Two dangerous pets from 'Zeno'

The last week of my teaching term, and while I have launched myself half-heartedly at EEBO’s selection of the pamphlets of Cotton Mather, I have no real zest to write anything about that strange and conflicted man.

But I did come across the German site, zeno.org, with its many, many online, large format, images from early modern art. I have been looking at more graphic works by Hans Baldung Grien than I’d ever seen before. As parrot owner, I have selected his African Grey. With it, a very dangerous ‘cryptid’, as the always fascinating ‘TetZoo’ would call it:

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/

a kind of walrus/iguana mashup, here ridden by an intrepid putto. Here's the TetZoo's closest match:

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/09/longnecked_seal_described.php#more

Hans Baldung drew just about anything: seals, armour, landscapes, post-coital lovers, and many studies of heads and faces. I was interested by the way that his children’s faces could have been drawn in the 20^th century, yesterday really, while his studies of adult faces all seem to be of recognizably Northern Renaissance people.

Back to the point, which is to recommend the Zeno site:

http://www.zeno.org/Kategorien/T/K%C3%BCnstler

http://www.zeno.org/Kunstwerke