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1. Wine is strong. 2. the King is stronger. 3. Woman is strongest. 4.Truth trumps all three! Derives from I Esdras, chapter 3. It is first found in profusely-illustrated late medieval bibles that do not consider Esdras non-canonical. See Ilja Veldman, “Who Is the Strongest? The Riddle of Esdras in Netherlandish Art” in Simiolus 17…
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This transparent motif was enormously popular, and is perhaps the commonest allegorical motif to be found in the albums. The typical form depicts a youth — often standing on a sphere — pulled on on side by a person (usually a young woman) holding a thread, and on the other by a person (usually a…
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A fairly low-tech, supplementary amusement to be found in many albums is the painting which includes a liftable flap over some portion of the image, e.g. a woman’s skirts, and we have already noticed the small musician literally fiddling under the voluminous skirts of the famous Fat Woman of Strasbourg. In the example in the…
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The comparison of a woman to a horse — however regrettable we may feel it today — was unexceptional, and unexceptionable, in the early modern era — at least, in the ‘Germanic’ world. These two also make up two thirds of the triad we have considered in our post https://albumamicorumear-e4qvahs764.live-website.com/triads-of-one-kind-and-another/ I first gave serious consideration…
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This young man from the 1620s appears to be heading into the future, blind. There are three paths he might follow here, the Church (centre), the Army (bottom) or marriage (top), this last option being symbolised by the same emblem we have discussed in the previous post https://albumamicorumear-e4qvahs764.live-website.com/lovers-i-till-death-do-us-part-or-hearts-skulls/ i.e. chains from his and her wrists,…
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Except that the participants/actors are of different sexes, iconographically, there is no difference between the emblem of a lovers’ union, and that of two male friends, this latter often symbolising Amicitia. We begin with an image of the two lovers holding a flaming heart between them with chains hanging from their wrists united by a…
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The motif of a king/emperor standing on a world-orb with a sword in one hand and a book in the other would seem to derive from an emblem in the 1560s editions of Paradin’s Devises Heroiques which include the Appendix by Simeoni …. As the text below the image explains, Caesar became ruler of the…
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This motif is a bit of a mystery to me! — I wondered if it is some historical reference to the uprisings of 1525? The Deublinger album inscription seems to suggest it’s a Three Musketeers “All for one, and one for all” sentiment. The first print-book to notice the motif is Rollos’ Euterpe Suboles [Berlin…
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An enduring stereotype! Of course, in our era, these were exclusively male students, and tattered trousers were a sign of poverty, there being no money to replace them — not a fashion statement, as today. Here all the student’s clothes look pretty tatty, not just his hose, and his shoes are beyond repair — and…
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A popular exemplum. In order to determine which of the three sons is the deserving heir, they are instructed to shoot at their father’s corpse — only the true son refuses to do so. The earliest representations show it as one of the Judgements of Solomon, but it appears shortly thereafter in illustrated manuscripts of…