This large and beautifully illustrated album was created as a catalogue to the J. Paul Getty Museum exhibition. Articles by seventeen scholars, representing multifarious aspects of bestiary scholarship, follow the introduction and an exemplary section of bestiary entries with colorful illustrations. A total of twenty-seven writers contributed to the volume that includes a catalogue and appendixes. Only some can be mentioned here.
Sarah Kay presents a brief overview of the Greek Physiologus, with its descriptive and allegorical entries, didactic function, and Latin translations, discussing later additions of encyclopedic works, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologies and the Dicta Chrysostomi, as well as the Physiologus of Theobaldus, which expand and modify the bestiaries. Xenia Muratova discusses tradition and modification in pictorial interpretations of illuminated manuscripts following textual modifications. Examples from the Aberdeen and Ashmole bestiaries, illustrating theological, moral, and didactic meanings of animals, exegetic iconography, and mythological influences, demonstrate tradition and invention. Elizabeth Morrison examines the flexible relationships between text and image. She discusses theories regarding connections between bestiary manuscripts and examines iconographic consistencies alongside textual recensions.
Ilya Dines investigates a group of miscellanies to ascertain the function of bestiaries included in them. Noting that the original Physiologus, geared to a monastic audience, was didactic, she questions the purpose of bestiaries that included encyclopedic knowledge intended for highly educated readers. Susan Crane concentrates on a superbly illustrated bestiary (Bodleian MS 764) that expands the texts with images in which “animals are given imaginative and social roles alongside, or instead of religious significance” (78). Vernacular translations, beginning with the Physiologus and reworked in medieval French bestiaries, are discussed by Emma Campbell. Latin and vernacular bestiaries for late thirteenth-century French and Flemish courtly audiences are analyzed by Larisa Grollemond. The last sections of the text, The Bestiary beyond the Book, explores bestiary animals depicted in ecclesiastic sculpture, tapestries, misericords, encyclopedias, manuscripts, maps and art objects, primarily in medieval art, followed by a section devoted to the modern legacy.
Some writers enriched information with exemplary material that inspires curiosity and speculation. The myth of the unicorn, tales of the cats at night, the hawk evoking social rank, the fallen elephant, apotropaic griffons, and the mother ape and her babies, are examples presented in the articles. The prognostic bird, called the caladrius, briefly described by Muratova, was popular in bestiary illustrations. According to the Physiologus, the bird turns his face away from the man whose illness will bring death, but if the disease is not fatal, he stares at the sick man and releases him from his illness. Unfortunately, scholars have neglected to investigate the history of this bird in ancient Sanskrit sources. The Atharvaveda Kauśika Sutra (AVŚ 1, 22) discusses the treatment of jaundice by this yellow bird (called haridrava) and the Sushruta Samhita describes it as a bird of happy or evil augury. These sources are roughly dated to the early and mid-millennium BCE, suggesting that the myth originated in Indian texts on medicine, bird divination, and magico-religious beliefs.
In her article on Islamic tradition, Rebecca Hill makes reference to an Indian book of moralistic animal fables, the Panchatanta (ca. third century BCE), and its translations. But her example of the Greedy Dog was not one of the Panchatantra fables; it originated in Aesop's Fables and was incorporated into Nasr Allah's Persian translation, named Kalila wa Dimna (ca. 1143). It might be noted that the earliest Western illustration thereof appeared in the Aberdeen Bestiary (ca. 1200), shortly before Nasr Allah's version was illustrated in Baghdad.
The effort to coordinate the articles and their illustrations to the catalogue entries, on the one hand, and catalogue illustrations, on the other, makes reading cumbersome. Captions for illustrations lack dates when the reader is referred to the catalogue. The excellent catalogue entries are scattered among the articles, thereby forcing readers to interrupt their reading and search for the relevant reference. Perhaps the question of readership should have been clarified in advance. This book conjoins an exhibition catalogue, geared to an educated but non-professional audience, with academic studies for specialists who are familiar with the material and can digest overloads of information. As a comprehensive compilation it will provide interest and inspiration to both types of readers.
