, Book of Beasts occasionally gets a bit lost in the weeds with details that may have been better saved for the reference section at the back of the book. Anyone who is secular may also have a difficult time slogging through some of the antiquated religious references, although they were interesting/amusing at times and do have a lot of historical significance.

Overall, the illustrations, history, and painstakingly detailed allegories make this book very worthwhile. Even if you simply look at the illustrations, you’ll still find a lot of entertainment value.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

Was this review helpful?

A great book for those who like manuscripts or Medical history. Looks at images from a few book or pages from Christian, Islam and Judaism sources. So you do get a range of looks and how the images are incorporated into the whole page or with words. A nice beginning to the animals and beasts in Medical sources.

Was this review helpful?

Not what I expected from a bestiary. It plunged a lot into biblical nonsense as opposed to focusing on the animals themselves. I'm very disappointed. The only redeeming aspect of the book were the passages, in total 15, that went into detail about the animals themselves and the gorgeous pictures packed into the book. The rest was fluff, monotone or just dreadfully boring.

Was this review helpful?

This is such an interesting book! It's a companion to an exhibit, but it reads beautifully on its own, and though I would love to see the various bestiaries mentioned in person, the illustrations are high quality enough that I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything I needed to understand the essays. This would be an excellent jumping-off point for those who are completely new to bestiaries, but for those who have a little info already, the essays in particular are very interesting and explore some unusual aspects. The book as a whole is well-designed and well-balanced, and would be a fascinating addition to anyone's shelf.

Was this review helpful?

Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World Edited by Elizabeth Morrison with Larisa Grollemond

Pros: lots of gorgeous full colour illustrations, essays on a variety of topics, thorough discussion on the evolution of bestiaries

Cons: some of the essays are dense

This is the guide that accompanies the exhibition “Book of Beasts” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibit runs from May 14th to August 18th. (with the included link http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/bestiary/inner.html)

The book is divided into three parts. Part one is an introduction plus images and text for the 15 best known bestiary animals. Part two: Exploring the Bestiary is subdivided into The Bestiary in form and function (consisting of 6 essays and the first 28 catalogue listings) and The Bestiary Reimagined (two essays and 5 listings). Part three: Beyond the Bestiary is again subdivided, with catalogue listings after each essay. It’s sections are: Church and Court (3 essays) and Bestiaries and Natural History (4 essays). The epilogue is followed by the final catalogue listings and four appendices.

I found the first few essays of part 2 boring due to their dry and somewhat dense prose. There’s a fair amount of repetition in that most of these essays opened with similar background paragraphs on Bestiaries and their origins in the Greek book Physiologus. For me, the most interesting essay of this section was “Accommodating Antlers, Making Room for Hedgehogs, and Other Problems of Page Design in the Medieval Bestiary”. It was interesting learning how scribes and illustrators may have been working from different manuscripts and so their work didn’t always line up.

The later essays were much more interesting, both in style an content. There’s less minutiae about the manuscripts making them more accessible and I enjoyed learning new things about how bestiaries influenced other forms of art like maps and sculptures. I also appreciated that there were separate essays on Jewish and Muslim uses of animals in manuscripts. Those essays all felt too short, given the amount of information being discussed.

I liked that there are occasional ‘notes to the reader’ explaining some of the terms so that even those who haven’t studied manuscripts can understand the more scholarly language used. The notes for catalogue listings generally mentioned if a manuscript has been fully or partially digitized and is available online for further study. Unfortunately these notes are in such small text I’m afraid some readers will miss this information.

Catalogue images are all reproduced in colour and there was a good variety. I loved seeing the evolution of the genre and how the stories were reinterpreted in later works. I was surprised that some of the images were duplicated though. A page would be used to illustrate an essay and than that same page would be one of the images used to illustrated the catalogue listing for that manuscript. Given the fact that each manuscript only got one or two images, I would have expected different pages to be used each time in order to maximize the number of different images shown.

If you’re new to bestiaries this is an excellent primer, though you’ll have to work a bit to understand some of the terms. For those with some knowledge, it will increase it and suggest other works to examine. If you’re well versed in the subject the later essays don’t go far enough to suggest new avenues of study, though the earlier ones do an excellent job of showing what scholarship has been done and what still needs examination.

This looks like an excellent exhibit and I wish I could attend and see all of these manuscripts and artworks in person.

Was this review helpful?

This book is really quite interesting, but very heavy on the academia and not a particularly good place to start your interest in bestiaries. It seems to be presented with the hope that layman readers will be able to learn from it, but it suffers from a hurdle there - it is so goddamn verbose. The information on the 15 most popular bestiary creatures was super interesting, and the illustrations are gorgeous. I would've liked to have more information on the creatures beyond the 15, honestly. This is an exhibit I'd have loved to see, but sadly wrong country for me. So I can be satisfied with this peak at bestiaries. Just wish it was less foreboding to read.

Was this review helpful?