Gargoyles – Dolores Herrero

Gargopedia

Gargoyles and Expressiveness. A Look at Their Visual Power in Sculptural Art

Dolores Herrero Ferrio

 

The Expressive Dimension of the Gargoyle

Gargoyles provoke all sorts of reactions and feelings when we look at them, and not just because of the figures they depict, but also because most of them are strikingly expressive.

Functionality aside, gargoyles are pure image.

 

gargolas arquitectura

Bordeaux Cathedral (France)

 

Ugliness and Dissonance in the Gargoyle’s Face

Ugliness is one of the characteristics associated with images of gargoyles with terrible, disturbing expressions, something that’s normally seen in all kinds of demons and monsters.

 

Philosophical Reflections on Ugliness

There are a quite few literary references to ugliness. For example, Saint Agustine (4th-5th century) says that the body’s beauty comes from the harmony of its parts. For him, the lack of that harmony offends and this deformity will be corrected by the Creator, using ways that only He knows. “In the resurrection all ugliness will be made beauty”, he says.

Plotinus (3rd century) in his Enneads (I, 6) also states: “Since everything void of form is by nature fitted for its reception, as far as it is destitute of reason and form it is base and separate from the divine reason. And this is absolute baseness”.

According to John Ruskin (1819-1900), beautiful shapes are taken from Nature, so things not taken directly from it “are necessarily ugly”.

 

Threatening Gargoyles: The Power of Fear

Regarding the symbolic meaning or function of gargoyles, some authors speak—among others—of an intimidating function. This function aims to provoke fear. The idea of inducing fear may also explain why certain gargoyles display highly expressive and threatening gestures; as Janetta Rebold Benton states, they act as a kind of scarecrow that frightens the devil and keeps the interior of the building safe.

Nevertheless, gargoyles do not only exhibit terrifying and disturbing expressions. We can also find gestures that reveal a wide range of emotions: compassion, anger, suffering, laughter, and more.

Through their expressions and postures, gargoyles become true bearers of emotion carved in stone—ready to engage in silent dialogue with those who contemplate them.

 

Communicative Gargoyles: A Gallery of Gazes and Emotions in Stone

 

 

 

gargolas de piedra

House of Shells in Salamanca (Spain)

 

 

por que se llaman gargolas
Batalha Monastery (Portugal)

 

 

qué son gárgolas

Church of Our Lady in Trier (Germany)

 

grifos y gárgolas

Palencia Cathedral (Spain)

 

gárgolas modernas

Cathedral of María Inmaculada in Vitoria (Spain)

 

Bibliography

Obras de San Agustín XVII. La Ciudad de Dios, Vol. 2, libros XIII-XXII, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965, XXII, 19, 2.

PORFIRIO, Vida de Plotino. PLOTINO, Enéadas I-II, Madrid, Editorial Gredos, S. A. Biblioteca Clásica Gredos, 57, 1992.

REBOLD BENTON, J., Holy Terrors. Gargoyles on medieval buildings, New York, Abbeville Press, 1997.

RUSKIN, J., Las siete lámparas de la arquitectura, Barcelona, Editorial Alta Fulla, 1997.