Drolleries: deliberately impossible hybrid creatures
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 48). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Especially c.1200–1500; a Getty cutting is c.1260–1270
Region: Western Europe
Workbook date-sort bounds: 1200 CE to 1500 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Human, bird, mammal, serpent and plant parts are recombined into small absurd figures. Getty's Marginal Drollery: Hybrid Couple, MS Ludwig VI 5 leaf 23, is a dated c.1260–70 example.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
Hybrid drolleries recur widely in professionally decorated manuscripts.
What remains uncertain
This is an umbrella art category, not one demonstrable circulating cultural item. Planned commissioned images cannot be treated as spontaneous reader doodles merely because they appear in margins.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria