The earliest animal carvings on medieval churches were representations of dragons. Many homeowners with a taste for the Gothic enjoy decorating their yards and gardens with gargoyle statues.
Nowadays, gargoyles are probably better appreciated for their delightful grotesquerie than they are for any functional use. Baboons? Perhaps some of them might resemble baboons, but I tend to think that it might have more to do with the stone masons doing a bit of monkeying around.Gargoyles began as decorative waterspouts that carried rain away from the roofs of medieval churches and cathedrals. In the Middle Ages, it seems that both gargoyles and grotesques were called babewyn from the Italian word babuino, which means baboon. Could they have been just for decoration? Babewyns
But in truth, no one knows for sure – the stone masons didn’t leave us any clues, and neither is there any mention of them in church records.
Others think they were to ward off evil spirits. Why were so many of these creatures in churches? Some people think they were meant to teach Biblical lessons at a time when many people didn’t read. While gargoyles have a clearly defined function – to carry water away from the building – the reason for grotesques remains a mystery. Image source On the right, an impudent grotesque in Barfreston, Kent sticks out his tongue at whoever dares to look up at him. He’s known as the Mad Hatter, and the good folks of Winchcombe like to think that he might have been the inspiration for the Alice in Wonderland character. The one on the left is from Winchcombe in the Cotswolds. So if you are grotesque hunting, take some binoculars, or zoom in with your camera. They’re usually small and sit high up in those soaring cathedrals. Unfortunately, they’re often hard to see. There is an amazing variety of these types of carvings both inside and outside the cathedrals. You can read this in another article I wrote: A Saint, a Convict, and a Gargoyle go into a Swamp… Grotesquesīasically, any sculpture which is an exaggerated form of a person or creature, and does not carry water, would be a grotesque. There’s a lovely French legend about the origins of gargoyles – which involves a dragon, of course. So, they are usually some kind of elongated figure which extends from the building and has an opening for the water to escape (usually the creature’s mouth). They are basically a form of guttering and are designed to keep water away from the building. Image source Right: This gargoyle, in the form of a man holding a cup, looks to be in agony. Left: a hybrid bird, animal, human gargoyle.
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