Michelangelo on the grotesque  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Michelangelo in Da Pintura Antiga (1548) remarks on the grotesque:

"But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous.

When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals." --tr. from Monsters of Our Own Making: The Peculiar Pleasures of Fear by Marina Warner.

"this insatiable desire of man sometimes prefers to an ordinary building, with its pillars and doors, one falsely constructed in grotesque style, with pillars formed of children growing out of stalks of flowers, with architraves and cornices of branches of myrtle and doorways of reeds and other things, all seeming impossible and contrary to reason, yet yet it may be really great work if it is performed by a skillful artist." (Quoted in David Summers, "Michelangelo on Architecture", The Art Bulletin 54.2 (June 1972:146-157) p. 151.

See also

• “Four grotesque heads; study for Hercules and Antaeus”, ca. 1524-25, red chalk, hercules group over black chalk, 255 x 350 mm. London, The British Museum.[1][2]
• Da Vinci grotesques