Two Fantastical Creatures on Tinted Paper

A rounded creature faces us with long, curved limbs extending far beyond its body. Beside it, another hybrid crouches close to a patch of heavily shaded ground. These are inventions by Hieronymus Bosch, drawn with a combination of delicate outlines and concentrated dark strokes. Weight and posture give their invented bodies a convincing physical presence.

The small horizontal sheet belongs to Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett, inventory KdZ 550, where it is called Zwei Phantasiegeschöpfe, or Two Fantastical Creatures.^[1] It has sometimes been described more loosely as Animal Studies, but the figures are imaginary combinations rather than records of identifiable species. Two further creatures appear on the reverse, making both faces important to understanding the surviving drawing.^[3]

At a Glance

• ArtistHieronymus Bosch
• TitleTwo Fantastical Creatures; the reverse shows a head-and-feet figure and another monster
• DateAround 1505–1515 in the museum’s 2016 exhibition text
• MediumPen in brown ink on reddish prepared laid paper
• Dimensions8.6 × 18.2 cm, following the current museum record
• CollectionKupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
• InventoryKdZ 550, recto and verso
• Collection historyOld holdings, acquired before 1878 according to the museum

Annotated Details from Two Fantastical Creatures: Berlin KdZ 550

Two invented creatures appear on each face of this small Berlin drawing. Both photographs are retained at their available native resolution.

Berlin KdZ550 Front

Berlin KdZ550 Reverse

Details from TWO FANTASTICAL CREATURES: BERLIN KDZ 550

Compare the shapes on the two sides. The focused views isolate each creature without adding detail to the source photographs.

Berlin KdZ550 Front

1

The rounded creature

A rounded central body is surrounded by long, curved extensions. Dark strokes accumulate beneath it, giving the light upper outlines a firmer base.

2

The crouching creature

A second creature crouches close to the ground. Its small raised head and folded limbs are enclosed by a darker edge and parallel shading.

Berlin KdZ550 Reverse

3

The small creature at the left

The smaller invention bends down between two narrow limbs. Its compressed shape contrasts with the much larger head beside it.

4

The head with limbs

A large head in profile wears a broad circular form above it. Long arms and legs extend directly from the head, replacing an ordinary torso.

Image and detail crops: Wikimedia Commons source 1; Wikimedia Commons source 2 (public domain reproductions).

The Rounded Creature on the Left

The larger figure on the front begins with an almost circular mass. Fine, repeated curves establish its rounded surface, while darker marks gather underneath. The broad body seems to settle towards a small face and short appendages at its lower edge. Long, tapering limbs sweep out to either side, giving the creature an extraordinary width compared with its compact centre.

Its outline remains open to inspection. Several curves travel close together rather than merging into one firm boundary, and faint loops rise behind the main form. We can follow the pen testing and reinforcing a shape. This lightness around the upper surface contrasts with the dark points and clustered strokes below, where the creature appears to make contact with the ground.

A spider provides one possible visual comparison, but it does not supply a complete anatomical explanation. The rounded centre, sprawling extensions and small features have been assembled into something unfamiliar, whose parts remain recognisable even though the whole has no straightforward equivalent in nature.

A Crouching Companion

The figure at the right has a different balance. Its rounded back and bent limbs sit low over a dense field of hatching. A small projection rises near the upper outline, while a head-like form extends behind the body. The turning shapes make it harder to decide immediately which familiar creature offers the best comparison.

Here the diagonal marks beneath the body are particularly active. Some extend well beyond the figure, while others collect into darker patches beside its limbs. They establish a surface under the hybrid without describing a complete landscape. Against that dark base, the comparatively pale upper body acquires volume and a sense of downward pressure.

The two figures do not overlap. An expanse of unused paper separates their contrasting silhouettes, leaving each invention easy to examine. The front therefore offers more than two examples of odd anatomy: it compares a broadly spreading, frontal presence with a compressed creature seen from another angle. The difference in presentation is part of the drawing’s visual interest.

The Head That Walks on the Reverse

On the back, the most striking invention is a large human face supported directly by long legs. A broad, tilted hat sits above the head, with loose projections extending behind it. There is no ordinary torso to connect the features with the limbs. The face itself has become the principal body, an arrangement often described as a head-and-feet figure.^[3]

Short marks crease the brow, cheeks and area around the eye. Longer strokes describe the legs and their widely separated feet. The contrast gives the face a compressed, weathered appearance while the limbs suggest an ability to stride. A rope joins the legs, however, introducing a physical obstacle into that apparent freedom of movement.^[3]

The smaller companion has its own compact silhouette and sharply bent limbs. It is sufficiently separate to be read as another creature, yet both figures share a direction of movement. The museum’s exhibition commentary emphasises the relationship between the larger figure and its follower, describing a clear hierarchy despite the sparse setting.^[2] Scale and placement organise the pair without an elaborate background.

The reverse also changes the viewer’s encounter with the paper. The dominant creature extends almost across its height, and the lower edge cuts close to parts of the drawing. The BRCP records that the reverse image has been cropped at the bottom.^[3] What survives should therefore be examined as a fragment of a once larger sheet, rather than assumed to preserve every original boundary.

Why the Two Sides Look Different

The support was prepared with an orange colour on both faces, according to the Bosch Research and Conservation Project, or BRCP. Its catalogue explains the paler front as the result of greater exposure to light, while the reverse retains a stronger colour.^[3] The difference records the sheet’s later history as well as the artist’s original choice of a tinted surface.

That choice matters visually. Areas without ink already have a colour, allowing even a sparse contour to establish a figure against a warm field. On the front, a few repeated arcs can suggest the rounded creature’s bulk. On the back, the stronger tone surrounds the large face and helps unify the many short strokes describing its features.

The present brown of the ink should likewise not be confused with an unchanged original appearance. The BRCP notes that fresh iron-gall ink is nearly black and that the drawing’s ink has faded, while remaining legible without ink corrosion.^[3] We can appreciate the fine distinctions between lines today while recognising that their contrast with the paper has altered over centuries.

A Creature Reused in Painting

The crouching figure provides an unusually specific link between drawing and painting. The BRCP identifies its repetition in the upper roundel on the reverse of the Rotterdam panel showing the world after the Flood. There it appears among demons threatening a human figure. The catalogue reproduces the drawn creature alongside infrared and visible-light details of the painted one.^[3]

In isolation, the Berlin hybrid is an invention to be studied. Within the roundel, it belongs to a scene of danger. That change of setting shows how a single form could acquire a narrative function when placed beside other figures. Its rounded body and crouching stance remain recognisable, but their effect depends partly on what now surrounds them.

The relationship does not prove that Bosch personally painted the Rotterdam panel. The BRCP assigns that ensemble to his workshop and proposes that assistants may have followed his drawings more literally than he did himself.^[3] This is a possible explanation of the correspondence, rather than a surviving instruction documenting a particular assistant at work.

Nor does the repeated motif establish that the whole Berlin sheet was designed for that commission. Its other creatures remain separate inventions, and the surviving paper contains no full arrangement of the painted roundel. The surviving comparison connects one form across two objects, leaving the circumstances of its transfer open.

A Sheet of Available Inventions

The BRCP suggests that the original, larger sheet may have served as a source of examples. Its figures are placed beside one another without overlap, a useful arrangement if individual forms were to be consulted or reused.^[3] That model-sheet interpretation explains the distinct silhouettes, although it does not identify every intended user or occasion of use.

The Berlin drawing also needs to be kept separate from the museum’s other Two Monsters sheet, KdZ 547. That vertical, two-sided work includes different hybrids, among them the horse-skull creature. Similar modern titles can conceal differences in format, support, inventory and subject. Here the warm paper, horizontal proportions and particular crawling figure identify KdZ 550.

The name written near the lower left of the front is another part of the object’s history. The BRCP identifies it as an inscription in a later hand, rather than Bosch’s own signature.^[3] The current museum record nevertheless attributes the drawing to Bosch.^[1] The inscription and modern attribution are different kinds of evidence and should not be treated as interchangeable.

Date and Collection History

The museum’s 2016 exhibition text dated the reverse around 1505–1515.^[2] Its current collection records identify the maker, materials and dimensions without giving a separate execution date.^[1][6] The exhibition estimate provides a useful approximate period; it is not a date written by the artist on the sheet or established by a dated commission.

The museum records the drawing among its old holdings, acquired before 1878.^[1] A collection stamp and inventory notation on the reverse mark its later institutional life.^[3] Beyond that modest documentary framework, the sheet offers unusually direct evidence of invention: repeated curves searching out a body, dark strokes giving a crouching creature weight, and a human head persuaded to walk on long, awkwardly constrained legs.

References

1. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zwei Phantasiegeschöpfe, KdZ 550, current recto collection record and photograph. View source.
2. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hieronymus Bosch und seine Bildwelt im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, worklist and wall texts, p. 4, complete KdZ 550 verso entry for the 2016 exhibition. View source.
3. Matthijs Ilsink and colleagues, Hieronymus Bosch, Painter and Draughtsman: Catalogue Raisonné (2016), catalogue 51, pp. 554–555, complete entry and plates; catalogue 22, pp. 386–387, for the repeated creature in the Rotterdam roundel. View source.
4. BRCP Catalogue Raisonné (2016), object dates in catalogues 1, 2, 8, 15 and 20; catalogue 20 object metadata only for the Haywain comparison. View source
5. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2016 exhibition wall texts, p. 3: approximate date of KdZ 549. View source
6. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zwei Phantasiegeschöpfe, KdZ 550 verso, current reverse collection record. View source.
7. Splash image, Hieronymus Bosch, Two Fantastical Creatures, around 1505–1515 in the museum’s 2016 exhibition dating, pen in brown ink on reddish prepared paper, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, KdZ 550 recto. View source. View source.