This popular album scene is but one of several satirical motifs fixed by the Pugillus Facetiarum print-book (Strasbourg, 1608, 1618, etc). It was especially popular with 16C Swiss glass-painters too, found on Wappenscheiben [coats-of-arms painted on glass panes] and Scheibenrissen [designs for these] from 1552 onwards. Daniel Lindtmayer,…

Under the umbrella-term of the World Turned Upside Down [monde renversé, verkehrte Welt] are included many inversions and reversals of the natural order mostly – by definition – impossible. While on consideration, we may suspect the point of all these motifs of reversal to be ‘moral’, even at…

Another popular sexual innuendo in the albums. Yje motif is seemingly restricted to the Germanic area, but the foxtail is a very common phallic symbol, doubtless assisted by the fact that the fox’s tail is called “Rute”, a word which is also used for ‘penis’ at this period…

One colourful aspect of student life registered in the print-books is the initiation or ‘hazing’ ritual to which new students were subjected. The so-called Depositio appears in the Pugillus Facetiarum (Strasbourg 1608, 1618) and also in de Passe’s Academia sive Speculum Vitae Scolasticae (Arnhem 1612),[i] and the miniature…

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December 2025 (3) A peculiarly German motif — in both senses of the word! Presumably a sexual innuendo — riding on pricks? (works just as well in German) Christoph Gasser is bout to publish an article on this popular album motif. The earliest example known to me is…