Artefacts

Breton tales are not the only instances of werewolf descriptions that offer a combination of human and lupine qualities, as previously mentioned. Germanic folklore also touches on this concept, with myths such as their “wild men” taking precedent; Willem de Blécourt conducted research on werewolf legends in Europe in his 2007 research article "I Would Have Eaten You Too": Werewolf Legends in the Flemish, Dutch and German Area, and found around 400 differing werewolf accounts from the region of Northern Europe (Blécourt, 2007). One such depiction of a Germanic “werewolf” is the following artefact, a drawing of a wild man crawling on all fours back to his woods after ravaging a farm and killing several people. He holds an infant in his mouth and walks among the remains of his other victims, while survivors of the attack, a woman and children, watch on in horror from their house. The art has no colour, and is a wood-cut drawing, implying that it was not meant for lavish decoration or important display. 

It was created sometime between 1510 and 1515 c.e by Lucas Cranach the Elder, a court painter in Wittenberg, Germany at the time of creating this piece. As per his job title, Lucas Cranach would have created cultural and mythical paintings as requested or for the appeasement of the local nobility or rulers, and as such this particular work can be understood as being a part of Lucas’s mythological interpretations for his ruler. The artefact shows the continued intrigue in the werewolf myth throughout the Middle Ages, culminating in this art being created towards the end of this period. It is a depiction, as stated, of a “wild man” attacking a farm, which is often credited as being another rendition of werewolves; the man depicted here is clearly acting lupine, with untamed hair, crawling on all fours, and retreating to the woods, just like where Marie de France’s bisclavret lives. However, the way he is depicted as wolf-like is from a different approach as in Bisclavret; changes seem to be strictly mental and attribute-based, as he remains in his human form but is more savage than bisclavret appeared to be.

Many other cultures and religions feature depictions of werewolves having some differing aspect of humanity involved in the transformation; for instance, the below artefact is an artist’s rendition of the myth of Lycaon, showing him with a wolf’s head atop a human’s body, as if the final figure was a mixture of the two. The original myth involved a Greek king being transformed into a wolf by Zeus for feeding him human flesh, and the artist seems to have incorporated his own culture’s understanding of werewolves and physical transformation. In both cases, however, the wolf-man has human characteristics just as the Germanic artefact does.

Yet another example of the different ways in which werewolves have been depicted is this religious text from a different region of Germany, showing a wolf standing upright wearing a monk’s habit and holding a scroll. This depiction illustrates the werewolf in slightly different ways as the above artefacts, being fully transformed into a wolf but standing like a man and taking the role of a monk. While the Getty Museum Collection does not provide context for the artefact, it could be inferred that the werewolf in monk’s clothing refers to the thought of some holy men as dishonest or morally corrupt. Whether or not the depiction is a positive or negative reference is inconsequential though, as either way the werewolf is being shown as a manifestation of some sort in the religion the folio was created for. This, along with the same principle in all of the other pieces of werewolf media shown thus far, combine to show that the werewolf is a creature created from the fear of manifestation of humanity’s basic urges and violent tendencies.