GROTESQUE: THE HERITAGE OF ANTIQUITY

Abstract

The term “Grotesque” is used as a general adjective for everything strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, thus it is also used to describe the weird shapes. Main objects of architectural decoration of this kind are vignettes and fantastic monsters, consisting of human, vegetal and zoomorphic elements, and sometimes architectural details too. An immense variety of motifs and figures, hybridity and metamorphosis is one of the most typical characteristics of the decorative style.The word itself is originally from Italian grottesco, literally “of a cave” (from Italian grotto), which is an extravagant style of Antique Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Renaissance at the end of the 15th century. The word first was used for the paintings found on the walls of basements of Roman ruins that were called at that time Le Grotte. That Grotte were the halls of splendid Domus Aurea, the unfinished palace complex of Emperor Nero, built after the Great Fire of Rome in 64, which was demolished during the rule of Emperor Trajan.Such designs were very fashionable in Rome starting from the times of Augustus (Villa Livia, Villa Farnesina etc.) as fresco or stucco wall decoration and floor mosaics, but they were hardly criticized by Vitruvius (30 B.C.) as illogical, meaningless art, purely decorative, without sense and narration, great ideas and heroes: “reeds are substituted for columns, fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes take the place of pediments, candelabra support representations of shrines, and on top of their roofs grow slender stalks and volutes with human figures senselessly seated upon them.”After discovering of Domus Aurea, the Grotesque became very fashionable in Renaissance art too, thanks to the artworks of Raphael and his school, especially of Giovanni da Udine (Villa Madama and Villa Farnesina in Rome, loggias of Apostolic Palace in Vatican) forming the special variation of this style – Raphaelesque Grotesque. Starting from that times till the beginning of the 20th century in fact any European villa, luxurious city residence or palace has the decoration, somehow relative to the Grotesque style.In our article we try to discover some forms of Medieval fine arts, including also Georgian samples (frescoes and reliefs, manuscripts illuminations) relative to Grotesques. According to this, we can analyze also the wide and complicated problem: how the heritage of Antiquity – the iconographical schemes and stylistic moments, pagan gods and mythological creatures – survives in the Middle Ages both in Eastern and Western Christendoms.