Verified answer

"Mel Grant made the excellent Magica-cover, and got detailed instructions on how it should be, he tells us:

>The brief came from Ronnie Dio's record company via my London agent 'Artist Partners', and, as far as I can remember, it asked for the face of an evil character in a dark place at one end of the cover to lead across to a light snow and mountain landscape to the thoughtful face of the hero at the other. The choice of faces, setting and colour etc. was left up to me.

> Before starting the artwork, I spoke with Ronnie by phone and he gave me the breakdown on the Magica story and the feel he wanted in the cover art.

The artwork was painted digitally and I e-mailed a low resulution copy to the record company art director for comments and to check I hadn't lost the plot anywhere... and then the job was done. Again, Ronnie’s shows his true character and maybe also one of the reasons for being loved so much by his fans:

> A few days later, Ronnie sent me a copy of the final CD with 'Mel it's brilliant, thanks so much' written across the inside of the cover, which was really nice. Not everyone remembers the artist when it's all done. I must say it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I've done and I found Ronnie and the gang great people to work with, Grant tells us."

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Well, turns out the beast doesn't has a name and was created especially for the album's cover art like I've originally suspected. DIO is GOD (well that's a no brainer duh)