Readers’ wildlife photos

PLEASE send in your good wildlife photos as we’re running low. I am considering making this post sporadic rather than daily, as I don’t like repeatedly asking for photos. But if you got ’em, send ’em in.

Today we have some from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior on depictions of fantastical wildlife, gargoyles, and persons on buildings. Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Eerie fauna of yore

If you walk by a medieval cathedral, university or town hall in France, Italy, Spain, Germany or the United Kingdom, you may look up and catch sight of a creature staring back at you with stony eyes and an unearthly smile or grimace. These hallucinatory figures are gargoyles or grotesques, types of sculpture carved in the form of mythological beings or unsightly human faces. A gargoyle is a fancy waterspout that projects from a roof and carries rainwater away from the walls of a building, protecting the masonry from water damage. Grotesques look like gargoyles but have no architectural purpose: they are decorative carvings fixed to walls, high ledges or rooftops. When sculpted as faces, grotesques are known as mascarons. Inside a building, you may spot one of those figures carved on a boss, which is an ornamental knob on a ceiling, wall or sculpture.

A gargoyle standing guard by a saint in Pisa, Italy:

A sphynx-like grotesque in Bari, Italy:

A mascaron in Bologna depicting a lecherous-looking faun.

Below: one of the hundreds of bosses at The John Rylands Library in Manchester (they are not easy to photograph with a telephone because of the dim light). The spectacular collection of rare books and manuscripts and the building’s neo-Gothic architecture make the library alone worth a visit to Manchester. You will feel like you’re entering Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (but despite some claims, Harry Potter was not filmed there):

Animal-shaped waterspouts have been used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, but gargoyles and grotesques really picked up during the Gothic period (12th century). By the Renaissance, these structures become elaborate and fanciful, with a profusion of chimeras (mythical combinations of animals, including humans). Gargoyles and grotesques were generally painted with vivid colours, and some were also gilded. The drab figures we see today have been weathered by the erosive effects of rainwater.

Gargoyles in Perth, UK.:

Sheridan & Ross (Grotesques and Gargoyles: Paganism in the Medieval Church, 1969) suggested that gargoyles and grotesques were modeled after pre-Christian Celtic deities whose images could ward off malevolent spirits. The more bizarre and alarming the figures, the better; by drawing attention to themselves, they would deflect harm from people and their buildings. Christians could have adopted these pagan traditions that were tolerated by the Church for their usefulness as PR. But Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), Saint Bernard to Catholics, didn’t buy any of that nonsense: “What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read? What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, strange savage lions and monsters? To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man?… Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities we should at least regret what we have spent on them”. Indeed, nobody knows for sure the reason for these skilled carvings. The craftsmen who created them left no written records, so their motivation is a mystery: these sculptures may very well be whimsical, nothing more than the product of master masons’ irreverence and sense of humour (Woodcock, 2011. Gargoyles and Grotesques).

A mascaron adorning the bell tower door of the church of Santa Maria Formosa, Venice:

Some of the hundreds of gargoyles and grotesques decorating the magnificent Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano), which took nearly six centuries to complete. You need binoculars or a camera with a good zoom to properly appreciate them:

A building guardian in Altamura, Italy:

Gargoyles and grotesques have celebrity status at Notre-Dame Cathedral, but those structures are not particularly old. They were created by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), who in 1844 was given the task of renovating the cathedral. Viollet-le-Duc was criticized for adding more figures and sculptures than was historically accurate, probably because he was caught up in the resurgent interest in medieval art and architecture. This Gothic revival was inspired by Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and other popular stories involving mysterious castles, gloomy mansions, and the supernatural (Reilly 1966, The Dictionary of Art, Vol 12).

Gargoyles of Notre Dame, Paris:

The tradition of artistic freedom among master carvers continues. Salamanca Cathedral in Spain features an astronaut grotesque, and the Alien monster was carved into the structure of Paisley Abbey in Britain. Punks, Queen Elizabeth, nurses and local personalities have also been immortalised as gargoyles and grotesques.

This mascaron on a bridge over the river Spree in Berlin is supposed to represent Cesar, but the cheeky locals call it Angela Merckel:

With time, aesthetics replaced functionality and religiosity. Stonemasons, sculptors and blacksmiths used gargoyles and grotesques to display wealth, status and fashion.

Fancy corbels (structural brackets) in Noto, Syracuse Province, Italy.

From buildings, the fantastical human-animal imagery diffused into other designs and types of ornamentation such as doorknobs and knockers, and there’s no better place than Venice to admire their craftmanship. Elaborate bronze doorknobs (modern ones are usually made of brass, iron or wood) depict people, mythological characters or animals. Lions are quite popular for representing bravery, nobility and strength, or the Lion of San Marco, Venice’s symbol.

A doorknob poised to bite unwelcome visitors to a Venetian house:

A Venetian doorknob suggesting an African model:

A sour-looking escutcheon, which is an ornamental plate surrounding handles or key holes and designed to protect the door against nicks and scratches:

Well-off ancient Greeks seem to have come up with the idea of attaching a heavy ring to a metal plate to let guests announce their arrival, so doing away with uncouth shouting or door-banging. Rich Romans, who looked up to the chic Greeks for new trends, quicky adopted the practice. Their homes were fitted with fancy knockers and an ostiarius, a gate-keeping slave. Some door knockers have magic powers, like the one that transubstantiated into Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s old business partner, to help the miserly old git change into a happy, generous man (Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).

The Sanctuary Knocker on Durham Cathedral. In Medieval times, people who had committed ‘a great offence’ (usually murder or theft) would come to the cathedral and grasp the knocker’s ring – there was no knocking, despite its name. A monk on watch above the door would ring a bell to announce that sanctuary had been granted. The fugitive could stay for 37 days; afterwards, if no royal pardon was forthcoming, he had to decide whether to face trial or go into exile. If choosing the latter, the miscreant had to confess his crime and swear to leave the country and never come back:

An end comes to us all: a gargoyle or grotesque eroding away in Bari: