Fragile Beasts

About

Exhibition on view June 10, 2016 through January 16, 2017
Plan your visit to the museum today.

Fragile Beasts features nearly 70 rarely seen ornament prints and drawings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that are part of Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library.

Within the confines of ornamental designs, artists turned elements from nature into otherworldly beings. Creatures, fearsome or playful, graceful or rigid, take their place in dense and sinuous designs for locks, ewers, rings, tapestries, stained glass, and more. These intimately scaled works, often measuring just a few inches, are at times erotically charged and at others moralizing. Centuries later, these drawings and prints open a window to the imagination of artists and designers as the Age of Exploration unfolded around them.

find your beast!

Discover your own fragile beasts as you color in delicate designs adapted from the prints and drawings now on view. The Fragile Beasts Coloring Book is available at SHOP Cooper Hewitt.

Start coloring with these free, printable pages from the book:

highlights

Print, Plate from Insigne Ac Plane Novum Opus Cratero Graphicum (A New Artistic Work, Eminent and Clear, On the Crater), 1551; Attributed to Matthias Zündt (German, ca. 1498-1572); Engraving and etching on paper; Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. A. Murray Young; 1946-37-1; Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution

Print, Plate from Die Folge der phantastischen Schmucksträsse (Suite of Fantastic Ornamental Bouquets), 1614; Wendel Dietterlin the Younger (German, active 1610-1614); Etching on paper; Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. John Innes Kane; 1942-36-29-1. Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution

Print, Grotesque Ornament with Satyrs, from a Set of Twenty Ornament Panels, ca. 1530-35; Agostino Veneziano (Italian, ca. 1490-after 1536); Published by Antonio Salamanca (Italian, ca. 1500-1562); Engraving on paper; Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. John Innes Kane; 1946-3-1. Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution

Print, Plate from a Series of Designs for Ewers and Vessels, 1548; Cornelis Floris II (Flemish, ca. 1513-1575); Published by Hieronymus Cock (Netherlandish, ca. 1510-1570); Engravings on paper; Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. John Innes Kane; 1946-3-3

Print, Grotesque Panel with Dolphins, 1527; Lucas van Leyden (Netherlandish, ca. 1494-1533); Engraving on paper; Gift of Leo Wallerstein; 1949-29-2. Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution

Print, Plate 16, from Livre de bijouterie (Book of Designs for Goldsmiths and Jewelers), ca. 1570; Engraved by René Boyvin (French, ca. 1525-1625) possibly after Leonard Thiry (Flemish, active 1536 d. 1560) or Rosso Fiorentino (Italian, 1494-1540); Published by Paul de la Houve (French, active 17th century); Engraving on paper; Museum purchase through gift of Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt; 1956-23-6-16

Explore all the objects in the exhibition online.

Fragile Beasts Video

“Cowcumbers and Cornucopia”: Rediscovering the Grotesque in Design

Watch the video.

What is a cowcumber, exactly? Find out the answer to this and many “grotesque” questions as Sarah Grant, Curator in the Word and Image department of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, gives an overview of the grotesque in all its many fanciful and provocative permutations: from its origins in ancient Rome and its rediscovery and eccentric treatment in the Renaissance to its grandiose and elegant variations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.