25 June 2026

What Lies Beneath? Pictish Monsters and the Living Frame

Online talk by Heather Pulliam, Professor of Medieval Art, Edinburgh School of Art

Organised by Groam House Museum. Tickets via Eventbrite : £3.96 members and students; £7.21 others). Groam House Annual Academic Lecture.

Medieval art is known for its monsters, but Pictish art seems to take it to the next level. Drawn from my new book, Art, Nature and the Body in Early Medieval Art (Cambridge University Press, 2026), this talk addresses the many questions raised by the monsters that crawl, slither, and climb across the sculptural surfaces of Pictish art. While my focus is primarily on sculpture, building on Victoria Whitworth and Isabel Henderson’s arguments that we might understand the Book of Kells as made in Pictland, my talk also considers the Book of Kells and the Book of Deer. The paper begins by asking what a monster is, and what it means to be monstrous. It then turns to ask: What do Pictish monsters do for Pictish art? Why do they feature on so many monuments, in so many positions on these monuments, including places normally reserved in medieval art for the most sacred and divine figures? Finally, it briefly considers how the settings of these monuments (as much as we can reconstruct them) might help us better understand the role of monsters in Pictish art.