A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and ArtWright, Thomas
History
A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art
Wright, Thomas
Caricature -- History
There was another popular story, which also was told under several
forms. The old Norman historians tell it of their duke Richard
Sans-Peur. There was a monk of the abbey of St. Ouen, who also held
the office of sacristan, but, neglecting the duties of his position,
entered into an intrigue with a lady who dwelt in the neighbourhood,
and was accustomed at night to leave the abbey secretly, and repair
to her. His place as sacristan enabled him thus to leave the house
unknown to the other brethren. On his way, he had to pass the little
river Robec, by means of a plank or wooden bridge, and one night
the demons, who had been watching him on his errand of sin, caught
him on the bridge, and threw him over into the water, where he was
drowned. One devil seized his soul, and would have carried it away,
but an angel came to claim him on account of his good actions, and
the dispute ran so high, that duke Richard, whose piety was as great
as his courage, was called in to decide it. The same manuscript from
which our last cut was taken has furnished our cut No. 37, which
represents two demons tripping up the monk, and throwing him very
unceremoniously into the river. The body of one of the demons here
assumes the form of an animal, instead of taking, like the other, that
of a man, and he is, moreover, furnished with a dragon's wings. There
was one version of this story, in which it found its place among the
legends of the Virgin Mary, instead of those of duke Richard. The
monk, in spite of his failings, had been a constant worshipper of the
Virgin, and, as he was falling from the bridge into the river, she
stepped forward to protect him from his persecutors, and taking hold
of him with her hand, saved him from death. One of the compartments
of the rather early wall-paintings in Winchester Cathedral represents
the scene according to this version of the story, and is copied in
our cut No. 38. The fiends here take more fantastic shapes than we
have previously seen given to them. They remind us already of the
infinitely varied grotesque forms which the painters of the age of the
Renaissance crowded together in such subjects as "The Temptation of
St. Anthony." In fact these strange notions of the forms of the demons
were not only preserved through the whole period of the middle ages,
but are still hardly extinct. They appear in almost exaggerated forms
in the illustrations to books of a popular religious character which
appeared in the first ages of printing. I may quote, as an example, one
of the cuts of an early and very rare block-book, entitled the _Ars
Moriendi_, or "Art of Dying," or, in a second title, _De Tentationibus
Morientium_, on the temptations to which dying men are exposed. The
scene, of which a part is given in the annexed cut (No. 39), is in the
room of the dying man, whose bed is surrounded by three demons, who
are come to tempt him, while his relatives of both sexes are looking
on quite unconscious of their presence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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