Two Monsters by Hieronymus Bosch: the Berlin Drawing and its Reverse

Two Monsters: Introduction

A bird-headed creature holds an arrow across its body. Below it, a crouching monster opens its mouth beside a curling tail. These two figures occupy the front of a small sheet in Berlin's Kupferstichkabinett, usually called Two Monsters or Two Fantastical Creatures. Turn the paper over and two more inventions appear: a turtle wearing a horse's skull and a thin, winged creature with a funnel on its head. All four belong to the same drawing, inventory KdZ 547. ^[1][3]

The sheet brings Bosch's imagination unusually close to the viewer. There is no painted city to explore and no crowd of sinners to separate. Instead, the movements of a pen give each creature a body, a surface and a direction. The upper monster balances its weapon; the lower one seems ready to spring. On the reverse, a few lighter strokes make a different kind of creature equally persuasive. Looking at both sides reveals several ways of inventing a monster rather than a single recipe for combining animals. ^[3][4]

At a Glance

• ArtistHieronymus Bosch. ^[1][5]
• CollectionKupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. ^[1]
• InventoryKdZ 547, drawn on both sides. ^[1][5]
• TechniquePen and brown ink on paper. ^[1]
• Dimensions16.3 × 11.7 cm in the current Berlin record. ^[1]
• DateApproximately 1500–1510 in Berlin's 2016 exhibition catalogue; an estimated range. ^[4]

Annotated Details from Two Monsters: the Berlin Sheet and its Reverse

Both faces of Berlin KdZ547 are shown here. The monsters on the front and the turtle and winged figure on the back belong to one sheet.

Front: Two Monsters

Reverse: Turtle and Winged Figure

Details from TWO MONSTERS: THE BERLIN SHEET AND ITS REVERSE

Compare the silhouettes and the different combinations of animal and manufactured forms.

Front: Two Monsters

1

The standing monster

A long shaft runs across the standing creature’s body. Scales, feathers and its rounded belly combine features that would not ordinarily belong to the same animal.

2

The crouching monster

The lower creature folds in on itself. Its long, curling tail extends away from the dense knot of limbs and head.

Reverse: Turtle and Winged Figure

3

Turtle and horse skull

A turtle’s small head and feet emerge from a large horse skull. Bone takes the place of a shell in this transformation.

4

The winged figure

A smaller winged figure occupies the lower right of the reverse. Its narrow legs and broad, pointed wing create a different silhouette from the large turtle above.

Image and detail crops: Wikimedia Commons source file and reverse source file (public domain reproduction).

The Two Creatures on the Front

The standing figure has a long neck, a broad bill and an elaborate crest that sweeps backwards over its head. Its torso swells out beneath a covering of overlapping, scale-like marks. Arms extend from the upper body, while the legs end differently: one has a soft, rounded outline and the other a pointed claw. The arrow passes across this unlikely anatomy in a nearly horizontal line. Because its shaft is so straight, it makes the creature's swollen body and curving neck seem more pronounced. ^[3]

The hands matter as much as the animal parts. One opens near the rear of the shaft while the other grips it farther forward. They suggest a practical activity that a viewer can understand even while the creature's species remains impossible to identify. Its broad stance gives the weapon weight and allows the body to occupy a believable position. Bosch does not need to explain how such an animal evolved. He makes its balance legible in the act of drawing it. ^[3]

The lower creature works differently. Its body is compressed, with its limbs gathered close and its head turned out from the darker tangle of its back. A conspicuous ear or fin rises beside the open mouth. The tail then escapes into a long, loose curve near the bottom of the paper. That curve prevents the figure from becoming a closed knot: the eye can follow it away from the crowded head and return to the small, tense body. ^[3]

Both figures face towards the right, although they do not share a clearly defined setting. The standing creature directs the arrow towards the upper part of the edge, while the crouching figure opens its mouth towards the lower part. The empty paper receives these movements without supplying an enemy. Their threatening poses are enough to create an expectation of action; inventing a particular battle or unseen victim would add a story the drawing does not establish. ^[3][4]

How the Pen Gives Monsters Substance

Close looking changes the emphasis from the creatures' strange ingredients to their different surfaces. The upper torso carries a mesh of repeated marks, but the neck is described with longer, more widely spaced lines. The swollen belly has a comparatively open centre. Darker strokes collect near joints and overlaps, where one part of the body must be distinguished from another. These differences help the eye move between hard covering, folded skin and projecting limbs. ^[3]

In the crouching figure, the shading is more concentrated. Curves follow the rounded flank, while dense lines gather around the shoulder and head. The mouth remains readable because its opening is framed rather than filled indiscriminately. A few dark accents give the creature force, but much of its apparent bulk comes from the unmarked paper enclosed by its outline. The image is small enough for these changes in pressure and spacing to become part of its character. ^[3]

The sheet also gives the two inventions room to remain distinct. They do not overlap, and neither becomes a distant accessory to the other. Their separation invites comparison: upright against crouching, extended against compressed, a straight weapon against a looping tail. Yet the repeated rightward movement connects them across the gap. The arrangement can be read both as a collection of usable figures and as a deliberately engaging encounter with two different bodies. ^[3]

The Reverse: a Turtle Inside a Horse's Skull

On the back, the largest form initially resembles a long animal skull lying diagonally across the sheet. Its teeth, eye socket and narrow muzzle belong to something dead. Then a small head and feet emerge around its upper end, and the skull becomes the protective covering of a living turtle. The same outline can be read as bone and as a shell. The transformation depends on where the eye begins and how it follows the contour. ^[3][4]

This invention is more integrated than an animal simply carrying an object on its back. The skull's shape supplies most of the creature's body. Its diagonal position also gives the emerging turtle a direction of travel: the small head appears to lead the much larger covering upwards. The disproportion between the tiny living parts and the enormous bony casing is comic, but it does not prevent the viewer from imagining the animal moving. ^[3]

The reverse therefore expands what Two Monsters means. Here the problem is how an inert object can become anatomy. The eye must keep revising its first impression, whereas the front encourages comparison between two bodies that are immediately recognizable as creatures. These are different visual operations, carried out on the two faces of one piece of paper. ^[3]

The Winged Creature and its Funnel

Beneath the skull-turtle sits a much slighter figure with bat-like wings, a pointed face and a bulging torso. Its bent limbs gather around an oval form, while a narrow arm drops towards the bottom of the sheet. The sparse lines leave the figure more exposed than the densely worked crouching monster on the front. Its expression depends on the turn of its face, the curve of its back and the awkward position of its limbs. ^[3][4]

The funnel provides a particularly useful glimpse of invention. The BRCP catalogue observes that Bosch first drew the creature without anything on its head and added the funnel as he developed the figure. The finished form therefore preserves a decision made during drawing. The funnel changes the silhouette and gives the head a tall, absurd accent, but the earlier contours remain part of the evidence for how the figure took shape. ^[3]

It is tempting to treat every household object in a Bosch image as a coded accusation. Here, however, the funnel's most securely demonstrable role is visual: it was an addition that altered the creature. A specific identification with a named vice or proverb would require further evidence. Attending to the change in the drawing allows the viewer to see Bosch making an image without pretending to know every association its first audience might have brought to it. ^[3]

A Horse-Skull Motif in the Paintings

The horse's skull has a useful comparison in the Hermit Saints Triptych. In its central panel, a small creature investigates a skull in the foreground. The BRCP catalogue contrasts that separation of animal and bone with the drawing, where the two have become a single entity. The related forms show Bosch varying an idea rather than mechanically repeating one finished monster. ^[3]

This comparison also sets a limit on the word study. A drawing may illuminate an artist's painted imagery without being a direct preparatory design for a particular detail. The skull-turtle is not identical to the separate creature and skull in the triptych. Neither that relationship nor the drawing's small size establishes which image was conceived first. The value of placing them together lies in the transformation of a motif, not in an undocumented sequence of commission, sketch and completed panel. ^[3]

What a Later Copy Preserves

A larger Model Sheet with Monsters at the RISD Museum in Providence, inventory 51.069, provides another kind of evidence. Jamie Gabbarelli identifies copies of all four Berlin creatures within its larger gathering: the two from the front and the skull-turtle and funnel-hatted figure from the back. The figures have been rearranged, bringing designs from opposite sides of the Berlin paper together on one surface. ^[7]

Gabbarelli distinguishes Bosch's more varied handling from the comparatively even lines of the later sheet. He suggests that its maker may have been preserving designs or practising within Bosch's circle. The exact relationship remains an interpretation, and no named pupil can be identified from it. Nevertheless, the repeated forms show that individual inventions could circulate beyond their original arrangement. The copy is useful evidence for the reception of the Berlin sheet, not another autograph version of it. ^[7]

Date, Inscription and a Similar Title

Berlin's 2016 exhibition dated KdZ 547 approximately 1500–1510. That range is a scholarly estimate, not a year written by Bosch on the drawing. The name near the bottom of the front, usually transcribed as Jer: Bosch, is identified in the same exhibition material as a later inscription. It records an attribution but should not be presented as the artist's autograph signature. ^[3][4]

Titles introduce a separate source of confusion. Berlin also owns KdZ 550, another sheet described as Two Monsters or Two Fantastical Creatures. That work has a broad horizontal format and prepared, tinted paper; it is not the small upright KdZ 547 considered here. An inventory number and the imagery on the reverse are more reliable guides than a generic English title. The turtle and winged figure belong to KdZ 547. ^[3][5]

The Small Sheet as a Surviving Object

The paper's condition adds another qualification to its apparent simplicity. The BRCP catalogue records folds, stains, smudging and a cropped image on the reverse. It also considers the sheet to have originally been larger. The present edges therefore cannot be assumed to preserve Bosch's complete arrangement. Nor should every dark mark in a reproduction be interpreted as a creature or a deliberately placed stroke: some belong to the history of the support. ^[3]

The current Berlin records place the drawing in the museum's old holdings, acquired before 1878. That is a collection-history boundary, not a complete account of its movements since Bosch's lifetime. The sheet nevertheless retains something more immediate than an unbroken ownership history: four inventions that can still be examined at the scale of a hand. Alongside The Hearing Forest and the Seeing Field, it shows why Bosch's drawings deserve close attention in their own right. The monsters become convincing through particular lines, poses and revisions, even when their bodies resist every familiar category. ^[1][3][5]

References

1. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zwei Phantasiegeschöpfe, KdZ 547, current collection record. View source.
2. 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
3. Matthijs Ilsink and colleagues, Hieronymus Bosch, Painter and Draughtsman: Catalogue Raisonné (2016), catalogue 38, pp. 506–509; catalogue 51 object metadata, p. 554. View source.
4. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hieronymus Bosch und seine Bildwelt im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, exhibition worklist and wall texts (2016), KdZ 547 entries, pp. 3–4. View source.
5. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zwei Phantasiegeschöpfe, KdZ 547 verso, current collection record. View source.
6. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2016 exhibition wall texts, p. 3: approximate date of KdZ 549. View source
7. Jamie Gabbarelli, “Cat. 1 Circle of Hieronymus Bosch,” Drawing Closer: Four Hundred Years of Drawing from the RISD Museum (2020, updated 2021). View source.
8. Splash image, The front of Bosch’s Two Monsters, Berlin KdZ547; two further creatures appear on the reverse. View source. View source.