bat in The Art of Falconary
Not a modern bat. Not even a believable one. Its body is off.
A medieval bat that feels like it crawled out of a dream
This tattoo started with one of those images that doesn’t look quite right — and that’s exactly why it stays with you.
It isn’t a modern bat.
It isn’t even a believable one.
The body feels slightly wrong. The proportions don’t settle. The limbs stretch outward in a way that feels almost human, almost intentional. It looks less like a creature observed in nature and more like something imagined. As if it slipped out of a dream and landed on a page, halfway between fear and curiosity.
The source of the image is a 13th-century manuscript titled De Arte Venandi cum Avibus — an early guide to falconry commissioned by Manfred of Sicily. The book is famous for its precision. Page after page of birds drawn with obsessive care. Wings measured. Beaks studied. Feathers rendered with near-scientific attention. More than nine hundred illustrations, each one trying to understand the natural world through observation.
And then, suddenly, there’s this bat.
It doesn’t follow the same rules.
It doesn’t pretend to know exactly what it is.
What I love most are the hands.
Tiny, human-like hands at the ends of its wings. Almost tender. Almost playful. A medieval illustrator trying to make sense of a creature he probably never saw up close — maybe never saw at all. Instead of accuracy, he filled the gaps with imagination. Instead of certainty, he allowed strangeness.
That’s the kind of “mistake” I’m drawn to. The kind that reveals more than perfection ever could. It shows how people once saw the world before modern science flattened mystery into explanation. When fear, curiosity, faith, and fantasy were all part of the same image. When drawing wasn’t about getting it right, but about making sense of something unknown.
We tattooed this piece at Visions of Ecstasy here in Berlin.
And interestingly enough, after finishing it, I discovered that this bat has been tattooed by quite a few people before. It isn’t a hidden reference. It isn’t obscure. It’s already been traveling through tattoo culture for a while. But somehow, that doesn’t drain it of meaning. It doesn’t become empty. Each time it’s used, it carries the same strange sweetness with it — half creature, half fantasy. Familiar, but still unsettling.
The client who chose it was visiting from the United States and only had about forty-eight hours in Berlin. She wanted her first tattoo. Something small. Something quiet. But something with a story behind it. And she chose this bat — this medieval oddity — and carried it with her before catching a flight back home.
I love moments like that.
A tiny illustration drawn in a monastery more than seven hundred years ago travels across time, across continents, across bodies. From a medieval manuscript to a tattoo studio in Berlin. From ink on parchment to ink in skin. Chosen during a two-day stop in a city that itself is always in transition.
It’s a reminder that these fragments of history don’t stay still. They keep moving. They keep reappearing. Long after their authors are gone. Long after their original purpose has faded.
The bat is still flying.
Still drifting.
Still finding new places to land.
And maybe that’s exactly why it feels alive.
nOT
