30 Times Medieval Painters Had No Idea How Something Looked And Created “Weird Medieval Guys”, As Shared On This Twitter Page

“I do a bit of graphic design for a magazine at the university where I study, and last year I ended up using a lot of medieval imagery in one of our issues,” the creator of “Weird Medieval Guys” told Bored Panda in a written interview.

“I spent a lot of time online looking for images from medieval manuscripts to incorporate into the project, and I was amazed at the works that I found. Not just the art itself, but also the extent to which these priceless, one-of-a-kind manuscripts and documents have been digitized and catalogued online for anyone across the world to browse.”

According to the author, “until this millennium, accessing and sharing these kinds of works would have been practically impossible on such a wide scale.” So they really wanted to create a way for people to enjoy them. “Because I found so many pieces that I thought were extremely funny and endearing and could only send so many of them to my friends before they got sick of me, I also liked the idea that I could connect with other people online about how cool the art is,” the creator explained.

Having said that, the creator of “Weird Medieval Guys” said that they are not the first person to acknowledge how funny medieval artwork can be, nor are they the first person to create a social media account based on it: “there are a huge number of pages on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other sites dedicated to sharing medieval humor. So knowing that this was something people would probably enjoy seeing certainly influenced my decision to start the account.”

“Most of what I post is from the eras that are referred to as the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages, which encompass approximately the 11th to the 16th century,” they said. The author explained: “I do think that this period of time is very unique from a western art historical standpoint - because the printing press had not yet been invented, all books were written out by hand and often included notes and doodles that were added in spontaneously by scribes who never thought these additions would be seen by the general public.”

“Therefore, we have a huge amount of content from this era that reflects the humor and thoughts of (somewhat) average people. And when we look at what they created, we actually find that a lot of it contradicts how we view the 'Dark' Ages,” the creator explained.