Student Temptations

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 2^nd edition of the Pugillus Facetiaum, re-titled the Speculum Cornelianum (Strasbourg, 1618). It shows the student at his desk, head in hand, with God the Father in a cloud above him and a yawning hell-mouth beneath him. To his right he is approached by an angel and a skeletal Death holding hour-glass and dart, while to his left a bare-breasted (Venetian-style) courtesan and the Devil approach. I know of 5 painted versions of this scene in the album corpus, none of them dated ante 1618, the von Nostitz example (BELOW) being a very close copy of the print, the Gastel and Rosenberg (1615×23) examples being vertical in format, and another on a leaf that has been torn in half, leaving only the Devil and a (heavenly) image of Conscience visible – it is possible the page was censored thus on account of the unusually alluring nature of the courtesan.

Though the album miniatures painted in these students’ alba amicorum copy a plate published in the Speculum Cornelianum (Strasbourg 1618), the ‘student’ here merely continues the ‘everyman’ of earlier representations, and the captioning Spruch goes back at least as far as Bebel’s Proverbia Germanica (1508): Noli peccare/ Deus videt/ Angelus adstat/ Conscientia mordet/ Mors minatur/ Diabolus accusat/ Inferi cruciant [Sin not! / God sees/ the Angel stands by/ Conscience gnaws/ Death threatens/ the Devil accuses/ Hell torments]

from the *Speculum Cornelianum* /2nd ed. of the *Pugillus Facetiarum* — both print-books — in so far as they are not one and the same! — issued in Strasbourg in 1618.

from the album of Balthasar von Nostitz (dated entries begin in 1608). Henrici auction cat. 11^th June 1925, Nr. 111, & pl.VI — here via https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/henrici1925_06_11. Though this is a very close copy of the print, I note that the young Venetian courtesan’s bare breasts have been decently covered here! See the ‘censored’ image below

from the album of Frans Rosenberg, adjacent page dated 1615. Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek,
NKS 2090 h, 4°

from the album of Johann Gastel, adjacent page dated 1597. Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, Y 55, f.98r.

from the album of Thielemann Regenstorff, *ante* 1625 [this scanned from the 1911 Warnecke sale cat. The album is now in the Focke Museum, Bremen.]

perhaps censored on account of the young temptress ? cf. my remarks re the Balthasar von Nostitz image above.

painted glass pane, Winterthur 1670. London, Victoria & Albert Museum, 9060-1863

A different version was published as one of the plates engraved by Peter Rollos in his Philotheca Corneliana (Frankfurt 1619) — here the student sits at table with his inamorata :

from the *Philotheca Corneliana* engraved by Peter Rollos, Frankfurt 1619. Folger copy

There is at least one album painting that copies this plate — I have not seen any reproduction of it, but the description of this page in the album of Johann Georg Rager in the Repertorium Alborum Amicorum [RAA] (below) is clearly the same composition. Dated 1st March 1619, it implies that the Philotheca Corneliana was published very early in the year.

A different version:

engraved by Isaac Brun after Boetius Abraham Bolswert; c.1627 is suggested by the Friedrich-Alexander Universitat’s Graphische Sammlung in whose collection it is

Origins of the composition; earlier versions

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