Flying on a lucky dragon for once, following a niffler on a treasure hunt or defeating an orc: Fantastic animals, mythical creatures and monsters play a major role in current children’s and youth literature as well as in fantasy and science fiction films. From 1 February 2022, the Kupferstichkabinett will be presenting around 30 virtuoso prints, copper engravings and etchings from the 15th to 18th centuries in its cabinet in the Gemäldegalerie, showing the joyful delight in inventing the fabulous and the strange.
Image above: Hendrick Goltzius, The Dragon Devours the Companions of Cadmos, 1588, copperplate engraving, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Long before current creations such as the Grüffelo or Schlickschlupfen and Flubberwurmn from the novels of J. K. Rowling, authors and artists were dealing with real animals and magical creatures whose existence was conjured up in legends, described in encyclopaedic compendia and imagined in works of art.
Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Egyptian sculptures, Greek vases and Persian miniatures already show mixed creatures made up of various animals that took on religious and symbolic functions. At the same time, with their help, unknown natural phenomena could be explained, but also fears and foreignness could be thematised.
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
The mutability of these animal creatures has preoccupied art just as much as their thoroughly ambivalent relationship to humans, which oscillates between the terribly evil and the divinely good.
The small thematic exhibition presents around 30 prints from the 15th to 18th centuries from the rich holdings of the Kupferstichkabinett showing fantastic animal creatures – including works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Giulio Bonasone or Hendrick Goltzius, among others.
Virtuoso copperplate engravings and detailed etchings illustrate the joyful delight in inventing and formulating the fabulous and the strange, whether as ornament, as a depiction of hell or as a narrative of Greek mythology.
Due to Corona, the duration of the exhibition may change at short notice.
WHERE?
Kupferstichkabinett in the Gemäldegalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Matthäikirchplatz
10785 Berlin-Tiergarten
WHEN?
Tue – Fri 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, Sat + Sub 11:00 am + 6:00 pm
Prizes + Tickets
More on this here: www.smb.museum/en/plan-your-visit/prices-tickets/
