Dragon and Griffin Iconography: same origin, different destiny

Abstract

Una de las principales fuentes iconográficas para la comprensión del arte medieval la constituyen los bestiarios, en los que texto e imagen se unen para materializar y explicar conceptos abstractos a través de los comportamientos animales, conceptos cristianizados con el objetivo de transmitir una enseñanza moral según los principios eclesiásticos. Entre estos animales se encuentran el dragón y el grifo, seres que, probablemente, compartieron un mismo origen en el territorio mesopotámico, pero que, tras fijarse su iconografía particular, discurrieron por caminos diferentes, aunque compartiendo siempre su función de guardianes de tesoros. Y ello solo por haber surgido ambos de un pensamiento simbólico ligado a la interpretación religiosa del mundo circundante por parte del ser humano de las primeras culturas urbanas.

Bestiaries are one of the main iconographic sources for medieval art comprehension. Text and image are joined in these sources and they were aimed at materializing and explaining abstract ideas through animal behavior, ideas which were Christianized to transfer a moral education according to ecclesiastical principles. Among those animals are included the dragon and the griffin, beings whose origin was probably shared inside Mesopotamian culture, but beings which, after the establishment of their particular iconography, went by different ways, although always sharing their function as treasure guardians too. And it only happened because of development of both images since a symbolic thought attached to the religious interpretation of the surrounding world by human beings in primeval urban cultures.