Popular ‘folk’ means of rejuvenation include fountains [Jungbrunnen], furnaces, and mills. I’m just concentrating on mills here, especially the Altweibermuhle which rejuvenates old wives, but also the Narrenmuhle, into which fools are poured, ground & emerge as… fools! — perhaps taking the hint from Proverbs 27.22: Crush a fool in a mortar…yet his folly will…

First appearing in the Pugillus Facetiarum (Strasbourg, 1608) the image of the nun — the armes nonnelein — looking enviously at the lovers kissing under the tree was taken up by the album amicorum painters, the glass-painters and even issued as a medal…(the so-called Coburger Kusstaler) Hijacked by a monk! Here a monk seems ready…

The manifold temptations to which the student is subjected, the battle for his soul, indeed, is the subject of an engraving signed with Jacob von der Heyden’s monogram and published in the 2nd edition of the Pugillus Facetiaum, re-titled the Speculum Cornelianum (Strasbourg, 1618). It shows the student at his desk, head in hand, with…

Or is it a perfectly ordinary-sized man and a giantess? Another popular album amicorum motif which seems, indeed, to have originated in the albums — the earliest I’ve found is dated 1598 [BELOW] — which was then picked up by the print-books (Vita Corneliana, 1624 BELOW) — and has endured Applied uses In subsequent centuries…

Another popular method of assessing suitors’ suitability is to pass them through a sieve — the acceptable candidate remains in the sieve. Again, the motif predates the albums Woman sieves fools/men Men sieve women

The only painted miniature in the recently digitised album of Gerhard Horst, Hs. 35153 in the Library of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (dated entries 1607-11) depicts a large devil sitting on a close-stool devouring soldiers and excreting them as priests — a monk sprinkles holy water over the issue. The caption below the image (not shown…

Though you need more patience than at speed-dating! Men fishing for women, women fishing for men — the bait varies (see below). The earliest I’ve found it in the albums is 1578, but not found any 17C examples — so seems a short-lived motif limited to the final quarter of the 16C. Outside the albums,…

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, for example, used it at least 3…

The Symbol We have become familiar with Bruegel’s signal in his Netherlandish Proverbs painting of 1559 that all his busy characters enacting their proverbial follies are inhabitants of a topsy-turvy world, that they all dwell, as it were, at the Sign of the World Turned Upside Down. [see my Pinterest board https://uk.pinterest.com/malcmjones/monde-literally-renverse/ for many more…

Another popular sexual innuendo in the albums. The 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 in German — but, then, the ‘tail’…