Tracing the evolution of the newly emerging iconographical patterns
of fools and folly, this book sheds light on the original and
innovative invention that was an exclusive creation of northern
Renaissance art and culture. The novel theme of the fools' journey,
as expressed mainly through prints in Germany and later in the
Netherlands in the sixteenth century is revealed as an ironical
paraphrase, parodying the well established Christian topos, the
Pilgrimage of Life or the Pilgrimage of the Human Soul, which
offered the believer the opportunity to travel on the road toward
redemption. The new mythical image of the fools' journey, however,
confronts the contemporary reader/viewer with the image of the fool
on his voyage that leads him, instead, to his doomed fate, thereby
reflecting a pessimistic world-view. The newly emerging visual
vocabulary is considered in relation to analogical contemporary
didactic and satirical theatrical performances such as the
rederijkers plays, the sotties, and also carnival processions.
Proposing a new reading of Sebastian Brant's The Ship of Fools (Das
Narrenschiff, Basel 1494), a landmark in the new iconography of the
allegorical journey, this study recognizes as well the power of the
visual image employed in the woodcuts-illustrations accompanying
the treatise as a tool of moral teaching, used as a means of
influencing the larger urban audience for whom word and image were
sometimes interchangeable. Concomitantly, the divergence between
verbal expression and visual language may be seen to define the
inherent codes of the visual expressions. It is precisely the gap
between literary sources and visualization, the very moment when
visual vocabulary crystallizes, and image departs from word
creating its own autonomous expression and language, that attracts
our attention. The range and diversity of visual material related
to the fools' journey topos, addresses a wide spectrum of
audiences. This study also takes into consideration the strategies
of communicating meanings and values to various publics. Addressing
the wider urban public that was not necessarily lettered, notably
women, illustrated-books and images were envisaged first of all as
didactic tools. In accordance, the painters-engravers attended
their public with rather simple visual elaborations that could be
easily deciphered. Paintings, drawings, and prints intended for
highly cultivated elite circles of urban society, among them works
by Albrecht Durer and Hieronymus Bosch, demanded greater
intellectual involvement on the part of the beholder, challenging
the sophisticated viewer to re-create a meaningful ensemble out of
the various scenes and motifs presented within complex
compositions.
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