Context ! This is but one of the numerous pictorial album motifs (in these young men’s albums) devoted to young women. I hope to exemplify other, less hostile triadic groupings in a future post. [I did! see now

https://albumamicorumear-e4qvahs764.live-website.com/triads-of-one-kind-and-another/

So… The Three Proudest are: the Peacock (ok — we’re used to that one of old), the Horse, and the Woman (esp. young and beautiful, presumably). In addition to the images shown below, an orphaned leaf of this motif (peacock placed centrally) dated 1639 was sold as lot 168 in the du Rosey sale — Weigel, Leipzig, 1864. Probably the same leaf subsequently sold by Kende in Vienna in February 1927, as lot 474.

Again, it is pretty clear that this motif only appears after the publication of the first edition of the Pugillus Facetiarum in Strasbourg in 1608 (below)

The Kessler album image (1616)

In this album painting — reversed with respect to the Pugillus plate — the print-book’s captioning verses are transcribed on the adjacent page by the signatory and dated 1616. The Dutch Jeucht Spieghel (Arnhem, 1610) shamelessly copies the prints of the 1608 Pugillus but in reverse (as is usual when prints are copied) — it therefore seems more likely that the Kassler album artist has copied from this book, rather than oddly reversed his painting from the Pugillus.

Applied use

According to Czehiak’s 1891 catalogue of the glassware then in the collection of the Wroclaw Museum, it included a glass [?Humpen], dated 1706, and enamel-painted with our motif and captioning text. Might still be there — for all I know!