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I have yet to come across this amusing scene painted in an album, but evidently it was — and, interestingly, as early as 1607. The above listing is but one of the hundreds describing orphaned leaves auctioned by Weigel in Leipzig in 1864 in the du Rosey sale. It probably looked much like this plate…
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The old story — young wife makes fool of old husband (note fool’s cap), even effeminates him, as he is forced to participate in that quintessentially feminine occupation, spinning! This miniature in the Lüdel album, painted c.1624 is accompanied by a traditional rhyme Ejn harte nuß, ein stumpfer Zan, Ein jungeß Weib, ein alter Man,…
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Glad to have the excuse of the Meyer album miniature, painted in Switzerland c.1640 (below), to post the Swiss painted glass panes of this (& other) motifs The elderly, book-under-his-arm, know-all (?teacher, scholar) says to the boy who has fallen from the ladder: Werestu nit so hoch gestigen Vnd werest bey deinsgleichen bliben Vnd hetest…
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Distel und Dorn stechen sehr Falsche Zungen noch viel mehr. Auch wolt ich lieber in Disteln und Dornen baden Denn mit falschen Zungen seyn beladen. [Thistle and thorn prick badly / false tongues much more / And yet I’d rather bathe in thistles / than be burdened by false tongues]. The Keils noted that in…
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As the overwhelming majority of albums were begun when their owners were students, this is not surprisingly one of the most popular motifs to be found in them. Cornelius bin ich genant [My name’s Cornelius Allen Studenten wolbekant well known to all students] So runs the caption to what was to become the…
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Of the numerous memento mori emblems in the albums this is surely the strangest. The sketch in the album of Jacob Freund is a particularly unlikely version: Two men in robes emerge from an arcade to witness an eagle dropping a tortoise on the head of a seated man who appears to be declaiming from…
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Forget industry — the “busy bee” — for the moment; the bee also features in emblematic contrasts: the contrast between the sweetness of the bee’s honey and the sharpness of its sting; and the contrast of the bee and spider that (in medieval and early modern belief) make opposite products from the same flower (honey…
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as intellectuals have long liked to believe. The appearance of the forceful encounter of the representatives of both sides of the proposition was fixed in 1608, with the publication of thePugillus Facetiarum print-book: The miniature in the Freund album, for example, dated 1617, shows its dependence on the print-book plate (above) in such telltale details…
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This, at first sight, comical painting of a man feeding an ass at the dining-table is soon revealed to be an allegory, when we notice the labels — Caro [Flesh] for the ass, Homo Carnalis [Carnal Man] for the man feeding him, and Anima [Soul] for the skinny, dishevelled figure hovering behind him. The caption…
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One of the most popular episodes — frequently depicted — from Ariosto’s epic, Orlando Furioso (first full edition published 1532), shows the lovers Angelica and Medoro carving their names on a tree (and sometimes suggested as the source of Shakespeare’s Orlando carving his beloved Rosalind’s name on every tree in the Forest of Arden). It…