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We might say that the album amicorum was born out of the Reformation, and given that the overwhelming majority of albums were produced in a Protestant milieu, there is no shortage of anti-Catholic iconography, often virulent. Anti-Papal motifs are common enough, but perhaps the commonest such images accuse monks of improper relations with nuns and…
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The peregrinatio academica, given that it almost always brought students to Italy, was a precursor of the 18C Grand Tour, and if for the moment we can forget the inevitable attraction for these young men of the courtesans, famous throughout Europe, it introduced them to the monuments of Antiquity — and not just in Rome.…
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Thomas Schweiker Owners were always keen to acquire the works of foot- and mouth-artists for their albums. The most famous foot-artist was Thomas Schweicker of Schwäbisch Hall (1540-1602). In May 1583, beneath the heading Dominus mihi adiutor non timebo quid faciat mihi homo [Ps.117.vi], he dedicated his entry — diβ mit meinem füessen geschrib [this…
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This is a gentle satire on the inevitable fall-off in sexual performance as a man ages. It features men of four ages, the youngest embracing a young woman. Jakob von der Heyden, the publisher of the Pugillus Facetiarum (Strasbourg 1608, 1618) states in his preface that many of the designs in this print-book were taken…
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Never mind online-dating, what better way of securing a spouse than knocking her/him out of a tree with a stick? Before the Albums Like a boy throwing sticks into a chestnut tree to bring down the conkers, a man in the Erlenwein album (below) throws sticks into a tree of women to knock down a…
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Playing footsie! This is an example of what, in one of my Pinterest boards, I call “significant gesture”. The lady is spoiled for choice — positively over-run with suitors. But who is her favourite? Is it the one whose foot she subtly treads on? But her mocking verse, frequently quoted, suggests that she is happy…
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One of the many invaluable insights the album images have to offer is examples of gesture — especially in the genre scenes of everyday life. The well-known and usually abusive ‘horns’ gesture (though at times used apotropaically) is well-represented — if we look carefully. Horns In this detail from a miniature in the Plan album…
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I do not propose to sample the numerous memento mori images to be found in the albums here, but to try to limit myself to Danse Macabre and related images that did not properly belong in my previous Death & the Alls post. [https://albumamicorumear-e4qvahs764.live-website.com/death-the-alls-and-i-kill-you-all-with-an-entertaining-digression-on-trumpet-rebuses/] The scene of Death with his scythe ‘reaping’ all manner of…
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This is a motif which appears to me to evolve from an original model depicting the Three Estates, via the addition of Death (with — inevitably — incidental shades of the Danse Macabre). By the late 16C it is sometimes an incremental motif in which each ‘estate’ declares its service to ALL the preceding ones,…
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This emblematic design seems to have first appeared in the early 17C, and like many other images popular with the album painters its representation divides into two phases, before and after it appears in a print-book, in this case the Speculum Cornelianum (von der Heyden, Strasbourg 1618). I consider this volume to be the 2nd…