Strange Newes out of Kent

This wonderful piece of newes was sent to me by Whitney Dirks-Schuster who’s completing a PhD based on Monstrous births in Great Britain between 1450 - 1750. Although this revolves around human phenomena the story-telling aspect to the visualisations is precisely the same as in bestiaries.

This is the wonderful description to go along with the woodcut:

“… it had no head, nor any sign or proportion thereof, there only appeared as it were two faces, the one visibly to be seen, directly placed in the breast, where it had a nose, and a mouth, and two holes for two eyes, but no eyes, all which seemed ugly, and most horrible to be seen, and much offensive to human nature to be looked upon, the other face was not perfectly to be seen, but retained a proportion of flesh in a great round lump, like unto a face quite disfigured, and this was all of that which could be discerned.  The face, mouth, eyes, nose, and breast, being thus framed together like a deformed piece of flesh, resembled no proportion of nature, but seemed as it were a chaos of confusion, a mixture of things without any description, from the breast downward to the bowels it was smooth and straight, all the other parts of the body retained a most strange deformity, for the arms grew out at the top of the shoulders, having neither joint nor elbow, but round and fleshy, at the end of which arms, grew two hands, with fifteen fingers, the one hand had eight, the other seven, of a contrary shape, not like to the natural fingers of newborn children: also it had fourteen toes, of each foot seven, being as it were like unto geese or ducks’ feet.  The waist and middle as I said before, was straight and without joints, but the lower parts were all in a lump of flesh, like unto a lamb’s paunch, or suchlike loathsome thing to be seen, and withall the legs so short, that they seemed to have no proportion”

Another brilliant bit of madness from Edward Topsell’s History of four-footed beasts and serpents. This is a Beaver.

It’s fair to say that Albrecht Durer’s Rhinoceros is the prime example of the replicated image. Despite being created in 1513 and despite having many errors it was still considered the truest rendering of a Rhinoceros until the 18th Century (Durer had never seen a real rhinoceros, his image was in fact based on a description and a sketch that someone else made).

The print was copied relentlessly by artists through the ages, Hans Burgkmairs is perhaps the closest to real-life whilst Topsell’s is predictably quite unrealistic.

Edward Topsell’s work is a treasure chest of received wisdoms and derivative images. The above image is an engraving (1607) taken from his ‘History of Four Footed Beasts”

Not strictly speaking an unseen real animal - but a deliberate monstrosity. 
From the ‘Monstrorum Historia’ by Ulisse Aldrovandi