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 times ‘political’, the immediate visual impact, the effect on the viewer, is humorous/comic and one cannot help but laugh!
We expect to see birds perching in trees, not donkeys. The image of the ass/fox in the tree and the birds on the ground beneath it is surprisingly common in the albums – I have noted 10 such paintings to date. The earlier, 16C version features the ass, being superseded in the following century by the fox. It is usually accompanied by a rhyming couplet – that in the Schroetter album (1580s) is typical:
Ist das nicht ein gros wvnderr ein esel avff dem baum fogell darvnder [Is it not a great wonder/a donkey in the tree and birds thereunder]
The earliest instance I am aware of, dated 1521, is a carving in the low-relief Flachschnitzerei technique, formerly located above the door of the guestroom of the Oetenbach nunnery, near Zurich, but now reconstructed in that city’s museum, and labelled wunder ibe[r] wunder der esel uf dem bom die fogel darun[d]er.
The motif was perhaps popular in the region, for in 1712 referring to what he considered the topsy-turvy decisions made by a local committee, a local nobleman compared its members to a painting he had in his house in Höng [now a suburb of Zurich] “in which the asses sat in the tree, several of them tumbling out of it, but the birds lay stretched out at the foot of the tree.” The painting in question was presumably of 17th or even 16C date.[ii] This is the original from Leonhard Meister, Helvetische Szenen (Zurich, 1785), p130:
Ein gewisser Junker Marr verglich diese Committee mit einem Gemaehlde in seinem Landguth zu Hoeng, in welchem die Esel auf dem Baum sassen, und einige freylich herunterpurzelten, die Voegel aber unten am Fuss des Baums ausgestreckt lagen.
But the motif had also been used polemically in Germany: in mid-sixteenth century Augsburg we hear of a satirical poster, a Schandbild indeed, fixed to the house of Bürgermeister Georg Oesterreicher, criticising the repressive measures introduced by the city council, and the report of the incident quotes the offending verse which captioned it:
Schau, Lieber, ist es nicht ein Wunder:
Esel auf dem Baum und Voegel darunter? [iii]
From the end of the century survives a magnificent Stangenglas dated 1592 and enamel-painted with the figural motif and caption: Wunder uber Wunder / die Ehsel auff den Baum und die vogel drunder. [iv]
An enamel-painted Humpen made in Franken dated 1610 and now in the Dresden Museum substitutes foxes in its example of the motif with the verse altered accordingly:
Sehett hyr wunder vbyer wunder Fösche [sic] auff Den baume vndt Fögel dar vnder. [v]
The 17C fox variant of our motif introduces a new, erotic element absent from the 16C ass original, in which — at most — the loving couple stand either side of the tree. The iconographically rich early 17C Heidenreich album is particularly relevant here. Its example, dated 1606, takes the form of a lift-the-flap painting: with the flap down, the fox stands on top of the tree, the birds walk about the foot of it — with the flap up, we see a young couple lying under the tree, the man’s hand cupping the woman’s bared breast.
lift-the-flap image in the Heidenreich album, 1606
The Egger album painting presents a similar scene accompanied by the usual Wunder Wunder... rhyme
The engraved plate in the Philotheca Corneliana print-book (Berlin 1624) is anomalous and puzzling — because, no! It is not a great wonder to see the birds in the tree and the foxes beneath it! Is this some kind of ‘double bluff’ — or did the engraver simply misunderstand the motif?!
The Harant album now in Prague (dated entries 1631-60) presents an apparently more sedate couple beneath the foxes in the tree, but in alarming company.[vi]
The rifleman (bottom right) appears to be firing a phallus at the figure of a naked woman standing in an archway in the distance.
The Steudlin album presentation of 1630 seems relatively ‘normal’ by comparison! Though the painter has forgotten to add the usual rhyme to the banderole.
Lastly – in yet another medium – an engraving of 1705 records a satirical medal [Spotmedaille] cast in the previous century which Tentzel believed to have been issued by Johann Casimir von Sachsen Coburg (d. 1633), another example of the fox variant.[vii] A young couple who occupy half of the design recline in an embrace beneath a tree in which a fox is ‘perched’, at least one bird is indicated on the ground beside them. The surrounding legend reads
WVNDER WVNDER VBER WVNDER EIN FVCHS VFF DEM BAVM VND VOGEL DARVNDER.
Satirical medal supposedly issued by Joann Casimir (d.1633). I have not been able to confirm that any contemporary examples of this medal survive.
And the fish, of course…
If anything, this is the traditional variant — fish in the tree! Wonderful accident of survival! An orphaned early 17C leaf sold at auction by Pieter Kiefer on 5th December 2022, as lot 2728. Cropped above, unfortunately, but I assume the first line ends Wunder, then follows the usual 2nd line of the couplet: Oben Fisch Vogel drunder [fish above, birds below] — someone better acquainted with this cursed cursive than me can doubtless supply the rest of the first line — pleeease, Gentle Reader! The perfect parallel and precedent, indeed, has to be the image below, excerpted from the wonderful wall-painting of Schlaraffenland/Cocagne at Ostermiething in Austria, c.1470
[ii] Gemählde probably means a wall-painting here, but itmight also refer to a framed painting.
[iii] cit. … Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte 1547-1555 (1911), 456.
[iv] sold Bonhams 3rd November 2016, lot 76. Though no provenance is given in the auction catalogue, it seems certain to be the glass noted in the …. collection…
[v] Ref….
[vii] Tentzel … Anderer Theil ( 1705), Tab.19
Leave a Reply