A Fantastic Creature 1590 - 1633

Arent van Bolten created this drawing of a fantastic creature in pen and brown ink, with gray wash, probably in the Netherlands, sometime in the late 16th or early 17th century. During this period, artists were fascinated by the grotesque, and images of hybrid creatures were a way of playing with established social norms. Fantastic creatures can be found in popular festivals and carnivals, and also in the margins of illuminated manuscripts, where they sometimes mocked church authority. The artist could have been inspired by such sources, or by the engravings of Hieronymus Bosch. The drawing is an example of the period’s interest in ornamentation, as well as the culture’s anxieties about social order. Looking at the sources that Van Bolten may have used gives us an insight into the image’s cultural significance. What are the politics of imagery? As historians, our interpretation of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.