Not perhaps the most politically correct motif, but for a few years in the second decade of the 17th century she was a celebrity, famous for being fat! (can we still use the F word?). She was married to a Strasbourg rope-maker [Seiler] — hence her name — and evidently popular enough to be the…

This popular motif in the alba amicorum derives from a woodcut illustration made by Hans Weiditz in Von der Artzney beider Gluck (Augsburg, 1532), a German translation of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae. The lover saws through a branch growing out of his heart; the branch bears a heart, a miniature Venus and a bearded…

As far as I can see, a motif limited exclusively to the early 17C alba amicorum of German students, and deriving from an engraving in the print-books published in Strasbourg in 1618 by Jakob von der Heyden (i.e. the Speculum Cornelianum and the 2nd ed of the Pugillus Facetiarum — insofaras these are not in…

I suppose common-sense urges that the object in the cat’s mouth must be a penis-shaped dildo, and cannot be a real, dismembered, erect penis (which, in any case, if dismembered, would presumably not remain erect!) — but then this is a story, and in stories common-sense is not always required. And there are versions of…

There are, of course, many species of ‘allegorical hunt’ in late medieval and early modern art, but the present hunt for fidelity in love seems to be a ‘Germanic’ motif which arose c.1400 but disappeared not long after 1600. The Lady sets out to hunt for Fidelity-in-Love with her greyhounds [Ger. Winden — rhymes with…

Yet another early modern German erotic metaphor — both with and without a fox. Here it seems possible to point to a particular print as the origin of the motif in the albums — a woodcut by Jost Amman in the Kunstliche wolgerissene new figuren non allerlai jag (Frankfurt 1582, 1592) — BELOW. The words…

Not a motif I have noticed anywhere else but in the albums (but see last). The gentleman appears to be plucking one of the flower-women, so — in the Huber album version — the lady inquires, Worumb diesze Rosen? Bin Ich doch viell reiffer [Why these roses? I am much riper] The illustration below is…

This satirical motif involves 4 characters standing in a row — from left to right, first the boy [Bube] who brings the wine, then the young woman who pours it (in the later prints, she is replaced by the landlord), then the man who drinks it off, and finally the peasant/poor man [Bauer] who pays…

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…