Fantastic animals

Could we have been lied to? The mummified dragon’s head on display in a curiosity cabinet looks an awful lot like a crocodile’s (ill. 1). It may come from the Musée du Doudou, but it’s sure to fool children, and possibly adults too. And this twisted horn only testifies to the existence of... sea unicorns, otherwise known as narwhals... What is the world coming to? Towards a reality of appalling banality. Fortunately, there is still the map by Olaus Magnus, published in 1539, which reveals the location of the "three-eyed cetacean hyena".
It takes daring, even a good dose of recklessness, to tackle these fantastic animals (ill. 2). Three curators - Hélène Bouillon, supported by Jeanne-Thérèse Bontinck and Caroline Tureck - are devoting an exhibition to them at Louvre-Lens that takes visitors from the Neolithic period to the 21st century; at once learned and accessible, it has the quality of appealing to all audiences.

1. Exhibition view: cabinets of curiosities
Dragon head
Mummified crocodile head champsès
Probably present-day Turkey, before 1409
Mons, Doudou Museum
Narwhal tooth, 1600-1700
Paris, Museum of Decorative Arts
Photo: bbsg

See the image in its page

So what is a fantastic animal? We grope to define the beast. It is a being endowed with both an extraordinary appearance, often hybrid, and supernatural powers, standing on the boundary between two worlds: between here below and beyond, between good and evil, between myth and reality. In the catalogue - which is richly illustrated, with notes for each work - Michel Pastoureau recalls the etymology of the word fantastic: "which concerns the imagination". So fantastic animals are not real? Of course they are: "Dreams and the imaginary are in no way the opposite of reality, they are an integral part of it". The way we perceive them obviously differs from one era to another and from one part of the world to another. Thus, dragons and unicorns were very real in the Western Middle Ages,…