Medieval mermaid

Mermaids are creatures that appear time and again throughout history and across cultures. Typically a mermaid is portrayed as having the top half of a woman, and the bottom half of a fish, though this sometimes varies slightly. The first known stories of mermaids come from Assyria around 1000BC; the goddess Atargatis, who was the…

Theatrum Chemicum, volumen primum, 1659.

Author Midori Snyder writing on her blog about all things that inspire her; art, myth, fairy tale and folklore, textile arts and film.

Melusine or Melusina is a figure of European folklore and mythology, a female spirit of fresh water in a sacred spring or river, usually depicted as a woman ...

One of the things that is a window into the past is imagination, and medieval imaginations were vivid. Despite living in an age of Church oppression, people found ways of bringing their fears and superstitions to life. Medieval cartographers treated their craft like an art, and added fanciful decoration to many of their maps in […]

St Martin’s Church in Zillis, Canton Graubünden, CH The earliest preserved, figuratively painted wooden ceiling in Europe can be seen above the nave of St Martin's Church in Zillis. Today only three other painted ceilings from the Middle Ages remain: they are located in Hildesheim (St Michael's), in Peterborough Cathedral and in Dadesjo (Sweden). The Swedish church in Sodra Rada was destroyed by fire in 2001. The ceiling paintings in Zillis demonstrate such a rich variety of form and…

Hieronymus Bosch: Mermaid (centre panel detail) from "The Garden of Earthly Delights," 1480-1505, oil on panel | Prado