We’ve posted a lot of medieval art on the pages of CVLT Nation. Medieval minds were just as sick, twisted and corrupt as ours today, and their artwork often reflected this. Medieval artworks also heavily influence modern-day metal artwork with their absurd, morbid worldview and obsession with demons and devils. In 1532, François Rabelais released the first of his satirical 5-book series entitled The life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, weird stories about two giants that subsequently inspired the set of 120 woodblock prints by Francois Desprez, which he called The Humorous Dreams of Pantagruel and published in 1565, years after Rabelais’ death. The prints are as weird and creepy as medieval art can be – to get a sense of why, read this passage from Rabelais’ original work:
Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf’s skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney’s bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer’s lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs.
And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.
The prints later inspired Salvador Dali to reinterpret them, as well as artist Fabrizio Riccardi, who began his series Paintings of Pantagruel in 2008. Here’s a collection of his paintings – they are disturbing and amazing, and will stick in your mind, as they have done in countless minds over the past 400+ years.
