Dream

The late medieval and early modern periods saw the triumph of the visionary in art. While not illustrations of dreams or dreamers per se, the work of this period, including the phantasms of Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450–1516), Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569), and others, first in large-scale commissions and later in more popular prints, brought the realm of the dream-like and highly imaginative to a growing audience, taking the visionary beyond the confines of the physical building of the church, and into the street. Popular series, some anonymous, some attributable to artists like Jean Duvet (1485–1561), include prints illustrating visions of heaven and hell and of the apocalypse.

The rise of popular interest in the natural world—particularly in alchemy—gave rise to a host of fantastic images in alchemical works of the seventeenth century illustrated by Theodor de Bry (1528–1598) and others. Baroque art transformed the quotidian into the phantasmagoric, and as such, can also be viewed as dreamlike in its elaboration and imaginative ornamentation. But however dreamlike the imagery, less emphasis is ultimately placed in this period on dreams and the dreamer—on imaginative phenomena occurring outside the range of perceivable reality and nature—and more attention is devoted to the overriding interest in the ingenious exposition of the natural in fanciful ways.