A bizarre hybrid animal with crocodile teeth, wings and a scaly tail shares the top of a window with a sea monster with a human face, as a girl with long hair blows a horn or pipe: square format view of outlandish but charming rustic sgraffito art on the front of a traditional family house at Ardez, Graubünden or Grisons canton, eastern Switzerland. The restored facade, dated 1665, also features an inscription in the Romansh language.
Ardez, Graubünden or Grisons canton, eastern Switzerland: square format view of bizarre animals and sea monsters sharing part of the restored 1665 sgraffito facade of Haus Aual 131 with girlish supporters blowing horns or pipes. The outlandish hybrid creature baring its teeth above the classically-inspired window surround has four legs, wings, a crocodile-like head and a scaly tail – and is perhaps the sgraffito artist’s interpretation of a dragon. Beside it coils a sea creature with a human face. Elsewhere, the charming rustic sgraffito art also features a buxom twin-tailed mermaid, flanked by urns, and an inscription in Romansh, a legacy language of the ancient Roman Empire still spoken by many local people. Ardez, in the Lower Engadine Valley, is an historic village renowned for its carefully restored 16th and 17th century houses decorated with heraldic symbols, Romansh inscriptions and wall art. While some designs are painted, others are sgraffito, the ancient artistic technique of scratching or cutting away parts of a surface layer of plaster, stucco or paint to expose a different colour or texture. Its heyday in Graubünden was in the 1600s and 1700s, but the craft was revived in the early 1900s amid fresh appreciation of regional artistic styles. In the Lower Engadine, Iachen Ulrich Könz restored many sgraffito facades in his home village, Guarda. His sons switched away from traditional designs, enriching more than 100 historic facades, including some in Ardez, with dragons, fish or mermaids. They also added decorative sgraffito to modern buildings and today, Graubünden artists and craftsmen use sgraffito both in restoration work and in new build projects.
Size: 2629px × 2628px
Location: Ardez, Graubünden or Grisons canton, eastern Switzerland
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1665, alpine, alps, animal, architecture, ardez, art, bassa, bizarre, blowing, canton, central, charming, clawed, creature, creatures, crocodile, , dated, decoration, decorative, dwelling, eastern, engadin, engadine, engadiner, engiadina, estate, europe, european, facade, face, family, feet, female, format, girl, graubünden, grisons, horn, house, human, hybrid, image, imaginary, inn, kerr, monster, municipality, mustair, mythical, outlandish, pipe, real, region, restored, rustic, scaly, scuol, sea, sgraffito, square, swiss, switzerland, tail, teeth, terence, val, valley, village, winged, wings
