Los Angeles Times

MEDIEVAL BEASTS ARE ‘ROAMING’ THE GETTY

A unicorn ‘herd’ is just the start of a marvelous exhibit on ancient manuscript­s full of real, imagined creatures.

- CHRISTOPHE­R KNIGHT ART CRITIC

When Marco Polo headed off from Venice, Italy, for the sprawl of Asia in 1271, the inquisitiv­e teenager was on the lookout for wondrous things. One that he found surprised him mightily.

The unicorn he encountere­d on Sumatra “is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin,” he later told a scribe, who recorded the explorer’s epic 24-year journey in “The Travels of Marco Polo.” In fact, he continued, “’Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon.”

That’s probably because what Polo had actually seen was a rhinoceros.

Because the traveler had never encountere­d one of those before, and because the ungainly beast sported a large horn protruding from its head like an elegant unicorn — which he also had never seen but knew about from Bible stories — he put two and two together and came up with five. Polo knew what he was looking for, so he made the world conform to his expectatio­n.

Unicorns proliferat­e in the first room of “Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World,” a sumptuous exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum. An animal surrogate for Christ’s cleansing purity, unicorns turn up in pictures drawn and painted in the vellum pages of books, carved into the side of an ivory box and the seat of a parade saddle made of bone, woven into a wool and silk tapestry, stained into window glass, hammered into a brass dish, molded to form a ritual water vessel and embroidere­d into delicate linen cloth. Not one is passing ugly. And lest a museum visitor doubt the reality of the marvelous creature represente­d in all these objects, some dating from nearly 1,000 years ago, a unicorn horn is displayed nearby. An unidentifi­ed artisan lavished the horn’s sometimes-spiraling surface with intricate patterns of plants, animals and human figures.

Pattern is repetition and repetition is ritual, which may explain why this strange object is thought to have been used in church procession­s as a ceremonial staff. Nearly 4 feet long, it was carved in England more than 100 years before Polo set off on his trip.

Closer inspection reveals that, like the rhinoceros case of mistaken identity, this carved tusk actually came from a wholly different beast. Not a unicorn’s horn, it’s the left canine tooth of a narwhal, a type of Arctic porpoise.

Never mind. Many of the unicorns these medieval artists invented are as wondrous as nature’s gifts.

“Book of Beasts” chronicles the rise of the bestiary, a specific type of manuscript illuminate­d with pictures of animals both real and imaginary, ordinary and extraordin­ary, plus its influence on other art until the Renaissanc­e interrupte­d all the fun. Around 300 were produced, especially in Northern Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries. Astounding­ly, nearly onethird of the 60 known books have been brought together for this indispensa­ble show.

For every lion there’s a griffin — a lion’s body fused with an eagle’s head, wings and sometimes talons — and for every pelican, a firebreath­ing dragon. Bestiaries extolled the glory of the Christian God through the applicatio­n of vivid splendor to his creation, whether proved to be real like a lion and pelican or believed to exist in a far-off realm like the griffin and unicorn. That meant making art that would be equally as splendid to convey appropriat­e power.

The show’s second section opens with a wallop.

The Aberdeen Bestiary, made circa 1200, is regarded by many scholars the greatest one of all. Certainly, it is an eye-boggling extravagan­ce. Getty curator Elizabeth Morrison and assistant curator Larisa Grollemond, who organized the exhibition after nearly a decade’s research, chose to display the book opened at a pivotal place.

The spectacula­r folio on the left shows Christ in majesty, enthroned in an abstract eternity of glistening, polished gold. So much gold that the vellum page looks physically heavy.

He is held aloft by angels and, at the corners, the four evangelist­s. Matthew is represente­d as an angel, then Mark, Luke and John by their similarly winged animal symbols of lion, ox and eagle.

The exaltation of the relationsh­ip between God and nature is further stressed by the stunning painting on the opposite page. Its story comes from the Book of Genesis. Adam, the first man, is shown naming the animals.

Adam’s right hand is raised in blessing, his left palm lowered and held upright in a welcoming, comehither gesture. Boxy rectilinea­r compartmen­ts hold an array of gently rounded, boldly outlined creatures painted in saturated colors, starting at the top with a crimson lion — king of the beasts.

The animal symbolism can get pretty complicate­d. Mythology of the time, according to a nearby label, said the cubs of a lioness were born dead; after three days, the lion would breathe life into them. The legend has at least two implicatio­ns, both inferring nature’s sacred source.

Genesis asserts that God “breathed into [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” — the lone biblical text that identifies when human life begins. The lion’s tale also adds a twist of resurrecti­on, since the cubs arise only after a three-day “death.”

The show then fans out beyond illuminate­d manuscript­s to encompass the bestiary’s role in establishi­ng a pervasive visual vocabulary in the medieval world. Its words and pictures functioned as a kind of moral Christian guidebook. The allegorica­l range is marvelous in tapestries, metalwork, architectu­ral fragments (painted ceiling panels, carved column capitals), game boards and other medieval objects of courtly and monastic life.

Eventually, the story unravels. Science intervenes.

Christian allegory wanes as natural history emerges during the Renaissanc­e, slowly draining mystical symbolism and replacing it with the visual power of direct observatio­n. If you haven’t actually seen a unicorn, better not to carve or paint one except in the spirit of lively play.

That shift in emphasis doesn’t banish imaginatio­n. “A Hare in the Forest,” the Getty’s own captivatin­g 1585 Hans Hoffmann panel painting, renders every fine, short hair of the animal’s fur in excruciati­ng detail. But the bunny, inspired by a famous Albrecht Dürer watercolor, is placed within a hyper-real woodland. Botanists have explained that only in art, not nature, could such a diverse array of plant life occupy a single locale.

If only the exhibition had also ended there. Unfortunat­ely, there’s one more room to go, and it misfires.

Seventeen minor specimens of Modern and contempora­ry art by the likes of Henri de ToulouseLa­utrec, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder and Damien Hirst suddenly catapult us almost 300 years into the future. The exhibition’s closing narrative is disjunctiv­e. What happened between the 17th and 20th centuries is anyone’s guess.

To cite one hapless example, Hirst’s sculpture of a hefty unicorn skull, crafted from solid gold and silver and made in 2010 for a lavish exhibition in Polo’s hometown of Venice, doesn’t really occupy “the sometimes blurry line between reality and fantasy” — the bizarre claim in the show’s large (and largely impeccable) catalog. The nihilistic gewgaw, vacuous and vulgar, instead embodies the mythos that can be manufactur­ed in a crude marketcult­ure that primarily values art as a luxury asset.

That’s a unicorn of a different color.

Art museums now seem to feel that topical relevance is somehow served by appending recent art to exhibition­s otherwise anchored in a historical epoch. Here, reducing the medieval bestiary to a contempora­ry footnote makes for a listless conclusion to an otherwise strong and compelling show.

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 ?? Photograph­s from J. Paul Getty Museum ?? “ADAM NAMING THE ANIMALS,” from the Aberdeen Bestiary, England, circa 1200, comes directly from the Book of Genesis.
Photograph­s from J. Paul Getty Museum “ADAM NAMING THE ANIMALS,” from the Aberdeen Bestiary, England, circa 1200, comes directly from the Book of Genesis.
 ??  ?? “A HARE IN THE FOREST” by Hans Hoffmann was inspired by a Albrecht Dürer watercolor.
“A HARE IN THE FOREST” by Hans Hoffmann was inspired by a Albrecht Dürer watercolor.

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