Beautifully illustrated, with learned introductive essays which combine scientific accuracy with information presented in a captivating, appealing way: a methodical repertoire sans pareil in Italian and international publishing. A comprehensive encyclopedia-style list of items with exhaustive explanations about each monster, starting with literary sources, and providing the main depictions associated with it. The book also looks into why these mythological figures are still important in modern and contemporary culture.
Beautifully illustrated, with learned introductive essays which combine scientific accuracy with information presented in a captivating, appealing way: a methodical repertoire sans pareil in Italian and international publishing.
A comprehensive encyclopedia-style list of items with exhaustive explanations about each monster, starting with literary sources, and providing the main depictions associated with it. The book also looks into why these mythological figures are still important in modern and contemporary culture.
The book is being published to accompany an unusual exhibition about monsters, man-beasts and demons in the primitive imagination, from the East to Roman times, a means of comparison with the different nature of wild beasts which enabled humans, as they evolved, to build up their identity. Griffons, chimeras, gorgons, centaurs, sirens, Silenus figures, the Sphinx, the Minotaur, Triton, Scylla and the Lernean Hydra have appeared on metal and pottery containers, on luxury objects made of gold and ivory, on terracotta architectural features and on weapons since ancient times.
Essays by learned scholars examine these icons laden with strong symbolic properties which have gradually lost their apotropaic value in favor of an essentially decorative function.
Other contributions examine the role of these imaginary creatures as bringers of good fortune, how they appear in myths, from Mediaeval Christian times, in bestiaries and grotesques, in Renaissance literature, in wondrous Baroque and bizarre Rococo decoration, Neo-classical revisitations, the worrying depictions of Symbolist painting, and artistic, anthropological and film hybridizations of 20th-century culture.