Grotesque

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Grotesque (disambiguation).

Mother Nature is surrounded by grottesche in this fresco detail from Villa d'Este.

Renaissance grotesque motifs in assorted formats.

Decorative panel showing the two separable elements of Grotesque: the elaborate acanthus leaf
and candelabra type design and the hideous mask or face
Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque (or grottoesque)
has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or
disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such
as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, however, grotesque may also refer to
something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well
as sympathetic pity. More specifically, the grotesque forms on Gothic buildings, when not used as drainspouts, should not be called gargoyles, but rather referred to simply as grotesques, or chimeras.[1]
The word was originally a noun (1560s), from Italian grottesco (through Middle French), literally "of a
cave", from Italian grotta (see grotto),[2] is an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art
rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century. The word first was used of
paintings found on the walls of basements of Roman ruins that were called at that time Le Grotte (The
Grottoes) due to their appearance. These "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea,
the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in CE 64, which had
become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above. Spreading from
Italian to the other European languages, the term was long used largely interchangeably
with arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.
Rmi Astruc has argued that although there is an immense variety of motifs and figures, the three main
tropes of the grotesque are doubleness, hybridity and metamorphosis.[3] Beyond the current
understanding of the grotesque as an aesthetic category, he demonstrated how the grotesque functions
as a fundamental existential experience. Moreover, Astruc identifies the grotesque as a crucial, and
potentially universal, anthropological device that societies have used to conceptualize alterity and
change.[not verified in body]

Contents
[hide]

1History

1.1Early examples in Roman ornaments

1.2Etymology in Renaissance

1.3Mannerism

1.4Engravings, woodwork, book illustration, decorations

1.5From Baroque to Victorian era

2Extensions of the term in art

3In literature

4Contemporary writers

5Pop culture

6Theatre of the Grotesque

7In architecture

8In typography

9See also

10Notes

11References

12Further reading

13External links

History[edit]

Roman frescos in Nero's Domus Aurea

Early examples in Roman ornaments[edit]

In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and
fantastic human and animal figures, usually set out in a symmetrical pattern around some form of
architectural framework, though this may be very flimsy. Such designs were fashionable in
ancient Rome, as fresco wall decoration, floor mosaics, etc., and were decried by Vitruvius (c. 30 BC),
who in dismissing them as meaningless and illogical, offered the description: "reeds are substituted for
columns, fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes take the place of pediments, candelabra
support representations of shrines, and on top of their roofs grow slender stalks and volutes with human
figures senselessly seated upon them."
When Nero's palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea, was inadvertently rediscovered in the late 15th century,
buried in fifteen hundred years of fill, the first breakthrough was from above, so that those keen to see
the rooms had to be lowered down into them on ropes, completing their resemblance to caves,
or grottoes in Italian. The Roman wall decorations in fresco and delicate stucco were a revelation.

Etymology in Renaissance[edit]

Ceiling of the Piccolomini Library

The first appearance of the word grottesche appears in a contract of 1502 for the Piccolomini
Library attached to the duomo of Siena. They were introduced by Raphael Sanzio and his team of
decorative painters, who developed grottesche into a complete system of ornament in the Loggias that
are part of the series of Raphael's Rooms in the Vatican Palace, Rome. "The decorations astonished
and charmed a generation of artists that was familiar with the grammar of the classical orders but had
not guessed till then that in their private houses the Romans had often disregarded those rules and had
adopted instead a more fanciful and informal style that was all lightness, elegance and grace."[4] In these
grotesque decorations a tablet or candelabrum might provide a focus; frames were extended into scrolls
that formed part of the surrounding designs as a kind of scaffold, as Peter Ward-Jackson noted. Light
scrolling grotesques could be ordered by confining them within the framing of a pilaster to give them
more structure. Giovanni da Udine took up the theme of grotesques in decorating the Villa Madama, the
most influential of the new Roman villas.

Maiolica pilgrim bottle with grottesche decor, Fontana workshop, Urbino, c 1560-70
In the 16th century, such artistic license and irrationality was controversial matter. Francisco de
Holanda puts a defense in the mouth of Michelangelo in his third dialogue of Da Pintura Antiga, 1548:
"this insatiable desire of man sometimes prefers to an ordinary building, with its pillars and doors, one
falsely constructed in grotesque style, with pillars formed of children growing out of stalks of flowers,
with architravesand cornices of branches of myrtle and doorways of reeds and other things, all seeming
impossible and contrary to reason, yet it may be really great work if it is performed by a skillful artist."[5]

Mannerism[edit]

Grotesque engraving on paper, about 1500 - 1512, by Nicoletto da Modena.

The delight of Mannerist artists and their patrons in arcane iconographic programs available only to the
erudite could be embodied in schemes of grottesche,[6] Andrea Alciato's Emblemata(1522) offered readymade iconographic shorthand for vignettes. More familiar material for grotesques could be drawn
from Ovid's Metamorphoses.[7]
The Vatican loggias, a loggia corridor space in the Apostolic Palace open to the elements on one side,
were decorated around 1519 by Raphaels's large team of artists, with Giovanni da Udine the main hand
involved. Because of the relative unimportance of the space, and a desire to copy the Domus Aurea
style, no large paintings were used, and the surfaces were mostly covered with grotesque designs on a
white background, with paintings imitating sculptures in niches, and small figurative subjects in a revival
of Ancient Roman style. This large array provided a repertoire of elements that were the basis for later
artists across Europe.[8]
In Michelangelo's Medici Chapel Giovanni da Udine composed during 1532-33 "most beautiful sprays of
foliage, rosettes and other ornaments in stucco and gold" in the coffers and "sprays of foliage, birds,
masks and figures", with a result that did not please Pope Clement VII Medici, however, nor Giorgio

Vasari, who whitewashed the grottesche decor in 1556.[9] Counter Reformation writers on the arts,
notably Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, bishop of Bologna,[10] turned upon grottesche with a righteous
vengeance.[11]
Vasari, echoing Vitruvius, described the style as follows:[12]
"Grotesques are a type of extremely licentious and absurd painting done by the ancients ... without any
logic, so that a weight is attached to a thin thread which could not support it, a horse is given legs made
of leaves, a man has crane's legs, with countless other impossible absurdities; and the bizarrer the
painter's imagination, the higher he was rated".
Vasari recorded that Francesco Ubertini, called "Bacchiacca", delighted in inventing grotteschi, and
(about 1545) painted for Duke Cosimo de' Medici a studiolo in a mezzanine at the Palazzo Vecchio "full
of animals and rare plants".[13] Other 16th-century writers on grottesche included Daniele Barbaro, Pirro
Ligorio and Gian Paolo Lomazzo.[14]

Engravings, woodwork, book illustration, decorations[edit]

In the meantime, through the medium of engravings the grotesque mode of surface ornament passed
into the European artistic repertory of the 16th century, from Spain to Poland. A classic suite was that
attributed to Enea Vico, published in 1540-41 under an evocative explanatory title, Leviores et
extemporaneae picturae quas grotteschas vulgo vocant, "Light and extemporaneous pictures that are
vulgarly called grotesques". Later Mannerist versions, especially in engraving, tended to lose that initial
lightness and be much more densely filled than the airy well-spaced style used by the Romans and
Raphael.
Soon grottesche appeared in marquetry (fine woodwork), in maiolica produced above all at Urbino from
the late 1520s, then in book illustration and in other decorative uses. At Fontainebleau Rosso
Fiorentino and his team enriched the vocabulary of grotesques by combining them with the decorative
form of strapwork, the portrayal of leather straps in plaster or wood moldings, which forms an element in
grotesques.

French neoclassical painted decor in the Raphaelesque grotesquemanner at Fontainebleau, 1780s

From Baroque to Victorian era[edit]

Grotesque made of gold thread on saddle pad, dated from 1600-1650.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the grotesque encompasses a wide field of teratology (science of
monsters) and artistic experimentation. The monstrous, for instance, often occurs as the notion of play.
The sportiveness of the grotesque category can be seen in the notion of the preternatural category of
the lusus naturae, in natural history writings and in cabinets of curiosities.[15][16] The last vestiges of
romance, such as the marvellous also provide opportunities for the presentation of the grotesque in, for
instance, operatic spectacle. The mixed form of the novel was commonly described as grotesque - see
for instance Fielding's "comic epic poem in prose". (Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones)
Grotesque ornament received a further impetus from new discoveries of original Roman frescoes and
stucchi at Pompeii and the other buried sites round Mount Vesuvius from the middle of the century. It
continued in use, becoming increasingly heavy, in the Empire Style and then in the Victorian period,
when designs often became as densely packed as in 16th-century engravings, and the elegance and
fancy of the style tended to be lost.

Extensions of the term in art[edit]

Artists began to give the tiny faces of the figures in grotesque decorations
strange caricatured expressions, in a direct continuation of the medieval traditions of the drolleries in the
border decorations or initials in illuminated manuscripts. From this the term began to be applied to larger
caricatures, such as those of Leonardo da Vinci, and the modern sense began to develop. It is first
recorded in English in 1646 from Sir Thomas Browne:"In nature there are no grotesques".[17] By
extension backwards in time, the term became also used for the medieval originals, and in modern
terminology medieval drolleries, half-human thumbnail vignettes drawn in the margins, and carved
figures on buildings (that are not also waterspouts, and so gargoyles) are also called "grotesques".
A boom in the production of works of art in the grotesque genre, characterized the period 19201933
of German art. In contemporary illustration art, the "grotesque" figures, in the ordinary conversational
sense, commonly appear in the genre grotesque art, also known as fantastic art.

In literature[edit]
One of the first uses of the term grotesque to denote a literary genre is in Montaigne's Essays.[18] The
Grotesque is often linked with satire and tragicomedy.[19] It is an effective artistic means to convey grief
and pain to the audience, and for this has been labeled by Thomas Mann as the "genuine antibourgeois
style".[19]
Some of the earliest written texts describe grotesque happenings and monstrous creatures. The
literature of Myth has been a rich source of monsters; from the one-eyed Cyclops (to cite one example)
from Hesiod's Theogony to Homer's Polyphemus in the Odyssey. Ovid's Metamorphoses is another rich
source for grotesque transformations and hybrid creatures of myth. Horace's Art of Poetry also provides
a formal introduction classical values and to the dangers of grotesque or mixed form. Indeed, the
departure from classical models of order, reason, harmony, balance and form opens up the risk of entry
into grotesque worlds. Accordingly, British literature abounds with native grotesquerie, from the strange
worlds of Spenser's allegory in The Faerie Queene, to the tragi-comic modes of 16th-century drama.
(Grotesque comic elements can be found in major works such as King Lear.)
Literary works of mixed genre are occasionally termed grotesque, as are "low" or non-literary genres
such as pantomime and farce.[20] Gothic writings often have grotesque components in terms of character,
style and location. In other cases, the environment described may be grotesque - whether urban
(Charles Dickens), or the literature of the American south which has sometimes been termed "Southern
Gothic". Sometimes the grotesque in literature has been explored in terms of social and cultural
formations such as the carnival(-esque) in Franois Rabelais and Mikhail Bakhtin. Terry Castle has
written on the relationship between metamorphosis, literary writings and masquerade.[21]

Another major source of the grotesque is in satirical writings of the 18th century. Jonathan
Swift's Gulliver's Travels provides a variety of approaches to grotesque representation. In poetry, the
works of Alexander Pope provide many examples of the grotesque.
In fiction, characters are usually considered grotesque if they induce both empathy and disgust. (A
character who inspires disgust alone is simply a villain or a monster.) Obvious examples would include
the physically deformed and the mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also
included. The reader becomes piqued by the grotesque's positive side, and continues reading to see if
the character can conquer their darker side. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, the figure of Caliban has
inspired more nuanced reactions than simple scorn and disgust. Also, in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of
the Rings, the character of Gollum may be considered to have both disgusting and empathetic qualities,
which fit him into the grotesque template.
Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the most celebrated grotesques in literature. Dr.
Frankenstein's monster can also be considered a grotesque, as well as the title character, Erik in The
Phantom of the Opera and the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Other instances of the romantic
grotesque are also to be found in Edgar Allan Poe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, in Sturm und Drang literature or in
Sterne's Tristram Shandy. The romantic grotesque is far more terrible and sombre than the medieval
grotesque, which celebrated laughter and fertility. It is at this point that a grotesque creature such as
Frankenstein's monster (in Mary Shelley's novel published in 1818) begins to be presented more
sympathetically as the outsider who is the victim of society.[22] But the novel also makes the issue of
sympathy problematic in an unkind society. This means that society becomes the generator of the
grotesque, by a process of alienation.[23] In fact, the grotesque monster in Frankenstein tends to be
described as 'the creature.'
The grotesque received a new shape with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, when a
girl meets fantastic grotesque figures in her fantasy world. Carroll manages to make the figures seem
less frightful and fit for children's literature, but still utterly strange. Another comic grotesque writer who
played on the relationship between sense and nonsense was Edward Lear. Humorous, or festive
nonsense of this kind has its roots in the seventeenth century traditions of fustian, bombastic and
satirical writing.[24]
During the nineteenth-century category of grotesque body was increasingly displaced by the notion of
congenital deformity or medical anomaly.[25] Building on this context, the grotesque begins to be
understood more in terms as deformity and disability, especially after the First World War, 1914-18. In
these terms, the art historian Leah Dickerman has argued that 'The sight of horrendously shattered
bodies of veterans returned to the home front became commonplace. The accompanying growth in the
prosthetic industry struck contemporaries as creating a race of half-mechanical men and became an
important theme in dadaist work.'[26] The poetry of Wilfred Owen displays a poetic and realistic sense of
the grotesque horror of war and the human cost of brutal conflict. Poems such as 'Spring Offensive' and
'Greater Love' combined images of beauty with shocking brutality and violence in order to produce a
sense of the grotesque clash of opposites. In a similar fashion, Ernst Friedrich (18941967), founder of
the Berlin Peace Museum, an anarchist and a pacifist, was the author of War Against War (1924) which
used grotesque photographs of mutilated victims of the First World War in order to campaign for peace.
Southern Gothic is a genre frequently identified with grotesques and William Faulkner is often cited as
the ringmaster. Flannery O'Connor wrote, "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a
penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one" ("Some Aspects
of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction", 1960). In O'Connor's often-anthologized short-story "A Good Man
Is Hard to Find", the Misfit, a serial killer, is clearly a maimed soul, utterly callous to human life but driven
to seek the truth. The less obvious grotesque is the polite, doting grandmother who is unaware of her
own astonishing selfishness. Another oft-cited example of the grotesque from O'Connor's work is her
short-story entitled "A Temple Of The Holy Ghost". The American novelist, Raymond Kennedy is another
author associated with the literary tradition of the grotesque.

Contemporary writers[edit]

Contemporary writers of literary grotesque fiction include Ian McEwan, Katherine Dunn, Alasdair
Gray, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Umberto Eco, Patrick McGrath, Natsuo Kirino, Paul
Tremblay, Matt Bell, Chuck Palahniuk, Brian Evenson, Caleb J. Ross (who writes domestic grotesque
fiction),[27] Richard Thomas and many authors who write in the bizarro genre of fiction. In 1929, G.L Van
Roosbroeck wrote a book called "GROTESQUES" (illustrations by J. Matulka) published by The
Williamsport Printing and Binding Co., Williamsport, PA. It is a collection of 6 stories and 3 fables for the
children of tomorrow.

Pop culture[edit]
Other contemporary writers who have explored the grotesque in pop-culture are John Docker, in the
context of postmodernism; Cintra Wilson, who analyzes celebrity; and Francis Sanzaro, who discusses
its relation to childbirth and obscenity.[28]

Theatre of the Grotesque[edit]

The term Theatre of the Grotesque refers to an anti-naturalistic school of Italian dramatists, writing in
the 1910s and 1920s, who are often seen as precursors of the Theatre of the Absurd.
Friedrich Drrenmatt is a major author of contemporary grotesque comedy plays.

In architecture[edit]
Main article: chimera (architecture)

Detail from the John Mylne Monument in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The text reads ...Aetatis Suae
56 because he died at age 56
In architecture the term "grotesque" means a carved stone figure.
Grotesques are often confused with gargoyles, but the distinction is that gargoyles are figures that
contain a water spout through the mouth, while grotesques do not. This type of sculpture is also called a
chimera. In the Middle Ages, the term babewyn was used to refer to both gargoyles and grotesques.
[29]
This word is derived from the Italian word babbuino, which means "baboon".

In typography[edit]
Main article: Grotesque (typeface classification)
The word "Grotesque", or "Grotesk" in German, is also frequently used as a synonym for sansserif in typography. At other times, it is used (along with "Neo-Grotesque", "Humanist", "Lineal", and
"Geometric") to describe a particular style or subset of sans-serif typefaces. The origin of this
association can be traced back to English typefounder William Thorowgood, who first introduced the
term "grotesque" and in 1835 produced 7-line pica grotesquethe first sans-serif typeface containing

actual lowercase letters. An alternate etymology is possibly based on the original reaction of other
typographers to such a strikingly featureless typeface.[30]
Popular Grotesque typefaces include Franklin Gothic, News Gothic, Haettenschweiler and Lucida
Sans (although the latter lacks the spurred "G"), whereas popular Neo-Grotesque typefaces
include Arial, Helvetica and Verdana.

See also[edit]

Ero guro

Hunky punk

Mask

Mummers' play

Rigoletto, an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi.

Sheela na Gig

Southern Gothic

Notes[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Bridaham, Lester Burbank, introduction by Ralph Adams Cram,

Gargoyles, Chimeres and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture, Architectural Book
Publishing Co., Inc. New York, 1930 p. xiv

2.

Jump up^ "OED-Grotesque etymology". Etymonline.com. Retrieved 2014-12-15.

3.

Jump up^ Astruc R. (2010), Le Renouveau du grotesque dans le roman du XXe

sicle, Paris, Classiques Garnier.

4.

Jump up^ Peter Ward-Jackson, "The Grotesque" in "Some main streams and
tributaries in European ornament from 1500 to 1750: part 1" The Victoria and Albert
Museum Bulletin (June 1967, pp 58-70) p 75.

5.

Jump up^ Quoted in David Summers, "Michelangelo on Architecture", The Art

Bulletin 54.2 (June 1972:146-157) p. 151.

6.

Jump up^ An example, the vaulted arcade in the Palazzo del Governatore,
Assisi, which was frescoed with grotesques in 1556, has been examined in the
monograph by Ezio Genovesi, Le grottesche della 'Volta Pinta' in Assisi (Assisi, 1995):
Genovesi explores the role of the local Accademia del Monte.

7.

Jump up^ Victor Kommerell, Metamorphosed Margins: The Case for a Visual
Rhetoric of the Renaissance 'Grottesche' under the Influence of Ovid's
Metamorphoses (Hildesheim, 2008)..

8.

Jump up^ Wilson, 152

9.

Jump up^ "bellissimi fogliami, rosoni ed altri ornamenti di stuccho e d'oro" and
"fogliami, uccelli, maschere e figure", quoted by Summers 1972:151 and note 30.

10.

Jump up^ Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (printed at
Bologna, 1582)

11.

Jump up^ Noted by Summers 1972:152.

12.

Jump up^ Wilson, 152

13.

Jump up^ "Dilettossi il Bacchiacca di far grottesche; onde al Sig. duca Cosimo
fece uno studiolo pieno d'animali e d'erbe rare ritratte dalle naturali, che sono tenute
bellissime": quoted in Francesco Vossilla, "Cosimo I, lo scrittoio del Bachiacca, una
carcassa di capodoglio e la filosofia naturale", Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen
Institutes in Florenz, 37..2/3 (1993:381-395) p. 383; only fragments survive of the decor.

14.

Jump up^ All mentioned by Ezio Genovesi 1995, in providing explanation of the
genre in the context of the painted vaulting at Assisi.

15.
16.

Jump up^ Mauries, Patrick (2002). Cabinets of Curiosities. Thames and Hudson.
Jump up^ Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (1998). Wonders and the Order
of Nature. USA: New York: Zone Books.

17.

Jump up^ OED, "Grotesque"

18.

Jump up^ Kayser (1957) I.2 Ce discours est bien grotesue

19.

^ Jump up to:a b Clark (1991) pp. 201

20.

Jump up^ Harham, Geoffrey Galt (1982). On the Grotesque. US: Princeton
University Press.

21.

Jump up^ Castle, Terry (1986). Masquerade and Civilization. Methuen.

22.

Jump up^ See Jeanne M. Britton, 'Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley's

"Frankenstein" ' Studies in Romanticism Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 2009)3-22, p. 3.

23.

Jump up^ Hanis McLaren Caldwell, Literature and Medicine in NineteenthCentury Britain: from Mary Shelley to George Eliot (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), p. 42.

24.

Jump up^ See Noel Malcolm, The Origins of English Nonsense (Fontana,
1997). ISBN 0006388442

25.

Jump up^ See George M. Gould and Walter M. Pyle's Anomalies and Curiosities
of Medicine (1896).

26.
pp. 3-4.

Jump up^ Leah Dickerman, Dada, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2005,

27.

Jump up^ "What is Domestic Grotesque Fiction and Why Do I Write It?".
Calebjross.com. 2012-01-21. Retrieved 2013-03-06.

28.

Jump up^ Sanzaro, Francis. The Infantile Grotesque: Pathology, Sexuality, and a
Theory of Religion. Davies Group Publishers, 2016.

29.

Jump up^ Janetta Rebold Benton (1997). Holy Terrors: Gargoyles on Medieval
Buildings. New York: Abbeville Press. pp. 810. ISBN 0-7892-0182-8.

30.

Jump up^ "Linale Grotesques" (PDF). Rabbit Moon Press. 2009. Archived
from the original (PDF) on January 2, 2014. Retrieved 2010-09-08.

References[edit]

Astruc, Rmi (2010) Le Renouveau du grotesque dans le roman du XXe sicle, essai
d'anthropologie littraire, Paris, Classiques Garnier
Clark, John R. (1991) The modern satiric grotesque and its traditions

Further reading[edit]

Sheinberg, Esti (2000-12-29). Irony, satire, parody and the grotesque in the music of
Shostakovich. UK: Ashgate. p. 378. ISBN 0-7546-0226-5.

Kayser, Wolfgang (1957) The grotesque in Art and Literature, New York, Columbia University
Press

Lee Byron Jennings (1963) The ludicrous demon: aspects of the grotesque in German postRomantic prose, Berkeley, University of California Press

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1941). Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Harpham, Geoffrey Galt (1982, 2006), On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and
Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Selected bibliography by Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, Methuen Critical Idiom Series, 1972.

Dacos, N. La dcouverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques la

Renaissance (London) 1969.

Kort, Pamela (2004-10-30). Comic Grotesque: Wit And Mockery In German Art, 1870-1940.
PRESTEL. p. 208. ISBN 978-3-7913-3195-9.

FS Connelly (2003). "Modern art and the grotesque" (PDF). Assets.cambridge.org.

Zamperini, Alessandra (2008). Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from
Antiquity to Art Nouveau. Thames and Hudson. pp. 320, 11" x 13", 250 color
illustrations. ISBN 978-0-500-23856-1.

External links[edit]

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Video tour of the most vivid examples of medieval Parisian stone carving - the grotesques of
Notre Dame
The Grotesque: Bloom's Literary Themes edited by Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby
"Grotesque". Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.