I had never noticed this ‘lady’ before — though I must have scanned this digitised album more than once — just goes to show. The moral — for me, who am uninterested in heraldry — is to stop fast-forwarding through the Wappen [coats-of-arms] and check the supporters or, indeed, any human being in the vicinity, more carefully!

So here is a young woman supporting Michael Stock’s coat-of-arms with one hand, and with the other, holding a lead on which is a mouse! The caption at the bottom of the page reads, Vnuergessen Beschechener Trew which is difficult to make sense of; it ought to mean, literally, something like ‘loyalty/fidelity that happened/occurred is not forgotten’ — perhaps it is just a random motto unconnected with the painting as such — an illustration which seems rather to suggest the very opposite of fidelity!

We find the same bizarre scene both earlier and later. In the print-books it is found in Rollos’ Vita Corneliana (Berlin 1624):

The captions are heavy — positively overweight, indeed — with innuendo.

Jungfraw ich halt ein freundlichn dauschs Girl, I suggest an amicable exchange
Ich gib euch mein finckn fur die Maus I give you my finch for your mouse
Ja Herz , es kan gar woll geschehn, yes, dearheart, that can well happen
Ich mus zuuor eurn finckn besehn (but) first I must see your finch.

The earlier example is a drawing by the extraordinary Swiss artist, Urs Graf, dated in the 1520s:

Commentators are agreed that the woman in Graf’s drawing is a prostitute ‘advertising her wares’ in this — presumably metaphorical, rather than real-life — way, pointing out that ‘mouse’ was a Swiss euphemism for the female genitals; Grimm, s.v. Maus, 3 g), notes that the word can stand for das weibliche geschlechtsglied, but cites only a relatively modern folksong, but refers also to the compound kammermäuselein in this sense — literally, ‘little chamber-mouse’ — which does at least come from an early modern source [Hasenjagd 1629], but I feel sure earlier examples of this usage are waiting to be found.