Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300-1550 (Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700) 9462983747, 9789462983748

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Information
Copyright Information
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Ridicule or Reverence? A History of Scholarship on St. Joseph
Sanctity, Humor, and the Gap between Material Reality and Religious ­Experience
Works Cited
1. Joseph’s Hosen, Devotion, and Humor: The ‘Domestic’ Saint and the Earliest ­Material ­Evidence of his Cult
1.1 Introduction: Rethinking ‘Higher’ Levels of Literature and Art
1.2 Joseph’s Hosen and Early Material Evidence of his Cult
1.2.1 The Ivories
1.2.2 The Power of Relics in Fourteenth-Century Europe
1.2.3 The Hosen and Humor in Royal Commissions: The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold
1.3 Nutritor Domini and Bumbling Old Fool: The Hamburg Petri-Altar
1.3.1 The Kindelwiegenspiele
1.4 Conclusion
Works Cited
2. Satire Sacred and Profane
2.1 Introduction: Laughter as Veneration
2.2 From the Margins to the Center: Humor and the ‘World Upside Down’ in Sacred Art and Ritual
2.3 Diaper-Washer Josephs and the ‘Battle for the Pants’
2.4 Joseph, the Ass, the Peasant, and the Fool
2.5 Complexities of Early Modern Humor: The Virtue of the ‘Natural Man’
2.6 Dirty Old Man: The Bawdy and the Chaste Saint
2.7 Conclusion: Satirizing the Sacred
Works Cited
3. Urbanitas, the Imago Humilis, and the Rhetoric of Humor in Sacred Art
3.1 Sacred Humor beyond Edification
3.2 Urbanitas, Facetia, and Courtliness in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
3.3 Dissimulatio, Christian Irony, and the Imago Humilis
3.4 The Art of Rhetorical Humor and the Artist as vir facetus: Early Humanism and Social Exchange
3.5 Conclusion
Works Cited
4. The Miserly Saint and the Multivalent Image: Sanctity, Satire, and Subversion
4.1 The Early Modern paterfamilias and the Profit Economy
4.2 Treasurer or Miser?
4.3 Satire, Subversion, and the Multivalent Image
4.4 Conclusion
Works Cited
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

V I S U A L A N D M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E , 13 0 0 -17 0 0

Anne L. Williams

Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300-1550

Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550

Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late­ medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard ­University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com.

Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550 Anne L. Williams

Amsterdam University Press

This book was published with support from the Kress Foundation and the International Center of Medieval Art, the Historians of Netherlandish Art, and the College of William & Mary.

Cover illustration: Master of the Little Garden of Paradise and his Workshop, The Doubt of Joseph, Strasbourg, c. 1430. Tempera on pine panel, 114 x 114 cm. Inv. MBA 1482, from the hospice of Saint-Marc, Strasbourg, on loan from the Hospices Civils de Strasbourg, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre Dame, Strasbourg. Photo courtesy of the Musées de Strasbourg, M. Bertola. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus 978 94 6298 374 8 isbn e-isbn 978 90 4853 411 1 doi 10.5117/9789462983748 nur 685 © A.L. Williams / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

Table of Contents List of Illustrations 7 Acknowledgements13 Introduction15 Ridicule or Reverence? A History of Scholarship on St. Joseph 22 Sanctity, Humor, and the Gap between Material Reality and Religious Experience 29 1. Joseph’s Hosen, Devotion, and Humor: The ‘Domestic’ Saint and the Earliest Material Evidence of His Cult37 1.1 Introduction: Rethinking ‘Higher’ Levels of Literature and Art37 1.2 Joseph’s Hosen and Early Material Evidence of His Cult42 1.2.1 The Ivories51 1.2.2 The Power of Relics in Fourteenth-Century Europe54 1.2.3 The Hosen and Humor in Royal Commissions: The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold57 1.3 Nutritor Domini and Bumbling Old Fool: The Hamburg Petri-Altar63 1.3.1 The Kindelwiegenspiele78 1.4 Conclusion83 2. Satire Sacred and Profane91 2.1 Introduction: Laughter as Veneration91 2.2 From the Margins to the Center: Humor and the ‘World Upside Down’ in Sacred Art and Ritual94 2.3 Diaper-Washer Josephs and the ‘Battle for the Pants’103 2.4 Joseph, the Ass, the Peasant, and the Fool109 2.5 Complexities of Early Modern Humor: The Virtue of the ‘Natural Man’123 2.6 Dirty Old Man: The Bawdy and the Chaste Saint128 2.7 Conclusion: Satirizing the Sacred142 3. Urbanitas, the Imago Humilis, and the Rhetoric of Humor in Sacred Art151 3.1 Sacred Humor beyond Edification151 3.2 Urbanitas, Facetia, and Courtliness in Medieval and Renaissance Europe157 3.3 Dissimulatio, Christian Irony, and the Imago Humilis162 3.4 The Art of Rhetorical Humor and the Artist as vir facetus: Early Humanism and Social Exchange167 3.5 Conclusion181

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4. The Miserly Saint and the Multivalent Image: Sanctity, Satire, and Subversion187 4.1 The Early Modern paterfamilias and the Profit Economy187 4.2 Treasurer or Miser?190 4.3 Satire, Subversion, and the Multivalent Image216 4.4 Conclusion220 Conclusion225 Index231

List of Illustrations Color Plates Plate 1.  Mosan/Netherlandish artist, Nativity, panel of the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold, c. 1400. Tempera and gold leaf on wood, 33 x 21 cm. Inv. MMB.0001.1-2, Mayer van den Bergh Museum, Antwerp. Photo courtesy of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp. Plate 2. Conrad von Soest, Nativity, detail of the Wildunger-Altar, left wing, 1404. Tempera on wood, 188 x 152 cm. Evangelische Stadtkirche Bad Wildungen. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons. Plate 3. Mosan/South Netherlandish artist, detail of a tabernacle with the Nativity and Flight into Egypt, c. 1395–1400. Tempera on gilded oak, 137 x 47.5 cm (full size). Inv. MMB.0002, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp. Photo courtesy of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh. Plate 4 Boucicaut Master and workshop, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1415–1420. Tempera colors, gold paint, gold leaf, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 20.5 x 14.8 cm, Ms. 22, fol. 72. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Plate 5. Jean le Tavernier, Adoration of the Magi, Book of Hours of Philip of Burgundy, 1450–1460. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 76, fol. 143v. Photo courtesy of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Plate 6. Master of the Legend of St. Barbara, Adoration of the Magi, central panel of a triptych, c. 1480. Oil on oak, 90.7 x 96.7 cm. Inv. 234, Galleria Colonna, Rome. Photo © Galleria Colonna, Rome. Plate 7. Master of the Little Garden of Paradise and his Workshop, The Doubt of Joseph, Strasbourg, c. 1430. Tempera on pine panel, 114 x 114 cm. Inv. MBA 1482, from the hospice of Saint-Marc, Strasbourg, on loan from the Hospices Civils de Strasbourg, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre Dame, Strasbourg. Photo courtesy of the Musées de Strasbourg, M. Bertola. Plate 8. Master of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Holy Family at Supper, detail from the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440. Tempera on vellum, 19.2 x 13 cm. Ms. M.927, pp. 150–151, Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Photo courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum. Plate 9. Circle of the Master of the Fröndenberger Marienretabels (after Conrad von Soest), Blankenberch Retabel, right wing, inside, Adoration of the Magi (detail), c. 1430–1440. Oil on wood, 154.5 x 396 cm (overall). Inv. 6 WKV, LWLMuseum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), loan from the Westfälischer Kunstverein. Photo courtesy of the LWLMuseum für Kunst und Kultur.

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Plate 10. Bartolo di Fredi, Adoration of the Magi, panel from an altarpiece, 1385– 1388. Tempera on panel, 195 x 163 cm. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Museale della Toscana, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena.

Black and White Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

1.5 1.6

1.7 1.8

1.9

Ivory tabernacle, Paris, c. 1300. 16.8 x 15.1 x 2.1 cm. Inv. 747, Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna. Photo by the author, courtesy of the Comune di Bologna, Istituzione Bologna Musei I Musei Civici d’Arte Antica. Psalter, Upper or High Rhine, c. 1200. Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br., Historische Sammlungen, inv. Hs. 24, fol. 11v. Photo © Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br./Historische Sammlungen. Andrea da Fiesole, Nativity, c. 1400. Marble relief. Inv. 1646, Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna. Photo by the author, courtesy of the Comune di Bologna, Istituzione Bologna Musei I Musei Civici d’Arte Antica. Master Bertram, altarpiece and retable of the former high altar of St. Peter’s Church in Hamburg (Grabower Altar), c. 1379–1383. Retable, double-winged with sculpted inside, oil tempera on oak wood, H: 217.5 cm. Outside of the right inner wing, ‘Nativity,’ inv. no. 500g/5. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle/Elke Walford/ Art Resource, New York. Hans Multscher, Nativity, Sterzinger Altar, 1456–1458. Hans Multscher Museum, Vipiteno, South Tyrol. Photo by the author, courtesy of the Hans Multscher Museum. Master of the Holy Kinship the Elder, Triptych of the Holy Kinship (detail from the inside of the left wing: Nativity), c. 1420. Painting on oak. Inv. WRM 59, Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne. Photo by the author. Detail of a Nativity scene from a carved altarpiece from Brabant, sixteenth century. Sankt Maria zur Wiese, Soest. Photo by the author. Franco-Flemish painter of the late fourteenth century, Adoration of the Magi from the ‘Small Carrand Diptych,’ c. 1355–1360. Tempera on wood, 50 x 31 cm. Inv. 2038C, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Photo courtesy of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Hieronymus Bosch, detail of Joseph drying diapers, left wing of altarpiece, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1495–c. 1500. Oil on oak, 147.4 x 168.6 cm. Inv. P02048, Prado Museum, Madrid. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/ Wikimedia Commons.

List of Illustrations

1.10

1.11

1.12 1.13

2.1 2.2

2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8

9

Melchior Broederlam, Presentation at the Temple and Flight into Egypt, right wing of the high altarpiece of the Chartreuse de Champmol, 1390s. Tempera on wood, 167 x 130 cm. Inv. CA 1420, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons. Master Bertram, altarpiece and retable of the former high altar of St. Peter’s Church in Hamburg (Grabower Altar), c. 1379–1383. Retable, double-winged with sculpted inside, oil tempera on oak wood, H: 217.5 cm. Inside of the right outer wing, ‘Flight into Egypt’, inv. no. 500h/6. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle /Elke Walford/Art Resource, New York. Württembergisch-Franken artist, Adoration of the Magi, detail of an altarpiece, c. 1525. Mainfränkisches Museum, Würzburg. Photo by the author. Master Bertram, altar triptych from Harvestehude, 1410. General view with open wings. Painting, oil tempera on oak wood, sculpted shrine, inv. no. 502. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle / Elke Walford/Art Resource, New York. Frans Floris, Holy Family, 1553–1554. Oil on oak panel, 132 x 166 cm. Inv. 2796, Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai. Photo © Musée de la Chartreuse (Photo: Hugo Maertens). Jean Pucelle, Betrayal of Christ and the Annunciation, miniature from the Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, 1324–1328. Grisaille, tempera, and ink on vellum, 8.9 x 6.2 cm (single folio). The Cloisters Collection, 1954, inv. 54.1.2, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art. Israhel van Meckenem, Henpecked husband, 1480. Engraving, 9.7 x 10.1 cm. After Lehrs 649. Erhard Schön, There is No Greater Treasure Here on Earth than an Obedient Wife Who Covets Honor, 1533. Woodcut, 25 x 21.9 cm. After Moxey (1989) 102. Hans Schäufelein, Diaper Washer, woodcut to lost poem ‘Ho, Ho, Diaper Washer’ by Hans Sachs, 1536. Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg. Photo © Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg/Germany. Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1500. Oil on panel. Inv. 10651, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Photo by the author. Jean le Tavernier, Nativity, Book of Hours of Philip of Burgundy, 1450–1460. The Hague, Koninklijke Biblioteek, Ms. 76, fol. 12r. Photo courtesy of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Master of the Gold Scrolls, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, from a Book of Hours, in Latin with a French rubric, c. 1440. Parchment. Inv. W.211, fol. 155v, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo © Walters Art Museum, used under a Creative Commons Zero License.

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2.9 2.10

2.11

2.12 2.13

2.14

2.15 2.16 2.17

2.18

2.19

SATIRE, VENER ATION, AND ST. JOSEPH IN ART, C. 1300–1550

Circle of Erasmus Grasser, Nativity, from a Life of Mary cycle, chapel of the Schloss Grünwald, early sixteenth century(?). Painted limewood. Inv. MA 1233, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich. Photo by the author. German School (Cologne), Rest on the Flight into Egypt (after Martin Schongauer), c. 1500. Oil on panel, 88.7 x 78 cm. Inv. P.1947.LF.68, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London. Photo © Courtauld Gallery. Master Bertram, ‘The Nativity,’ double-winged altarpiece of St. Peter’s Church in Buxtehude, inside of the right altar wing. Painting, oil tempera on oak wood, inv. no. 501 c-1. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/ Hamburger Kunsthalle /Elke Walford/Art Resource, ny. Veit Stoss, Flight into Egypt, interior left wing of the Bamberg Altar, c. 1520. Limewood, Bamberg Cathedral. Photo by the author. Limbourg Brothers, January: The Feast of the Duke of Berry. Illuminated manuscript page from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c. 1412–1416. Tempera on vellum, 22.5 x 13.6 cm. Ms. 65, fol. 1v, Musée Condé, Chantilly. Photo: René-Gabriel Ojéda, Musée Condé. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, ny. South Netherlandish, Workshop of Robert Campin, Annunciation Triptych (Mérode Altarpiece), c. 1425–1432. Oil on oak, 64.5 x 117.8 cm (overall). Inv. 56.70a-c, The Cloisters Collection, 1956, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art. Artist unknown, The Life of St. Joseph (copy after Robert Campin, The Life of Saint Joseph, c. 1425, now lost). Oil on panel, 64 x 203 cm. Sint-Katharinakerk, Hoogstraten. Photo courtesy of Sint-Katharinakerk. Israhel van Meckenem, The Visit to the Spinner, c. 1495/1503. Engraving, 16.2 x 11.1 cm. Rosenwald Collection, inv. 1953.4.1, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art. Master of the Little Garden of Paradise (Upper Rhenish), The Little Garden of Paradise, c. 1410–1420, Strasbourg(?). Tempera on oak, 26.3 x 33.4 cm. Inv. No. HM 54, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, on loan from the Historisches Museum Frankfurt. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons. Master E.S., Pair of Lovers on a Grassy Bench, c. 1450–1467. Engraving, 13.4 x 16.4 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1922, Accession Number 22.83.14, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art. Albrecht Dürer, The Promenade, c. 1498. Engraving, 19.5 x 12.1 cm. Fletcher Fund, 1919, Accession Number 19.73.106, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

List of Illustrations

2.20

11

Master of the Banderoles, The Fencing Room, c. 1460–1470. Engraving, 22.7 x 31.9 cm. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, inv. DG1926/935. Photo © Graphische Sammlung Albertina. 2.21 Urs Graf, Lustful Old Fool and Woman with Baby: Allegory of Fiddling, early sixteenth century. Drawing. Inv. U.X. 108, Kunstmuseum Basel. Photo © Kunstmuseum Basel. 2.22 Lucas van Leyden, A Fool and a Woman, 1520. Engraving, 10.3 x 70.3 cm. Rogers Fund, 1922, Accession Number 22.67.52, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art. 3.1 Master E.S., St. George, from the series The Apostles, c. 1450–1467. Engraving, 15.5 x 11.3 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1922, Accession Number 22.83.9, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art. 3.2 Raphael, St. George and the Dragon, c. 1506. Oil on panel, 28 x 21.5 cm. Andrew W. Mellon Collection, inv. 1937.1.26, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art. 3.3 Hans von Geismar, detail of the Circumcision, altarpiece from the Marktkirche St. Jacobi, Einbeck, c. 1500. Inv. HS 945, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover. Photo by the author. 4.1 Master Francke, Adoration of the Magi, St. Thomas (Englandfahrer) Altarpiece, 1424. Tempera on oak, 91.8 x 84.3 cm. Inv. HK-493, Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. 4.2 Master E.S., Adoration of the Magi, c. 1460–1465. Engraving. Rosenwald Collection, inv. 1949.5.482, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art. 4.3 Master of the Tucher Altarpice, Epitaph Painting for Clara Imhoff: Nativity, c. 1438. Painting on coniferous wood, 112 x 82 cm. Inv. no. Gm 2238, loan from the Church of St. Sebald, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. © Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Photo: Jürgen Musolf). 4.4 Pupil of Meister Francke, Adoration of the Magi, Preetz Altarpiece, c. 1435, Preetz Abbey, Schleswig-Holstein. Inv. CC-BY-SA, Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen. Photo courtesy of the Nationalmuseet. 4.5 Unknown artist, Adoration of the Magi, from the central Rhineland, c. 1440. Paint on coniferous wood panel, 111 x 191 cm. Schlossmuseum Braunfels. Photo courtesy of the Museum Schnütgen, Cologne and the Schlossmuseum. 4.6 Unknown artist, Altarpiece with the Coronation of the Virgin, detail: Adoration of the Magi, from Erfurt, c. 1460. Carved and polychromed limewood, 175 x 155 cm. Inv. Pl.O.149, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. Photo by the author.

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4.7 4.8

4.9 4.10

4.11

4.12 4.13 4.14

4.15

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SATIRE, VENER ATION, AND ST. JOSEPH IN ART, C. 1300–1550

Personification of the Vice of Avarice, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Amiens, west façade, central portal, 1220–1236. Photo © Stuart Whatling. Hans Holbein, The Rich Man, from Dance of Death, c. 1526, published 1538. Woodcut, 6.5 x 4.9 cm. Rogers Fund, 1919, Accession Number 19.57.27, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art. Adoration of the Magi, left wing of an altarpiece, c. 1420. Sankt Maria zur Wiese, Soest. Photo by the author. Triptych with the Adoration of the Magi, from western Germany, c. 1410– 1420. Painting on oak, 58 x 51 cm (central panel). Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, inv. WRM 354. Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, Wolfgang Meier, rba_d035884. Adoration of the Magi, detail of panel from former high altarpiece of the Carthusian monastery in Strasbourg, c. 1460–1470. Polychromed walnut, 58.5 x 69.5 x 17 cm. Inv. MOND 170, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg. Photo courtesy of the Musées de Strasbourg, M. Bertola. Meister der Verherrlichung Mariens, Adoration of the Magi, Cologne, c. 1480/90. Oil on oak. Bequest of Prof. Dr. Irene Ludwig, 2011, inv. GK 1621, Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen. Photo by the author. Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder, Adoration of the Magi, Cologne, c. 1515–1520. Painting on oak. Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, inv WRM 245. Photo by the author. Joos van Cleve, Holy Family, c. 1512–1513. Oil on wood, 42.5 x 31.8 cm. The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1927, Accession Number 32.100.57, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gherardo Starnina, Adoration of the Magi, from Florence, first quarter of the fifteenth century. Tempera on wood, 30.5 x 57.5 cm. Inv. 149, Escallier Bequest, 1857, Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai. Photo © Musée de la Chartreuse (Photo: Hugo Maertens). Giotto di Bondone, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1320, 45.1 x 43.8 cm. John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1911, Accession Number 11.126.1, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Acknowledgements I am indebted to the generosity of many people and organizations over the years of research and writing for this project, and I would like to begin by thanking the institutions that offered financial support during the process. The dissertation stage was funded by a Fulbright Graduate Fellowship for research in Germany, a multi-year Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Writing and Teaching Fellowships at the University of Virginia, and additional grants from both the University of Virginia and the Carl H. and Martha S. Lindner Center for Art History at UVA. The Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria provided the intellectual stimulation and space necessary to finish the manuscript, while a grant from the Historians of Netherlandish Art and a fellowship from the Kress Foundation and the International Center of Medieval Art provided generous funds to bring the book to fruition. I would also like to thank the Dean’s Office of Arts and Sciences at the College of William & Mary for granting me funds for conference travel and for defraying the costs of obtaining images and copyright licenses. I am grateful to the scholars in the US, Canada, and Germany who shared their knowledge and support on various aspects of my project. I am deeply grateful to Ulrike Heinrichs, Erin Campbell, Dagmar Eichberger, Alison Kettering, Herbert Kess­ ler, Gerardo Boto Varela, Paul Bramadat, and particularly Catherine Harding, whose keen intellect, insights, and generosity shaped the manuscript to its final form. My colleagues in the Art and Art History Department of William & Mary have been a wonderful source of support and inspiration, particularly Catherine Levesque and Sibel Zandi-Sayek, who have provided opportunity, guidance, and grace while modeling excellence in both teaching and scholarship. Over the course of my graduate work at the University of Virginia, Howard Singerman provided inspiration, support, and employment, while John Lyons forever changed the way I approach writing. Bill McDonald gave me the invaluable gifts of an introduction to Middle High German, and a wealth of information on the history of Joseph and German studies. Thanks are due to Paul Barolsky for his support, encouragement, and insights along the way. I would particularly like to thank Lisa Reilly, who always came to my talks and always had constructive and insightful criticisms of my work. I would certainly not be where I am today without her unflagging support and inspiration as a mentor. Above all, I want to thank Larry Goedde for his indescribably wonderful mentorship and mind, without which this book would never have been published. Special thanks are due to the incredible Erika Gaffney at Amsterdam University Press for her support and guidance, as well as to Alison Levy and my anonymous readers for their many helpful suggestions on improving the manuscript. I would also like to express my appreciation and gratitude to the curators, librarians, and staff of the following institutions: the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp, the Konin­

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SATIRE, VENER ATION, AND ST. JOSEPH IN ART, C. 1300–1550

klijke Bibliotheek at The Hague, the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre Dame in Strasbourg, the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster, the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, the Museo Civico Medievale of Bologna, the Museo Nazionale del Bargello and the Gallerie degli Uffizi of Florence, the Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg im Breisgau, the Hans Multscher Museum, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and Fondation Corboud, the Schnütgen Museum, the Schlossmuseum Braunfels, the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, the church of Sankt Maria zur Wiese in Soest, the Mainfränkisches Museum in Würzburg, the Musée de la Chartreuse of Douai, the Alte Pinakothek of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich, the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, the Sint-Katharinakerk of Hoogstraten, the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum of Hannover, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Thanks are due especially to Lorenza Amico and Lucie Stylianopoulos at the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library at the University of Virginia. I am sure that this book would not have been published without the support of my family and friends. My parents first exposed me to the world of art and instilled in me an appreciation for the humanities. For their wit and humor, I will always be grateful. I especially want to thank Jared and Trudy, my dearest loves, for always reminding me that there is more to life than work, and that work is lifeless without play.

Introduction Abstract: The introduction provides chapter summaries and a critical overview of scholarship of St. Joseph in art historical, literary, and religious studies. These have offered two very different and conflicting interpretations with respect to the presence and role of humor in religious art and practice, both of which perceive humor as the antithesis to ‘high’ veneration and theology – a notion that the book challenges. The introduction also provides the methodological framework behind the book’s goal: to move beyond humor’s relegation to the margins of medieval art, or to the profane arts alone, revealing the centrality and functions of humor and satire in altarpieces, devotional art, and veneration of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Key Words: Saint Joseph, humor, veneration, theology, devotional art

A saint rife with paradox, and the seemingly antithetical combination of satire and devotion, guides this study of humor in devotional and ecclesiastical art made between c. 1300 and 1550. Frequently the butt of medieval jokes as the quintessential cuckold, yet simultaneously admired for his familial piety, Joseph of Nazareth became a venerated figure made powerful not merely by the endorsement of the Church, but equally, rendered potent by the humor integral to the saint in popular thought. From the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, depictions of Joseph in various media attest to the humorous and bawdy as inextricable facets of the saint’s cult, even as he came to be taken more seriously as an object of devotion. Relying on extant plays, legends, tales, hymns, devotional manuals, jokes, and rhetorical theories of humor, as well as satirical paintings and prints, the following chapters explore the beneficial role of what could be called devotional humor in establishing St. Joseph as an exemplar in Germany, the Low Countries, eastern France, and northern Italy. In this regard, they reconcile two strands of interpretation that have polarized the saint into distinct early and late manifestations, one comical and derogatory, and the other sanctified and idealized. Scholarship on St. Joseph’s pre-Reformation representation has offered two very different and conflicting interpretations with respect to humor. One strand acknowledges the frequent presence of humor in the saint’s depictions but interprets this presence as indicative of the saint’s derision exclusively, concluding that such

Williams, Anne L., Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789462983748_intro

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representations could not be symptomatic of his veneration. The opposing camp has made the important case for the strength of Joseph’s cult in western Europe as early as the fourteenth century, but in doing so, attempts to sanitize any problematically comical depictions of the saint. In all studies on St. Joseph to date, ‘low,’ profane humor is therefore perceived as the antithesis to ‘high’ veneration and theology, a concept rooted in the scholarship of Erwin Panofsky.1 But, as this study indicates, rather than negating the theological richness or complexity of many works, humor and satire often reinforced such sacred meanings instead. Of course, depictions of Joseph were not always meant to be humorous; there exist many examples from this period that appear fully sober in message. This study proposes several reasons behind – and functions of – late medieval and Renaissance religious humor in an attempt to encourage a more nuanced method of interpretation that moves beyond the relegation of humor to the margins: one that acknowledges the presence, and often the centrality, of humor in religious scenes, as well as the importance of play for the making and experience of images. While addressing the various ways in which humor influenced the making of religious works, it investigates how laughter, humor, and satire could be appropriate to late medieval and Renaissance veneration – how laughter could be a form of veneration itself. One of the desired benefits of a deeper understanding of Joseph’s humor is an ability to see and to accurately interpret humor and wit in other examples of sacred art. Sacred humor is a phenomenon that is often concealed from the twenty-first-century eye. Our difficulty in acknowledging that the devout could have revered a saint that they sometimes ridiculed stems quite understandably from our familiarity with today’s more sober understandings of the saints, which rose out of the Counter-­ ­Reformation. It is also inextricably tied to the present, and to questions of freedom of speech that we are currently unraveling: should there be limits to freedom of expression regarding religion, as Pope Francis stated on 15 January 2015? What is the value of satire in any culture, particularly with respect to the dignity of religion – one’s own and that of others? Because of the seminal work of scholars like Michael Camille and Lilian Randall on medieval play within the margins of devotional books and churches, the concept of play in a medieval sacred context is not totally unknown in academic discourse.2 1 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 1: 164. See also Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 82, 226; Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel, 55; Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 73; Réau, ‘Joseph,’ in Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3: 752–755; Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, 194–196; Butler’s Lives of the Saints, 3: 185–186; Foster, ‘Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art,’ 249; Vasvari, ‘Joseph on the Margin,’ 168. 2 Michael Camille revealed for us this interaction of the margins with the center, not just in terms of their meaning, as Lilian Randall has successfully accomplished, but with respect to the margin’s function in conveying meaning for the whole. Camille, Image on the Edge, 10; Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts; Randall, ‘Games and the Passion.’

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Humor has also been explored as a product of High Renaissance humanism in Italian art, but not explained as a product of an artwork’s devotional or liturgical purposes.3 To acknowledge the centrality of humor, bawdiness, satire, derision, and play within the center of an altarpiece used for devotion or liturgical celebration might require that we relinquish preconceived notions of distinctions between ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern,’ or ‘pre-modern’ and ‘Renaissance’ culture. This is especially true for this book’s discussions of satire, a term for which there are ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ definitions, which are often clearly partitioned and contrasted with one another. Such definitions are frequently negated by the nuances of humor and satire in Joseph’s depictions; a definition of satire as insider’s laughter at the outsider, for example, does not quite encompass or explain the nature of a satirized Joseph in a religious narrative. To avoid an interpretation of satire that is too narrow, the book discusses its nature and purposes in a variety of forms and examples from the thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries. The rhetorical strategy of dissimulatio, which characterizes literary examples from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, is in many cases more useful in reconciling the derision and irony pervading images of sanctity than any existing definition of ‘medieval’ or ‘early modern’ satire; this is discussed especially in Chapter Three. Satire is a concept central to this book, however. For our purposes, although it does revolve around a criticism of vice with the goal of enacting awareness, it is also marked by inconsistency with respect to its message and its target; it is less pointed or cohesive than current definitions might suggest, in that it often refuses to take a side, seeming at times ‘neutral, detached, or cynical.’4 Satirical depictions of Joseph appear to operate along more nuanced, engaged lines, not merely presenting his behavior as either right or wrong, but rather as reflective of a spectrum of concerns to be internalized. Such images challenge interpretations of Renaissance satire as expressing a ‘firm commitment to positive values contrary to the negative values it mocks,’5 for negativity, positivity, and culpability overlap across a thin line. For example, while many of his images uphold ideals espoused in contemporary sermons, they may simultaneously subvert these same ideals for their slippage into vice. This is discussed particularly in Chapter Four, which addresses the issue of the ‘miserly Joseph’ in the burgeoning profit economy. For this study, the typical periodization of history is therefore both useful and irrelevant. The time period covered in this book – c. 1300 to 1550 – certainly complicates our desire for neat periodization of the phenomenon of Josephine humor, but in the following chapters of this book, I will use the term ‘early modern’ to refer to this period bridging the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It can be said that such humor 3 Barolsky, Infinite Jest; Alberti, La peinture facétieuse. 4 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 72. 5 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 72.

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disappears altogether from Catholic art after the rise of the Reformation, when laughter and derision toward a saint become antagonistic toward Catholic devotion itself. But the rise of Joseph’s humor, as we will see, in fact corresponds clearly to the twelfth-century rise of Marian devotion and Joseph’s own concomitant rise in popularity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as suggested in Chapter One. Clear divisions between lay and clerical cultures, and their Bakhtinian equations to ‘folk’ and ‘elite,’ or ‘low’ and ‘high’ cultures, persist in art historical scholarship; these are questioned in this study.6 ‘Popular’ culture – meaning a culture not only associated with the ‘lower’ classes but also with the many who do not belong to the highest political or religious leadership of western Europe – serves as the focus instead.7 In looking beyond papally endorsed doctrine alone, the goal is to reclaim a history of devotion occluded by the historian’s necessary reliance on the theological doctrine proscribed and recorded by those in power. Scholarship on Joseph’s rise through the efforts of the ecclesiastical elite alone has created an image of a saint, who, throughout most of the Middle Ages, was viewed as a solely subordinate and comical figure. But the depictions that angered the French theologian Jean Gerson (1363–1429) for their characterization of the saint as a doddering old fool are perhaps evidence not of deprecation alone, but rather a celebration of the comedy of his circumstances, and even a form of veneration as well.8 Because Gerson attempted to suppress this cultural production by relegating it to the realm of the ‘sacrilegious’, the flowering of Joseph’s cult is thought not have occurred until the late fifteenth century,9 and only then as a result of the efforts of Gerson’s earliest theological texts in praise of the saint, requesting the establishment of the Feast of the Engagement of Joseph at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). Outside of the official lines of discourse, however, as we will see, Joseph’s cult probably had a strong lay and clerical following by the early thirteenth century, the approximate date of the appearance 6 Mikhail Bakhtin’s influential Rabelais and His World qualified the laughter of the carnivalesque, the ‘World Upside Down’, and the grotesque of the medieval festival as the ‘low’ popular cultural sphere of the common lay folk who were allegedly rebelling against the ‘high’ official culture of the dominant Church and state. The lower class’s employment of humor, parody, and folklore supposedly fortified them with strategies of resistance to the ‘norm’ imposed from above. According to Bakhtin, the propensity of the lower classes for the scatological is an example particularly of the desire to rebel against the upper class’s desired decorum. Bakhtin understood carnival behavior as an expression of medieval popular culture, which he equated with a culture of laughter. The source of carnival was, to him, the desire of ‘popular culture’, or the lower classes, to invert sociopolitical reality in a culture supposedly dominated and strictly restricted by the Church (and its associated educated classes) who suppressed laughter. In fact, however, reversal and transgression appear to have permeated the festal behavior and humor of the clerical and lay higher and lower orders. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 96, 368–436; Gurevich, ‘Bakhtin and His Theory of Carnival,’ 57. 7 Jaritz, ‘Bildquellen zur mittelalterlichen Volksfrömmigkeit,’ 206; Schindler, ‘Spuren in die Geschichte der “anderen” Zivilisation,’ 23–24, 53, 74–77; Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, XI. 8 Glorieux, ‘Saint Joseph dans l’oeuvre de Gerson,’ 423–425; Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, 46. 9 Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother,’ 104; Filas, Joseph, 495.

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of the saint’s most important relic at Aachen Cathedral: the Hosen of the saint, variously translated in text and image as stockings, pants, or boots, and believed to have been the swaddling clothes of Christ.10 Popular art, texts, practices, and beliefs not only reveal the strength of Joseph’s cult as early as the thirteenth century, but also encourage us to reconsider the power and purposes of late medieval humor for laity and clergy alike. An approach based upon Erwin Panofsky’s principles of iconographic and iconological interpretation is necessary to understand Joseph’s humor in art,11 but it is important to avoid interpretations of Renaissance art as solely visualizing the theologically complex, oriented toward the intellectual and aesthetical elite. In this study, interpretations that consider popular productions and beliefs do not, I argue, actually counter the theological richness of many works, but rather amplify it. In an art historical field turned toward materials, an iconographic approach could never be more old-fashioned; and yet I strongly believe that this method is still foundational to understanding how images structured their beholders’ experiences – and this could not be more necessary or appropriate for shedding light on our understanding of humor in sacred art. Of course, translating the jokes and functions of humor in religious scenes necessitates iconographic analyses. But most importantly, in this book, an old-fashioned tool serves a new and all-important purpose – negating the typical iconographic analysis’s privileging of theological discourse over popular beliefs and practices, and revealing a union of satire and devotion that was at times central to the late medieval experience of Joseph and of the sacred image. In planning the layout this book, the idea of chapters on individual cities and religious centers was highly appealing. But a book about humor in Joseph’s depictions necessitates a focus on this phenomenon’s various manifestations, translating the humor therein, and articulating humor’s possible functions with respect to such manifestations. Most important, although perhaps not surprising, is the fact that early modern artists from Antwerp and Hamburg to Siena were apparently familiar with similar iconographic types for Joseph and adapted these to serve their own socio-religious contexts. The wide geographical spread of similar motifs may be explained in part by the spread of legends, plays, and pilgrimage which also demonstrate that a tradition of Josephine humor dating as early as the thirteenth century was not unique to the north.12 Indeed, the popularity of specific plays and legends regarding Joseph throughout western Europe, coupled with the movements of people on the trade and pilgrimage routes between Rome and the north, provides an

10 Demand et al., Kleiner Wegweiser durch die Domschatzkammer Aachen, 42. 11 Panofsky, Studies in Iconology; Panofsky, ‘Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.’ 12 Siena particularly was connected to the north on the trade and pilgrimage routes to Rome. See Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages, 43–49.

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important context for the appearance of similar depictions of the saint both north and south of the Alps.13 Chapter One begins with a discussion of the earliest manifestations of Joseph’s cult in art. Based on a reevaluation of the Panofskian understanding of his humor, it proposes that these manifestations appeared sooner than prior scholarship has suggested. A psalter from Freiburg, a Parisian set of ivories, and Chartres Cathedral’s jubé, all from the thirteenth century, celebrate Joseph’s cult and his most important relic, as well as its associated legend, which tells of Joseph’s loss of his stockings for a very munificent purpose. This legend and surviving cradle-rocking plays are then linked to one of the earliest preserved altarpieces depicting the strength, and the humor, of Joseph’s cult, the Hamburg Petri-Altar of c. 1383 by Meister Bertram. In this work, theology and humor are intertwined. This reconciliation of seemingly opposing concepts in a high altarpiece used for liturgical celebration sets the stage for the subsequent chapters’ discussions of ridicule and reverence in other works. The humor of the ‘domestic’ Joseph who cooks, dries diapers, washes, and swaddles the baby in northern art is connected to the appearance of similar iconography in trecento Italian art. Laughter and religious practice were interconnected throughout the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, as Chapter Two demonstrates. This chapter reveals the extensive visual puns and tropes that exist in Josephine imagery by placing them within the context of contemporary secular satire and comedy, particularly that of the fool, peasant, henpecked husband, and unequal couple. Analogies are drawn to profane prints, paintings, and tales addressing these themes. Buttressed by Chapter One, Chapter Two begins the book’s examination of the nature, power, and purposes of early modern humor, as well as its relationship to the sacred. The laughter that images of Joseph as a doddering, old, and unfortunately chaste father could elicit was in fact rooted in the reinforcement of socially advantageous values emphasizing the importance of fidelity and childcare for actual fathers. Such images probably also facilitated a communion with the Holy Family in its most humanized form, a trend and concern documented by contemporary devotional manuals. Humor, like illusionism in sacred images of the early Renaissance, may have served to familiarize the holy to the devotee desiring to experience the divine in human terms, much like the sexualization, or maternalization, of Christ in art.14 Religious satire may be 13 See also Ladis, ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’ Work remains to be done on the use of humor in devotional and liturgical art of trecento Italy. Studies on Joseph’s cult in Italy have rightfully focused on reclaiming a history of early devotion to the saint, but in doing so they, like Panofsky, assume that humor was antithetical to the saint’s devotion. Any possible hints of derision or humor are therefore ignored or sanitized, as they are perceived to be antithetical to the cause. As a result, many risible Josephs in Italian liturgical and devotional art remain unstudied and unpublished, probably in part due to their perceived deviation from more ‘appropriate’ venerable images. See Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, 66. 14 See Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ; Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ’; Bynum, Jesus as Mother.

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understood as well as an outgrowth of the ‘World Upside Down’ model that flourished within the aristocratic circles of the High Middle Ages. This is a phenomenon traditionally understood as an exclusively secular form of humor in which the satire of traditional sex roles, chivalric attitudes, or the clergy could occur only in circumstances in which the status quo was not actually questioned. This chapter argues that satirizing Joseph’s old age, virginity, cuckoldry by God, and incomplete understanding of the significance of Christ’s birth did not undermine the saint’s veneration because these very qualities in question were considered doctrinally necessary; they ensured Mary’s purity, for example. Laughing at St. Joseph could become equivalent to reinstating his important theological role, and in itself, therefore, a form of veneration. Another explanation for humor’s centrality in late medieval and Renaissance religious imagery of Joseph rests upon classical, early Christian, and medieval rhetorical theories of humor and laughter, the basis of Chapter Three. Such theories were available in the early 1300s in treatises on poetics and in the Latin discourse on rhetoric and emphasize the role of humor in the construction of urbanitas – for the patron, the audience, and as this chapter suggests, perhaps even the artist. The concept of dissimulatio is particularly useful for understanding inconsistencies between ridicule and reverence in art. The paradox created between the two is not irreconcilable; the definition of irony as two valid meanings existing equally and in contradiction does not apply here. It is a kind of paradox that is rooted in the many varieties of ancient Greek irony and is most reminiscent of Socratic irony. Joseph’s derision may be understood as a kind of inversion of an ironic paradoxical encomium; rather than blaming through praise, derision is used ultimately in a kind of veneration through laughter. This, as well as the courtly ideals rooted in concepts of estrangeté and the gift economy, is a phenomenon that might explain the presence of humor in sacred works fabricated for the courtois-oriented nobility (like Philip the Bold’s Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych, c. 1400) and newly flourishing bourgeoisie in centers of humanist and proto-humanist discourse. Josephine humor is contextualized particularly through the tradition of the sermo humilis, which grounds the rhetorical use of the ‘low’ or ‘plain’ style, incorporating humor and jokes as rhetorical devices, in an extensive tradition of Christian humility and humor in sermons and literature, including the Gospels themselves, that, I argue, gave rise to a kind of analogous imago humilis. Chapter Three also discusses a rhetorical trend of humor and wit in depictions of different saints with their attributes, as in the Master of the Little Garden of Paradise’s devotional panel of c. 1400. Finally, the presence of humor in altarpieces painted by members of the clergy reveals that play in religious art cannot be explained by citing the concerns of the laity alone. Following on the conclusions of Chapter Three, Chapter Four discusses the multivalent image, particularly the altarpiece, which could convey multiple meanings for laity and clergy alike, speaking to lay fathers and spiritual fathers at once. Once again,

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this understanding allows us to reconcile prior categorizations of Joseph’s depictions as either entirely derogatory or purely sober in message. A multiplicity of meanings is conveyed by versions of the Adoration of the Magi that depict Joseph as the family treasurer – in line with sermons on the successful behavior of the early modern urban paterfamilias (like those of the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena, 1380–1444) – yet often bordering on miserly keeper or ogler of material goods. According Joseph the roles of both comical miser and responsible caretaker, these images were proponents of successful behavior in an early modern urban money economy, but they were also redolent of medieval notions of the ‘avaricious Jew’, appropriately tying Joseph to the Old Law. Some may have also carried an undercurrent of pre-Reformation subversion rooted in contemporary satires of the Church’s greed, a medieval tradition that came to a head around 1500. While upholding Bernardine ideals (buttressed by the writings of earlier Church Fathers) of ideal nuclear paternity, the multivalent St. Joseph may simultaneously subvert these same ideals for their slippage into avarice, a problem of particular social relevance to pre-Reformation church practices based on the exchange of money. The ability of late medieval and Renaissance depictions of St. Joseph to convey seemingly conflicting messages at once, satirizing the saint’s greed yet celebrating his important theological and societal role as treasurer, is contextualized within forms of satire that are less rooted in the pointed, cohesive messages of modernity. Like the marginalia of earlier medieval art, the power of Joseph’s satire, central to many scenes, lies in its ability to subvert institutional ideals even while supporting that same institution’s most important doctrinal messages.

Ridicule or Reverence? A History of Scholarship on St. Joseph Joseph’s veneration ascended in the twelfth century, alongside a contemporaneous increase in devotion to the Virgin Mary. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) provides one of the earliest expositions on Joseph’s importance in his Advent Homily on the Missus Est, extolling the saint’s virtues as a descendant of the house of David and protector/nourisher of Christ.15 One of the earliest theological texts in praise of the saint was written in the fifteenth century by Jean Gerson, who also composed a Latin poem of 3,000 verses entitled Josephina, requesting the establishment of the Feast of the Engagement of Joseph at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). In 1489, Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) composed a treatise entitled De Laudibus S. Josephi.16 The campaigns of these late medieval theologians, including Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly (1351– 1420), finally culminated in the official ecclesiastical establishment of the saint’s cult in 1479, with the introduction of Joseph’s feast day on 19 March into the liturgy of 15 Bernard of Clairvaux, Laudibus virginis Mariae, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, 4: 63–64. 16 Réau, ‘Joseph.’

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the Catholic Church under the Franciscan pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484). The feast was not fully authorized for the Universal Church, however, until the sixteenth century.17 By the end of the seventeenth century, Joseph had become one of the most venerated saints of the Catholic Church.18 However, scholarship of Joseph’s rise through the efforts of ecclesiasts alone has created an image of a saint who, throughout most of the Middle Ages, was viewed as a solely subordinate and comical figure, often ignorant of the significance of the birth of Christ. His old age and diminution to the role of the simple ‘extra’ in the Bible and in theological writings ensured that he could not be mistaken as anything more than Christ’s foster-father.19 This work relies upon the groundbreaking scholarship of a number of authors who have contributed significantly to the field of Joseph studies. Carolyn C. Wilson has revealed that Joseph was taken seriously as an object of veneration even as early as the thirteenth century in some Italian towns,20 while modern-day theologians like Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., and historians like Paul Payan have unveiled the theological discourse underlying the saint’s rise in the eyes of the Catholic Church before the official introduction of his feast in the late fifteenth century. Before the work of these scholars, our understanding of Joseph’s history rested upon a pre-sixteenth-century image of the saint that is mostly derided for his age, simplicity, and care for a child by his wife that is most certainly not his own. An important contribution to studies of Joseph, particularly for art historical studies, is Sheila Schwartz’s dissertation, completed in 1975, which documents the rise in popularity of the apocryphal account of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt and its manifestations in art. The Rest on the Flight is an event from the eighth-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, ignored by theological commentators for its ‘heretical’ origin but frequently mixed with other Apocrypha and vernacular accounts including legends and folk tales, as well as excerpts from the Golden Legend and the Bible. While mystics devoted to Christ’s humanity like Pseudo-Bonaventura (the anonymous author(s) of the Meditationes de Vita Christi, c. 1300 or 1346–1364),21 Ludolph of Saxony (c. 1300–1378), Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471), and St. Bernard of Clairvaux used apocryphal material for their intimate accounts of Christ’s family life, the miracles performed by the infant Christ in the account of the Rest on the Flight caused them to ignore the narrative. Despite their occasional ‘magical’ accounts, the New

17 Rodrigues, ed., Butler’s Lives of the Saints, 185–186. 18 Dusserre, Les origines de la dévotion à Saint Joseph, 1: 23–54, 169–196, 2: 5–30; A.C., ‘Le développement historique du Culte de Saint Joseph,’ 104–114, 145–155, 203–209. 19 Réau, ‘Joseph.’ 20 Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art. 21 Typically attributed to the anonymous ‘Pseudo-Bonaventure’, the text has been ascribed specifically to Giovanni de Caulibus de Sancto Gemeniano. Recent work dates it between 1346 and 1364. See McNamer, ‘Further Evidence for the Date of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi’; McNamer, ‘The Origins of the Meditationes vitae Christi’; McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion.

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Testament Apocrypha were mainly popularized due to their educational function for the wider public, particularly the growing ‘middle’ classes, and were therefore used frequently by Dominicans and Franciscans in their sermons. The appearance of Bible translations in the thirteenth century, prompted initially by Beghard and Beguine devotion, as well as the emergence of secular romances and epics in the mid-twelfth century, probably facilitated their popularization.22 The Rest on the Flight into Egypt offered a unique artistic opportunity to depict St. Joseph as an integral member of the Holy Family, and sometimes very prominently as its sole head and provider. The subject first appeared in manuscript illuminations of the second quarter of the fourteenth century, but only attained its complete, autonomous popularity outside of the larger biblical and apocryphal narrative in the sixteenth century, when it became a single focus of altarpieces, particularly in Italy. Meister Bertram’s Hamburg Petri-Altar, completed in 1383, is thought to mark a turning point in the scene’s iconographic significance. Schwartz suggests that this earliest known appearance of the Rest on a major altarpiece came about from a desire to represent St. Joseph as nutritor Domini, the caretaker and nourisher of Jesus, and that the image’s prominent placement of the saint documents a significant rise in popularity of St. Joseph’s cult. Joseph appears first in the Nativity scene, handing the child to the Virgin, which Schwartz interprets as a theological demonstration of the saint’s importance as the protector of Christ and Mary, ‘a rare alteration of the traditional Nativity iconography, where his role is normally peripheral,’ and thus an early manifestation of the saint’s status in art.23 Similar depictions of the saint passing the Christ child to Mary at the Nativity are found in a group of about a dozen ivories dating as early as c. 1275 from Paris, in a psalter from Freiburg dated c. 1200, and on Chartres Cathedral’s jubé, recently dated to around 1230 or earlier, all discussed in Chapter One. Whether this motif originated in devotional writings, or whether the motif itself inspired such texts, is unclear and merits reevaluation with respect to Joseph’s most important relic, his Hosen, which became the swaddling clothes of the baby Jesus. The presence of a more positive image of Joseph in northern art as early as c. 1200 is suggestive of the already strong presence of his cult that actually pre-dates references to his paternal role in extant devotional literature (including the Vita Christi of 1374 by the Carthusian Ludolph of Saxony, the Franciscan Meditationes de Vita Christi of c. 1300 or 1346–1364, and Thomas à Kempis’s De Imitatione Christi of c. 1418–1427). Although Joseph’s feast day was not made official until the late fifteenth century, it may be found in calendars of

22 Schwartz suggests that secular romances and epics ultimately had a significant impact on the illustration and reception of the apocryphal texts. Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 8–19; Hugh of St. Victor condemned the Apocrypha in his Didascalicon, IV, 7 and IV, 15; see Taylor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor, 107–116. 23 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 47.

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orders and churches and in martyrologies from as early as the ninth century through the fifteenth.24 Schwartz’s well-founded argument to establish the Petri-Altar’s St. Joseph as a representation of the saint’s theological significance and veneration is made at the expense of a strong contemporary vernacular tradition that pokes fun at the saint’s shortcomings, however. This is certainly not to say that her arguments are invalid; rather, after a detailed consideration of the scope of Joseph’s iconography, the belief that the saint’s derision operated separately from his veneration appears to be incorrect. The two were not mutually exclusive, particularly in the towns and cities of northern Europe, in which literature and drama frequently intertwined the sacred and the base. Medieval religious drama was inspired particularly by the literary genre of the fabliaux, tailored to a rising bourgeoisie, in which the base and the comical infused stories of mischief and trickery. The trope of the cuckolded, foolish old husband became combined with the story of Joseph’s Doubt, presented in plays like the Trial of Joseph and Mary from the English Ludus Coventriae cycle, as well as German cradle-rocking plays. The cuckolded and bumbling version of the saint as a figure of comic relief appears to have continued in popular thought, even as his veneration ascended. Conrad von Soest’s Wildunger Altar in Bad Wildungen, which Schwartz argues ‘disproves a demeaning intent in the artist’s presentation of Joseph, for in the [Adoration] scene, Joseph stands reverently behind the Virgin as the Magi adore the Child,’ itself demonstrates the possibility for Joseph to appear a humorous, beloved, and venerated saint all at once on a high altarpiece.25 Joseph’s humble depiction in the Nativity scene (Plate 2) – crouching on all fours before a cooking pot – is probably not a humble enactment of Byzantine proskynesis.26 The most detailed iconographic examination of St. Joseph in Netherlandish art, Marjory Bolger Foster’s dissertation completed in 1978, includes such humorous depictions among her catalogue but attempts to sanitize them of disrespectful or sacrilegious interpretations, characterizing Joseph as ‘a well-meaning old fellow whose understanding of events in which he is involved is limited.’27 These arguments, although supported by theological texts, discount the broader context of popular, and often satirical, literature and art – ‘secular’ forms of cultural production that infiltrated religious activities and productions as well. Schwartz concedes that Joseph functioned as a base figure of ridicule in German Nativity plays; but the assertion that such ‘coarse entertainment for the lower classes that flourished in the absence of a strong ecclesiastical authority […] exerted no influence 24 Bonaño, ‘San José en los calendarios y martirologios hasta el siglo XV inclusive’; Barth, Die Verehrung des heiligen Josef im Elsass, 38–40; Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 13. 25 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 65. 26 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 66. 27 Foster, ‘Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art,’ 249; Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2: pl. 103, no. 82.

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upon the higher levels of literature and art’28 is probably incorrect, as this study con�� tends. Recent research into Joseph’s function in the plays, examined in the following chapter, discounts the assumption that Joseph was solely a figure of comic relief in them, and scholarship of the plays themselves reveals that they were presented by lay actors in townhouses or in churches and were directed by laymen of the local parish, often for an audience that included elite members of society.29 Furthermore, the humor of such plays and their associated legends appears as well in two works commissioned for the Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold (1342–1404), discussed in Chapters One and Two. Schwartz’s research into ecclesiastical thought relevant to the veneration of St. Joseph, as well as the work of Brigitte Heublein and Paul Payan, provides a seminal basis for this study. Heublein’s book on the ‘misunderstood’ Joseph, Der ‘verkannte’ Joseph: Zur mittelalterlichen Ikonographie des Heiligen im deutschen und niederländischen Kulturraum, provides an excellent documentation of the origins of Joseph’s northern medieval iconography, particularly that which evokes the importance of his biblical dreams, in the iconography of antiquity. She notes the ambiguity of Joseph’s characterization in the Bible, the Apocrypha, and theological writings, but minimizes remnants of Joseph’s ironic or ‘bad image’30 as a miser or bumbling care giver. Paul Payan, too, describes Joseph’s doddering behavior in literature and art as at most evidence of his being ‘humble’ – ‘un peu inquiet et peut-être un peu triste de ne pas avoir pu assurer le confort de sa famillie.’31 Payan writes a comprehensive history of Joseph’s conceptualization in church doctrine and devotion as the epitome of fatherhood, to become the intercessor for the well-being of the medieval family and the Church at large. The theological and ecclesiastical motivations behind Joseph’s rise in veneration are documented extensively in an entire series of journals published by the research center of St. Joseph’s Oratory of Montreal, the Cahiers de Joséphologie, which itself forms the unparalleled backbone of these and all Joseph studies, as its contributors vary from contemporary theologians and priests to scholars of history, religion, and art. One of the most notable contributors to the history of Joseph studies is Joseph F. Chorpenning, who charts the history of the veneration of St. Joseph with remarkable detail, albeit emphasizing the writings of theologians as the hegemonic discourse. Chorpenning, as well as a number of authors in his most recent edited volume, Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries, writes on the theological importance of St. Joseph for the changing characteristics of the late medieval family, a 28 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 84. 29 Schmidt, ‘Formprobleme der deutschen Weihnachtsspiele,’ 11; Simon, ‘Das schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel,’ 47; Simon, ‘The Home Town of the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel,’ 316; Brauneck et al., Theaterstadt Hamburg, 17. 30 Heublein, Der ‘verkannte’ Joseph, 260. 31 Payan, Joseph, 388; Payan, ‘Ridicule?’

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study that invites more work on the socio-economic currents motivating such changes. Through the lens of ecclesiasts, popular piety toward the saint appears to have only truly flourished after the official introduction of St. Joseph’s feast at Rome in 1479 and the following increase in ecclesiastical literature on the saint in the sixteenth century. However, Gerson’s early campaigns were probably not merely in favor of ‘rescu[ing] St. Joseph from the relative neglect of earlier periods.’32 Gerson’s disapproval of Josephine humor does not suggest that Joseph’s cult had only a small following at that time; rather, it hints to the presence of a cult practice that was not to Gerson’s liking, as well as to his intent to correct ‘mistaken’ conceptions of the saint that had been fostered by the apocryphal Gospels, drama, and other more popular forms of literature and art. But these should be considered as an integral part of the saint’s cult, especially since they continued far into the sixteenth century, the period during which some of the most influential early modern ecclesiastical texts on the saint appeared. One of these texts is the Summa of the Gifts of Saint Joseph (Summa de donis S. Joseph) of 1522, published at Pavia by the Dominican friar Isidoro Isolano. This and other theological texts document a strong cult dedicated to St. Joseph in northern and central Italy, which Carolyn C. Wilson, in St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, has shown existed in more than just localized form during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Isidoro praised St. Joseph as the ideal intercessor as champion of the Church Militant and the restorer of peace in Italy, in response to the crises of plague, invasion, and attacks that damaged the north particularly. Wilson’s research reveals that by 1522, churches, confraternities, and altars dedicated to St. Joseph had sprung up around northern and central Italy. In 1528, Parma adopted Joseph as its patron saint, while in 1521, Bologna was engaged in renewing the earliest known church dedicated to St. Joseph, its Benedictine church of San Giuseppe in Borgo Gallera, in existence by the twelfth century. Wilson’s book is primarily engaged with correcting a long-standing misconception in the history of scholarship that Joseph was primarily or exclusively a Counter-Reformation saint, seriously venerated only in later sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century Spain, France, and the New World.33 She demonstrates that intense cult activity existed in Italy before the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the event typically considered to mark the emergence of St. Joseph’s highest veneration. Her discussion of northern images attempts to cleanse Joseph of his humor, however, stressing the necessity of rethinking ‘any modern assumption of an artist’s intent to ridicule Joseph in scenes that portray the saint cooking or performing other charitable and parental acts.’34 32 Chorpenning, Sermon Texts on Saint Joseph by Francis de Sales, 27. 33 An excellent documentation of the rise of St. Joseph’s cult in seventeenth-century Spain is Black, Creating the Cult of St. Joseph. 34 Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, 66.

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Scholars like Wilson and Schwartz have contributed an important corrective to interpretations of Joseph’s depiction and cult that focused exclusively on his derision. Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages, first published in English in 1924, contends that the late fourteenth and fifteenth-century veneration of the saint was more ‘subject to the influences of popular fancy rather than of theology.’35 Hui­ zinga includes three poems that he interprets as entirely irreverent towards the saint, characterizing him as ridiculous and foolish. Louis Réau likewise falls into the trap of total derision, claiming that the verses of the French poet Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) indicate that Joseph, le rassoté (‘the fool or the weary’), had little respect in the late Middle Ages.36 Peter Burke states that a major change in the way Joseph was perceived only took place in the seventeenth century, with the saint marginally significant until then.37 Ruth Mellinkoff’s Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages likewise interprets Joseph’s iconography as solely derisive and comical.38 The arguments of this study align most closely with interpretations of Joseph’s character in art and literature by Cynthia Hahn and Pamela Sheingorn, as well as two essays by Louise Vasvari and Francesca Alberti, addressed in Chapter Three. Although Hahn and Sheingorn acknowledge an inherent duality, ambiguity, or ‘bricolage’ in Joseph’s late medieval artistic and literary manifestations, they tend to interpret these as distinct characteristics, the ‘juxtaposition of fragments whose edges cannot be smoothed,’39 or ‘mutually exclusive roles. In some Gothic representations he was depicted as an old, tired buffoon, a butt of jokes. Alternatively, he was conceived of as the hard-working foster-father of Christ, the worthy companion and helpmate to Mary, and the strong, capable head of his household.’40 The following chapters argue that both characterizations are true with respect to Joseph’s depiction in late medieval and Renaissance art, but that these seemingly disparate roles are not at all mutually exclusive in many artistic examples.41

35 Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, 168. 36 Réau, ‘Joseph,’ 754. 37 Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. 38 As does Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel; Mellinkoff, Outcasts. 39 Sheingorn, ‘Constructing the Patriarchal Parent,’ 171. 40 Hahn, ‘The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych,’ 55. 41 More recent scholarship of medieval drama, like that of Stephen Wright in the field of German drama and V.A. Kolve in the field of English literature, see Joseph’s two facets as evidence of his relatable function as the ‘natural man,’ allowing for the possibility that comedy and exemplarity could overlap. See Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope’; Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi, 247.

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Sanctity, Humor, and the Gap between Material Reality and Religious ­Experience The multivalent scope of Joseph’s iconography, contextualized within popular practices and beliefs, reveals much about Joseph’s function as an exemplar, whether playfully derided or venerated in the most sober of circumstances. What the image contains was probably less important to the period viewer than how the image structured the viewer’s experience of sanctity – how humor, for example, closed the gap between material and vision. This is an approach that also seems appropriate within the purview of the general decline of Scholasticism’s influence. Craig Harbison notes (I believe correctly): No surviving literary sources from the fifteenth century suggest that the ordinary lay viewer or patron was unusually concerned with the religious subject matter and [theological] symbolism of a visual image […] none of these documents [of works for public locations or monasteries] indicate that the specific theological meaning or symbolism of the many details found in these works was as minutely predetermined as modern scholars have at times supposed.42

James Marrow also contradicts the common assumption that the presentation of symbolic meaning through recondite symbols was considered the most important artistic achievement of fourteenth and fifteenth-century art. Period discussions of devotional works of art in fact focus on how an image works in relation to the beholder, rather than what it depicts specifically. Narratives of Christ’s life and devotional handbooks reveal this shift in interest from the theologically recondite to personal practice, particularly in visualizing one’s own personal response to religious events.43 As early as 1965, Sixten Ringbom related this visionary tendency in the late medieval religious experience to images, arguing that such experiences sought primarily to commune, in a very visceral and direct manner, with Christ and the saints in their most humanized form. From about 1450 to 1550 especially, Andachtsbilder, images like the Virgo lactans that have been isolated from a narrative in order to convey the emotional core of the story, were increasingly portrayed with added anecdotal and genre-like motifs. According to Ringbom, these changes were the result of a desire to make static images like that of the Virgin and Child more emotionally accessible to late medieval viewers. Another way that this was accomplished was through increased interest and skill in depicting physiognomy and a sense of the subject’s psychological interior. Fifteenth-century Italian theorists like Leon Battista Alberti discussed solutions to this problem – for example, how the painter could distinguish 42 Harbison, ‘Iconography and Iconology,’ 380. 43 Marrow, ‘Symbol and Meaning,’ 150–169.

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between laughter and crying – but the Italians admired northern painters most of all for their practical solutions to rendering the intimate details of an emotional response.44 The humanization of Joseph, even in his most playful or bawdy forms, is thus perhaps directly symptomatic of this desire for direct contact with the Heavenly Family. Artistic forms could stimulate this sense of personal engagement in a number of ways. Depictions of emotional and gestural responses to such events as the Passion of Christ encouraged a similar response in the viewer, while illusionistic art – that which could ‘eradicate or deny the distinction between the painted image and that which it represents’45 – served the important purpose of establishing a tangible connection between the beholder and the divine subject. In similar form, the direct iconic gaze of the divine subject of a work of art would not only stimulate a spiritual dialogue with the viewer but also admonish him to present an appropriate response. Devotional treatises like the Vita Christi, the Meditationes de Vita Christi, and De Imitatione Christi admonish their readers to react physically during their meditations upon the body of Christ, for example, and to experience Christ and the saints as viscerally as they possibly can.46 Depictions of the Holy Family thus facilitated this kind of devotion, inviting imitation of their actions. Theologians like St. Augustine (354–430), Pseudo-Dionysius (late fifth–early sixth century), St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Bonaventura (1221–1274) each expressed an interest in the meaningfulness of the image for spiritual meditation. In his treatise entitled On the four kinds of things on which one can meditate (De quatuor generibus meditabilium), Geert Grote (1340–1384), the founder of the Modern Devotion, writes that physical images are useful in experiencing one’s faith in the most human of terms, a kind of meditation that allows the worshipper to use his imagination to elaborate on the Bible. He writes that both St. Bernard and St. Bonaventura ‘taught that it is permissible in meditation to attribute more or different things to Christ’s earthly life than are actually found in the scriptures […] We may picture any event as though it occurred today.’47 Grote believed that this kind of ‘appropriation’ encouraged a proximity to Christ and the saints that aided in one’s spiritual salvation.48 At the very least, these images offered something akin to the longed-for experience of spiritual closeness with Christ and the saints, a foretaste of the unity with Christ and spiritual love experienced in the bliss of the afterlife.49 Mystics aimed while still on earth to achieve an experience of this same unity through the highest form of prayer, that of a physically experienced 44 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 50–51; Leon Battista Alberti, Trattato della pittura, 120; Bartholomaeus Facius, De viris illustribus, 49; Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, note 2. 45 Marrow, ‘Symbol and Meaning,’ 161. 46 Marrow, ‘Symbol and Meaning,’ 156–165. 47 Ridderbos, ‘Objects and Questions,’ 128–129. 48 Tolomio, Il Trattato ‘De quattuor generibus meditabilium,’ 56; Ridderbos, ‘Objects and Questions,’ 129. 49 Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion.

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yet passive unification with Christ. All of these variations in intensity of experience are what Sixten Ringbom describes as the ‘empathic approach’ to late medieval image theology, which is not guided by a need for edification or adoration alone, but by a ‘deep emotional experience.’50 Although theological symbolism was indeed crucial to a work of art used for private devotion or public veneration, the viewer’s experience of sanctity in art was not focused solely upon the search for ‘concealed’ theological complexity. Much of the symbolism that is so recondite to the modern viewer was in fact common knowledge for the late medieval laity, varying, of course, according to their social standing and associated level of education.51 Historical analyses of late medieval religious life indicate that the laity were more interested in trying ‘to “see” the consecrated host as a vision of the Christ Child, and going on both real and imaginary pilgrimages and processions, mingling superstition and personal desires with more officially recognized activities.’52 Through its attention to anecdotal detail and naturalism, the Vita Christi literature indicates that the reader was meant to follow Christ on a pilgrimage through life. Reindert Falkenburg connects these themes with late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century paintings that are intended to aid in one’s meditation upon this pilgrimage. Travel motifs including the walking stick, basket, and pilgrim’s garb become popular especially in images of the Flight into Egypt or the Rest on the Flight, while Joachim Patinir’s worldview landscape offered a path for the imagination to go on pilgrimage within the world of Christ’s infancy.53 The agency of viewing such images in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance becomes clearer with an understanding of contemporary theories of vision, which accorded a very active role to the eye in the process of seeing.54 According to medieval theories of sight espoused by Alhazen (965–1040), John Pecham (d. 1292), and Roger Bacon (1214–1294), which continued to influence Renaissance thought, the act of seeing implied the eye’s taking an imprint of the thing seen.55 This intimates that the viewers of a work of art would engage in a very active and personal discourse with the figures and things represented. Michael Camille reminded us that, ‘Whether one followed the theory of extromission, which involved the eye sending out rays in order to see, or intromission, which described the object as sending rays to the eye, vision was a far more active and dangerous sense than it is for us today.’56 50 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 12. 51 Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, xv. 52 Harbison, ‘Iconography and Iconology,’ 401; Toussaert, Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du MoyenÂge. 53 Falkenburg, Joachim Patinir. 54 Jacquemart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, 144–145; Camille, ‘Obscenity under Erasure,’ 143. 55 Lindberg, ‘Alhazen’s Theory of Vision and Its Reception in the West’; Eastwood, ‘Alhazen, Leonardo, and Late Medieval Speculation on the Inversion of Images in the Eye.’ 56 Camille, ‘Obscenity under Erasure,’ 143.

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‘Seeing’ and experiencing the Holy Family’s journey during the Flight into Egypt, for example, were, therefore, one and the same. Images of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph could be experienced as if present within one’s own life. Late medieval images and artists were thus highly aware and encouraging of the beholder’s reaction. More public images, like altarpieces, engaged with a multiplicity of people and concerns. These operated not for the clergy alone, but for the laity as well, whose concerns were often the main impetus behind an altarpiece’s imagery, as Lynn Jacobs notes in her examination of the fabrication and marketing of south Netherlandish sculpted altarpieces. She writes that works executed for a church’s high altar were primarily used for and pertinent to the religious salvation of the congregation, while for the clergy, they served as props for the liturgy and as a form of religious propaganda.57 The humanization of Joseph, even in his most playful and bawdy forms, is perhaps directly symptomatic of this search for direct contact with the Heavenly Family. The desire for a deep emotional or affective experience in devotion might have easily extended to experiences of play and laughter. Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of ‘emotional communities’, which challenged Norbert Elias’s influential notion of the ‘civilizing process’, provides a useful analogy for understanding this early modern phenomenon.58 Rather than conceptualizing Joseph as a saint first derided and later venerated, casting humor in his art as a sign of an undeveloped cult, we should be able to perceive his cult’s flourishing as something much more complex. This study attempts to reconcile a long tradition of Joseph studies that has yet to fully come to terms with humor’s centrality and functions in religious imagery, primarily because we lack an understanding of the communities that bound veneration with humor. Evidence of such practices is scarce in ecclesiastical accounts, but the very fact that Gerson publicly disavowed art and plays that cast Joseph in a deprecatory light suggests that the phenomenon of the saint’s humor was strong, as does the visual and literary evidence examined here. Because of our distance from medieval and Renaissance humor, it can be exceedingly difficult to imagine a devotee laughing at and venerating a saint at once. But humor, laughter, play, and the religious experience should be conceptualized according to the cultures under study, and not today’s experiences. This does not mean, however, that the early modern intertwining of satire, play, emotions, and the sacred, in ways that sometimes defy modern logic and rationalization, cannot provide some small inspiration for approaching different ways of understanding contemporary issues. Even in today’s world, marked by tensions between sacred and secular lives, the concept of emotional communities is becoming a more relevant way of understanding human life, perhaps as a part of reason itself.

57 Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 17. 58 Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages; Elias, The Civilizing Process.

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As an exploration of the intersection of humor and veneration in sacred art, this study draws as well upon anthropological theories of humor and inversion, shaped by Mary Douglas and Mahadev Apte. It also employs Johan Huizinga’s thought-provoking study on the fundamental significance of play, an enduringly compelling analysis explaining one way that humor and sacrality could overlap. Mary Carruthers’s more recent The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages rightfully questions the notion of traditional scholarly conception of play in medieval cultures as morally deficient or inferior, irrelevant for ‘serious people like clerics.’59 She argues rather that medieval arts were ‘composed and experienced on the model of classical rhetoric’60 and that ‘it is to rhetoric and not theology that one should go first to understand its character.’61 Paul Binski’s chapter in Gothic Wonder on the pleasure of play in medieval marginalia similarly cautions against such problematically binary thinking, arguing that in fact, ‘the culture of marginalia originated in, and shared many quite well-documented features of, high clerical and Latinate culture.’62 These are compelling notions that inform Chapter Three of this book. Work on medieval play in the margins provides an inspirational and important foundation for the aim of this book: to explore the reasons behind humor’s move to the center of many late medieval and Renaissance religious scenes, as well as how humor and satire could transcend such anachronistic categories as ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ or lay and clerical. But as an inquiry into the relationship between humor, religious sensibilities, and art, it is primarily a historical contextual analysis grounded in the visual culture of northern Europe, particularly the areas that border the Rhine and its wider environs, connected via trade and pilgrimage to the spiritual center of Aachen. Underlying this study is my earnest attempt to contextualize playful motifs within historically and culturally specific frameworks of early modern humor, satire, and wit, and to avoid assigning anachronistic meanings to works that never made (or were intended to make) their contemporaries smile or chuckle. A certain amount of humor transcends past and present, early modern and modern humanity; but humor is also specific to each person’s own experience, and even satire itself, as well as its functions today and 500 years ago, resists concrete definitions. Indeed, I am sure that there exist many jokes from this period that I did not ‘get’ – I hope that this book will provide some inspiration for further explorations of humor and play in late medieval and Renaissance art, a field that is finally growing but continues to invite much more exploration, particularly with respect to its role in veneration and devotion.

59 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 17. 60 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 18. 61 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 18. 62 Binski, Gothic Wonder, 286.

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Works Cited A.C. ‘Le développement historique du Culte de Saint Joseph.’ Revue Bénédictine 14, no. 1–4 (1897): 104–114. Alberti, Francesca. La peinture facétieuse: Du rire sacré de Corrège aux fables burlesques de Tintoret. Arles: Actes Sud, 2015. Alberti, Leon Battista. Trattato della pittura. Edited by Hubert Janitschek, Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte XI. Vienna: Wilhelm Braumülle, 1877. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Barolsky, Paul. Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978. Barth, Médard. Die Verehrung des heiligen Josef im Elsass. Haganau: Éditions de la Société d’histoire de l’Eglise d’Alsace, 1970. Bartholomaeus Facius. De viris illustribus. Florence, 1745. Bernard of Clairvaux. Sancti Bernardi Opera. Edited by Jean Leclercq and Henri Rochais. 8 vols. Rome: ­Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–1977. Binski, Paul. Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice, and the Decorated Style, 1290–1350. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Birch, Debra J. Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, uk: Boydell and Brewer, 2000. Black, Charlene Villaseñor. Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Bonaño, Garrido M. ‘San José en los calendarios y martirologios hasta el siglo XV inclusive.’ Cahiers de Joséphologie 19 (1971): 601–646. Brauneck, Manfred et al., eds. Theaterstadt Hamburg: Schauspiel, Oper, Tanz Geschichte und Gegenwart. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. Butler’s Lives of the Saints: New Full Edition. Edited by Paul Burns et al. 12 vols. Collegeville, mn: The Liturgical Press, 1993. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Bynum, Caroline Walker. ‘The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg.’ Renaissance Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1986): 399–439. Carruthers, Mary. The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1992. Camille, Michael. ‘Obscenity under Erasure: Censure in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts.’ In Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages, edited by Jan M. Ziolkowski, 139–154. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Chorpenning, Joseph F. O.S.F.S. Sermon Texts on Saint Joseph by Francis de Sales. Toronto: Peregrina, 2000. Chorpenning, Joseph F. St. Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries. Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2011. Cuttler, Charles. Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968. Demand, Ursula et al. Kleiner Wegweiser durch die Domschatzkammer Aachen. Aachen: Domkapital zu Aachen, 1995. Dusserre, Joseph. Les origines de la dévotion à Saint Joseph: Cahiers de Joséphologie. 3 vols. Montreal: 1953–1954. Duval, Edwin M. ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire.’ In A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern, edited by Ruben Quintero, 70–85. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

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Eastwood, Bruce. ‘Alhazen, Leonardo, and Late Medieval Speculation on the Inversion of Images in the Eye.’ An International Review of the History of Science and Technology from the Thirteenth Century 43, no. 5 (1986): 413–446. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life. Translated by Michael Hoyle. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1988. Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. The Fruit of Devotion: Mysticism and the Imagery of Love in Flemish Paintings of the Virgin and Child, 1450–1550. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994. Filas, Francis Lad. Joseph: The Man Closest to Jesus. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1962. Foster, Marjory Bolgar. ‘The Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art, 1400–1550.’ PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1978. Friedländer, Max J. Early Netherlandish Painting. 13 vols. New York: Praeger, 1967–1975. Glorieux, Palémon. ‘Saint Joseph dans l’oeuvre de Gerson.’ Cahiers de Joséphologie 19 (1971): 414–428. Gurevich, Aron. ‘Bakhtin and his Theory of Carnival.’ In A Cultural History of Humour, edited by Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 54–60. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997. Hahn, Cynthia. ‘“Joseph Will Perfect, Mary Enlighten and Jesus Save Thee”: The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych.’ Art Bulletin 68, no. 1 (1986): 54–66. Hale, Rosemary Drage. ‘Joseph as Mother: Adaptation and Appropriation in the Construction of Male Virtue.’ In Medieval Mothering, edited by John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, 101–116. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996. Harbison, Craig. ‘Iconography and Iconology.’ In Early Netherlandish Painting: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, edited by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Hank van Veen, 378–406. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. Heublein, Brigitte. Der ‘verkannte’ Joseph: Zur mittelalterlichen Ikonographie des Heiligen im deutschen und niederländischen Kulturraum. Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1998. Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. 1924; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Jacobs, Lynn F. Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces: Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Jacquemart, Danielle and Claude Thomasset. Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988. Jaritz, Gerhard. ‘Bildquellen zur mittelalterlichen Volksfrömmigkeit.’ In Volksreligion im hohen und späten Mittelalter, edited by Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer, 195–219. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1990. Kolve, V.A. The Play Called Corpus Christi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966. Ladis, Andrew. ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’ Art Bulletin 68, no. 4 (1986): 581–596. Lindberg, David C. ‘Alhazen’s Theory of Vision and Its Reception in the West.’ Isis 58, no. 3 (1967): 321–341. Marrow, James H. ‘Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Later Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance.’ Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 16, no. 2–3 (1986): 156–165. McNamer, Sarah. Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. McNamer, Sarah. ‘Further Evidence for the Date of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi,’ Franciscan Studies 50 (1990): 235–261. McNamer, Sarah. ‘The Origins of the Meditationes vitae Christi,’ Speculum 8, no. 4 (2009): 905–955. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Others in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. 2 vols. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1953. Panofsky, Erwin. ‘Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.’ Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 64 (Mar. 1934): 117–127.

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Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939. Payan, Paul. Joseph: Une image de la paternité dans l’Occident médiéval. Lonrai: Aubier, 2006. Payan, Paul. ‘Ridicule? L’image ambiguë de saint Joseph à la fin du Moyen Âge.’ Médiévales 39 (2000): 96–111. Purtle, Carol J. The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Randall, Lilian M.C. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Randall, Lilian M.C. ‘Games and the Passion in Pucelle’s Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux.’ Speculum 47, no. 2 (1972): 246–257. Réau, Louis. Iconographie de l’art chrétien. 3 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956–1959. Ridderbos, Bernhard. ‘Objects and Questions.’ In Early Netherlandish Painting: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, edited by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Hank van Veen, 6–172. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. Ringbom, Sixten. From Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-century Devotional Painting. Doornspijk: Davaco, 1984. Rosenwein, Barbara H. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Schindler, Norbert. ‘Spuren in die Geschichte der “anderen” Zivilisation: Probleme und Perspektiven einer historischen Volkskulturforschung.’ In Volkskultur: Zur Wiederentdeckung des vergessenen Alltags (16.–20. Jahrhundert), edited by Richard van Dülmen and Norbert Schindler, 13–77. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1984. Schmidt, Leopold. Formprobleme der deutschen Weihnachtsspiele. Emsdetten: H. and J. Lechte, 1937. Schwartz, Sheila. ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.’ PhD diss., New York University, ­Institute of Fine Arts, 1975. Sheingorn, Pamela. ‘Constructing the Patriarchal Parent: Fragments of the Biography of Joseph the Carpenter.’ In Framing the Family: Narrative and Representation in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited by Rosalynn Voaden and Diane Wolfthal, 161–180. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. Simon, Eckehard. ‘Das schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel: Ein neu entdecktes Weihnachtsspiel aus der Zeit 1417–1431.’ Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 94 (1975): 30–50. Simon, Eckehard. ‘The Home Town of the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel (ca. 1420) and Its Original Setting.’ Euphorion 73 (1979): 304–320. Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. 2nd ­edition. Edited by Larry Silver and Henry Luttikhuizen. Upper Saddle River, nj: Prentice Hall, 2005. Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and In Modern Oblivion. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Taylor, Jerome, ed. The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Tolomio, Ilario. Il Trattato ‘De quattuor generibus meditabilium.’ Padua: Antenore, 1975. Toussaert, Jacques. Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du Moyen-Âge. Paris: Plon, 1963. Vasvari, Louise O. ‘Joseph on the Margin: The Mérode Tryptic and Medieval Spectacle.’ Mediaevalia 18 (1995): 164–189. Wilson, Carolyn C. St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art: New Directions and Interpretations. ­Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2001. Wright, Stephen K. ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope: Gender and Transgression in Medieval German Drama.’ Theatre Journal 51, no. 2 (1999): 149–166.

1. Joseph’s Hosen, Devotion, and Humor: The ‘Domestic’ Saint and the Earliest ­Material ­Evidence of his Cult Abstract Beginning with a discussion of the earliest manifestations of Joseph’s cult in art, and concluding with one of the earliest preserved altarpieces documenting its strength, and humor, Chapter One reconciles discrepancies in scholarship of the saint’s fourteenth-century manifestations that characterize him as either having attained full cult status as the nutritor Domini or as a bumbling, comical, and oblivious old fool of little significance. Exclusive attention to official doctrine and the Panofskian conception of humor as antithetical to veneration have occluded our understanding of humor’s significance to the development of popular Josephine devotion. The relic of Joseph’s Hosen, cradle plays, and material culture reveal forms of veneration that valued humor not in spite of, but because of its theological significance. Key Words: Saint Joseph, altarpiece, Nativity, Flight into Egypt, Meister Bertram, relic

1.1 Introduction: Rethinking ‘Higher’ Levels of Literature and Art The earliest manifestations of Joseph’s cult in art are explored first in this chapter. These appear in works dating as early as c. 1200 that suggest connections to the relic of Joseph’s Hosen at Aachen, and in turn document the popularity of that relic and of the saint’s cult at least a century earlier than previously thought. Reconsidering the Panofskian concept of humor as antithetical to Joseph’s veneration allows us to reconsider the importance of the saint for the thirteenth-century faithful. Humor is shown to be integral to this early development, through the Hosen’s associated legends and appearance in art, as well as through an examination of period cradle-rocking plays (Kindelwiegenspiele). Following this discussion, the Hamburg Petri-Altar of c. 1383 provides an early case study in which humor and theology on a high altarpiece amplify Joseph’s significance as a role model; in this work, comedy, derision, and veneration intertwine in depictions of the saint that demonstrate an affiliation with the cradle plays as far north as Hamburg. The humor of the ‘domestic’ Joseph is key to understanding this altarpiece, as well as similar fourteenth-century works used for private devotion and more public, liturgical functions. Williams, Anne L., Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789462983748_ch01

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Joseph’s preoccupation with matters of childcare in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art is apparent in scenes of the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt, in which he is depicted cooking porridge, warming the baby’s diapers, preparing the baby’s bath, passing the freshly swaddled child to Mary, or holding or knitting his stockings to form the baby’s swaddling clothes. Scholars including Erwin Panofsky, Johan Huizinga, Ruth Mellinkoff, James Snyder, and Charles Cuttler consider these motifs derisory, viewing them as highlighting Joseph’s obliviousness to the significance of the birth of Christ. Yet the more recent scholarship of Carolyn Wilson and Sheila Schwartz stresses the necessity of rethinking ‘any modern assumption of an artist’s intent to ridicule Joseph in scenes that portray the saint cooking or performing other charitable and parental acts, such as that depicted in the Nativity of Philip the Bold’ (Plate 1).1 A reconciliation of these disparate perspectives is possible if we consider that such portrayals of Joseph are intentionally ambiguous. This study indicates that humor and exemplarity are in fact dual facets of his character at this time for both lay and clerical audiences. Joseph’s significance in the four extant German cradle-rocking plays provides one way to reconcile the character’s seemingly paradoxical characteristics. Contrary to the claims of earlier scholarship, Rosemary Drage Hale, Stephen Wright, and Pamela Sheingorn have demonstrated in various ways that the comical role of Joseph in medieval German Nativity plays was not intended exclusively as mere debasement for the purpose of comic relief. The character’s utmost familial piety as well as humor in these plays – apparent in the ridicule the midwives, wet nurses, and chorus of Jews bestow upon Joseph for his fulfillment of the typically ‘maternal,’ domestic duties – attest to an inherent complexity in the saint’s late medieval perception. His actions, in fact, indicate his function as an attainable model of domestic responsibility for his lay audience. Joseph’s centrality in the plays thus provides an interpretive framework for the saint’s simultaneously exemplary and comical behavior in the visual arts. The link between iconography and dramatic performance is explicit in the frequent appearance of motifs depicting Joseph cooking (Plate 2).2 Sheila Schwartz interprets these images as references exclusively to Joseph’s increasing theological importance as nutritor Domini, and therefore to his role as a model for the priestly protectors of Christ and Ecclesia. However, it is equally important to consider that motifs depicting Joseph cooking were closely tied to his dramatic portrayal, because neither the Gospels nor pre-fourteenth-century literature mention Joseph’s cooking.3 The plays, along with other forms of literary evidence like contemporary books of manners, such as Wernher der Gärtner’s late thirteenth-century Meier Helmbrecht, 1 Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, 66. 2 See also Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2: plate 72, n. 157 and plate 78, n. 180. 3 Foster, ‘The Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art,’ 49–50.

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provide an interpretative framework for Joseph’s simultaneously exemplary and comical behavior in such iconography, allowing for a reevaluation of the truly multi-faceted nature of the saint’s character in late medieval devotion, a figure who unites hilarity with exemplarity. In order to understand Joseph’s complex prominence in art, prior understandings of medieval mass culture must be set aside, particularly that: The German miracle plays […] were essentially coarse entertainment for the lower classes that flourished in the absence of a strong ecclesiastical authority. As such, they exerted no influence upon the higher levels of literature and art. Moreover, they remained themselves uninfluenced by the contemporary veneration of Joseph, then being confirmed in theological circles.4

The belief that Joseph’s cult was unilaterally developed and shaped by the ‘higher levels of literature and art’ fostered by theological circles, and that such literary and artistic productions could be considered separately from more popular devotional trends, is reconsidered in this study. Many have attributed the centrality of devotion to the Holy Family and to Joseph as its head, and the resultant desire for images of that family in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to the combined ecclesiastical efforts of Jean Gerson, Pierre d’Ailly, Bernardino of Siena, and St. Antoninus.5 How�� ever, evidence of Joseph’s veneration may appear as early as c. 1200 in a manuscript illumination from the Upper Rhine. The recently re-contextualized Joseph of Chartres Cathedral’s jubé, recently dated to around 1230 or earlier by Charles Little, likewise documents the saint’s early importance; the cloth held by Joseph in the jubé’s Nativity scene is far more significant than prior work has suggested. Furthermore, depictions of a prominent Joseph holding the Christ child appear as early as c. 1275 in a group of Parisian ivory tabernacles. All of these objects may be associated with the highly popular legend of Joseph’s Hosen and their role as the Christ child’s swaddling clothes, and with popular devotion to this relic. Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi and the Meditationes de Vita Christi are early examples of a devotional trend in personal piety contemporary with these artworks which emphasized the domestic life of the Holy Family, in which Joseph played a prominent role as caretaker. The interaction of these devotional texts with artistic and dramatic trends is a complex phenomenon to be discussed below. In the late medieval towns of western Europe, sanctity and morality were not only shaped by ‘official’ theological thought. Popular entertainment for both laity and clergy alike in the form of dramatic performances and apocryphal legends was in fact central to contemporary religiosity and conceptions of moral responsibility. 4 5

Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 84. Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 104.

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Religion and secular life could not exist without each other, meaning that saintly exemplars like Joseph could take shape in response to everyday concerns. Late medieval drama, a form of social and religious edification but, perhaps more importantly, of celebration and play, must be viewed in a similar light. Viewers and performers included even the wealthiest, highly educated members of society, particularly since these performances revolved around the marketplace, the central hub of the town square and its associated church. The Brabantine landjuweel, a competition of the land’s most skilled rederijkerkamers (rhetoricians’ chambers) performed on the host city’s streets, awarded its highest prizes not to the best moralizing spel van sinne, but to the most successful comic play. These facetiae, though written by and for an audience including the wealthy and educated, explored the most common social interrelationships in ways that could be downright lewd, exploiting common literary and artistic puns like the familiar sexual entreatment of a male market-goer to ‘unbutton his purse.’ As Elizabeth Honig notes, these facetiae presented the audience with their very own dilemmas, thus ‘holding up the mirror to every spectator and his or her deepest concerns [… laughter] rebounds back on the viewers who laugh at it, for they find that they are laughing at themselves.’6 Medieval drama ultimately operated within the social space of daily life, frequently even employing actual buildings for settings. From the fourteenth century on, Netherlandish Passion cycles were performed among the town square’s surrounding buildings, thus unifying the biblical tales with the everyday realm. Sacred and secular were inextricably intertwined in that the market and church were both sites for dramatic performance as early as the tenth century. Even for later performances of the sixteenth century, such as those that took place at the landjuweel or during imperial, princely, or ducal triumphal entries, the church and its surrounding market square remained the culminating point for processions of tableau vivants, moving floats with actors, props, and sometimes paintings.7 Piety during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Joseph came to the forefront in art and literature, both oral and written, was rapidly changing, due to the influence of the preaching orders and the privatization of devotion. The new concerns of lay and clerical devotion allowed for humanity, and even human frailty, to take a more central role in art and literature, as these media functioned effectively as tools, facilitating a more tangible and realistic experience of the divine. The rapid development of naturalism, or an interest in illusionism, in art of the early fifteenth century is often thought to be symptomatic of this trend in devotion. Works like Jan van Eyck’s Virgin of Chancellor Rolin (c. 1435, Musée du Louvre) were intended to inspire what Panofsky called ‘contemplative immersion’ because 6 Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, 60. 7 Tydeman, The Theatre in the Middle Ages, 120–140; Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, 60–68.

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of their removal from the specificity of a continuous narrative or historical context.8 Far from concerned exclusively with theological doctrine being formed by the ecclesiastical elite, depictions of the Holy Family at Rest, seeking nourishment from the trials of their flight into Egypt, were most suitable for personal contemplation because their isolation from a wider narrative context allowed the viewer to fill in his or her own details. These functioned much like the fourteenth-century Andachtsbild, a devotional image of religious figures isolated from their narrative contexts or ‘an augmentation of a representational image,’9 intended to incite an emotional response. Fifteenth-century devotional imagery took the Andachtsbild to the next step by implicating the viewer in a direct experience of ‘humanely appealing sentiments.’10 Pictorial illusionism often provided the means to this end by rendering depicted people, things, and events as continuous with reality, placing the venerated within the realm of the devotee. Fifteenth-century half-length formulations of the Virgin, Man of Sorrows, Salvator Mundi, and Holy Face or Vera Icona amidst a minimum of scenery, for example, had major implications for facilitating emotional engagement.11 The humanization of the saints in art potentially served the same devotional interests. As Leo Steinberg noted, images denoting what he calls the ‘humanation’ of Christ, such as those in which the genitals of the baby and of the adult Christ are quite obviously highlighted, are a part of this greater devotional trend. These images allude particularly to the sexuality of Christ, an aspect of his human form that renders him explicitly human, and thus sharing in humanity’s somatic suffering and pleasure.12 Christ’s imperfection itself – his experience of faulty humanity – allows him to redeem humankind. Richard Rambuss rightly notes that without the acknowledgement of Christ’s human sexuality, whether implicitly in text or in image, his unmatched purity and chastity could not be understood as the highest triumph over the challenges posed by the appropriation of earthly flesh.13

8 Panofsky, ‘Imago pietatis,’ 264. 9 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 57. 10 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 57. 11 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 55–59; Marrow, ‘Symbol and Meaning,’ 150–163. According to Sixten Ringbom, the Andachtsbild ‘has both an iconographical and functional meaning: iconographically it applies to a figure or group isolated from a narrative context, and functionally it denotes a pictorial aid to “contemplative absorption” […] An Andachtsbild in the iconographical sense could also be used for other purposes […] A typical Andachtsthema such as the Arma Christi could as an image of indulgence serve as a recipient of prayers […] That an Andachtsbild could be employed to symbolize a theological concept or a mystery of faith otherwise difficult to express in a picture, shown by the fact that the ‘Man of Sorrows’ at times stood for the mystery of the Eucharist.’ 12 Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ, 11–24. 13 Rambuss, Closet Devotions, 63.

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Human foibles are an important part of the working of devotional art particularly. As we will see, despite Joseph’s human faults, which frequently become comical in art and drama, he repeatedly chooses the correct course of action in the grand scheme of things. Through sympathy and moral rectitude, he functions as an effective model for his Christian audience. The choices put forth to Joseph’s character in religious drama reflect those of everyday life; the mirror is in turn cast upon the audience. Thus, Joseph’s flawed humanity, and the comical developments of his story evident in contemporary art and literature, might be reevaluated as evidence of a true flowering of his cult and his role as a model for the Everyman, and not as a mark exclusively of derision, as many have argued. The common belief that Joseph’s cult did not develop significantly until the late fifteenth century14 is disproven by Joseph’s earliest depictions, which were often simultaneously comical and worthy of veneration, reflective not of theological doctrine alone but of popular devotion as well.

1.2 Joseph’s Hosen and Early Material Evidence of his Cult Early evidence of St. Joseph’s popularity in art and society is not only found in a group of Rest on the Flight into Egypt miniatures dating from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, documented by Sheila Schwartz.15 A close iconographic link to early devotion to the saint appears in what remains of a group of about a dozen ivories executed in Paris around 1300 (Fig. 1.1), with the earliest example now dat�ed to c. 1275.16 What appears as an anecdotal detail commonly shared by the group, the motif of Joseph holding the Christ child at the Nativity, is probably connected to the holy relic of Joseph’s stockings and Jesus’ swaddling clothes, the Hosen. The legend of the Hosen may have an even earlier representation in a manuscript illumination from the Upper or High Rhine depicting the Flight into Egypt, from a psalter in Freiburg assigned a date of c. 1200 (Fig. 1.2),17 and the swaddling clothes appear at Chartres Cathedral as well in a relief dated to c. 1230. In the Nativity scene of the cathedral’s jubé, Joseph prominently presents a cloth and leans over Mary while gazing at the Christ child.18

14 Filas, Joseph, 495. 15 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.’ 16 Others can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. 17 Woelk, The Magi, 116; Kuder, ‘Mittelalterlicher Bildgebrauch’; Zinke, Verborgene Pracht, 54–61. 18 For the reconstruction, see Little, ‘Joseph at Chartres,’ 189, fig. 11.7.

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Fig. 1.1. Ivory tabernacle, Paris, c. 1300. 16.8 x 15.1 x 2.1 cm. Inv. 747, Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna. Photo by the author, courtesy of the Comune di Bologna, Istituzione Bologna Musei I Musei Civici d’Arte Antica.

While the cloth may have liturgical associations, casting Joseph in a priestly role, and may also be an offering to the Virgin, evocative of the importance of wool at Chartres,19 above all else, the motif would have likely evoked Joseph’s most holy relic at the pilgrimage site of Aachen Cathedral. Furthermore, the motif is not specific to Chartres or France alone, although the proliferation of the ivories bespeaks its popularity there. A relief from Bologna depicts Joseph holding the swaddling cloth as well (Fig. 1.3), indicating the far reach of this motif, which is actually not rare but rather overlooked, much like the legend of the Hosen itself, because of its ties to popular legend and devotion. Some scholars even believed that in the late Middle Ages, ‘There were no relics of him, and no churches were dedicated to his honor.’20 In the Flight into Egypt of the Freiburg Psalter from c. 1200 (Fig. 1.2), hanging from Joseph’s staff are not only his characteristic drinking flask, but also what appears to be a pair of socks or boots 19 Little, ‘Joseph at Chartres,’ 189–190. Jacqueline Jung interprets the swaddling cloth as a blanket. See Jung, ‘Beyond the Barrier,’ 634. 20 White, Medieval Religion and Technology, 184.

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Fig. 1.2. Psalter, Upper or High Rhine, c. 1200. Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br., Historische Sammlungen, inv. Hs. 24, fol. 11v. Photo © Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br./Historische Sammlungen.

tied together by a rope. The image has never before been tied to the motif of Joseph’s stockings, perhaps because of its assigned date, which pre-dates the earliest known images of the motif, and even the earliest fixed date tied to the relic itself – its placement in the Marian shrine of Aachen cathedral in 1238–1239.21 The motif’s strangeness may be explained only by its clear similarity to later images depicting the Hosen. The motif of Joseph holding or passing the Christ child, as in the ivories, appears in a variety of examples of different media from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century northern Europe, including the Petri-Altar at the Hamburg Kunsthalle (Fig. 1.4) and a manuscript in Brussels (Brussels, Bib. Royale, Ms. II, 7831).22 Joseph’s relic itself appears in many Nativity scenes, including such examples as the Nativity of Philip the Bold (Plate 1), Hans Multscher’s Sterzinger Altar, dated to 1456–1458 (Fig. 1.5), a Cologne triptych from c. 1420 (Fig. 1.6), and a carved altarpiece from Brabant (Fig. 1.7) dated to the sixteenth century. The Hosen are portrayed in a variety of ways, whether 21 Demand et al., ‘Kleiner Weg-Weiser durch die Domschatzkammer Aachen,’ 42. 22 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2: plate 67, n. 143.

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Fig. 1.3. Andrea da Fiesole, Nativity, c. 1400. Marble relief. Inv. 1646, Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna. Photo by the author, courtesy of the Comune di Bologna, Istituzione Bologna Musei I Musei Civici d’Arte Antica.

in the process of being removed, cut, or simply lying on the ground or over the baby’s crib, and they are sometimes depicted as boots instead.23 The prevalence and widespread fame of the relic at Aachen has been largely ignored among Joseph studies, although it was reportedly visited frequently by pilgrims after its appearance at Aachen’s cathedral. Josef de Coo’s 1965 article on Joseph’s Hosen in painting, pilgrim medallions, and literature first exposed the relic’s significance for late medieval pilgrims and the devout of northern Europe, but his findings are often overlooked in scholarship on Joseph. Various mystical writings, Christmas hymns, and fourteenth- through sixteenth-century chronicles mention the holy stockings themselves and their exhibition at Aachen, and they appear also on several pilgrim flasks and medallions.24 Beginning in 1349, the four great holy relics of Aachen – the swaddling clothes/stockings of Joseph, the tunic Mary wore when Christ was born, the loincloth of Christ, and the shroud of John the 23 de Coo, ‘Das Josefshosen-Motiv.’ 24 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert.’

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Fig. 1.4. Master Bertram, altarpiece and retable of the former high altar of St. Peter’s Church in Hamburg (Grabower Altar), c. 1379–1383. Retable, double-winged with sculpted inside, oil tempera on oak wood, H: 217.5 cm. Outside of the right inner wing, ‘Nativity,’ inv. no. 500g/5. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle/Elke Walford/Art Resource, New York.

Baptist – were all displayed by the cathedral during the ‘great pilgrimage,’ which took place every seven years. Since 1238–1239, the relics had been kept in a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the cathedral, but the precise date of their arrival remains unknown.25 Joseph’s stockings were represented in a wide range of sacred and secular literature from Germany, the Netherlands, and France, and in images both as the main subject and as a lesser detail, but were frequently present nonetheless. Josef de Coo documents a number of these as examples of the prevalence of Joseph’s relic in devotional thought and as a common pilgrimage goal. The Hosen were not always depicted straightforwardly as two separate cloths; sometimes only one cloth is shown, as at Chartres, and sometimes Joseph raises his bare foot to evoke the legend. Sometimes they more closely resemble boots or shoes than cloth. Jean Gerson’s early fifteenth-century writings attempted to negate the role of the Hosen, as well as to discourage depictions 25 Demand et al., ‘Kleiner Weg-Weiser durch die Domschatzkammer Aachen,’ 42.

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Fig. 1.5. Hans Multscher, Nativity, Sterzinger Altar, 1456–1458. Hans Multscher Museum, Vipiteno, South Tyrol. Photo by the author, courtesy of the Hans Multscher Museum.

of Joseph performing menial activities, which may account in part for the ambiguity of many depictions of Jesus’s swaddling clothes, at least later on. The Hosen’s frequent appearance in the more accessible media of prints and pilgrimage medallions attests to their widespread popularity, while their presence in more expensive and personalized commissions indicates their high status in the art and devotion of wealthier members of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Hans Multscher’s Nativity from the Wurzach Altar (1437; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) includes the stockings draped over the baby in the manger, while in Rogier van der Weyden’s Columba Altarpiece (c. 1460; Alte Pinakothek, Munich), placed in the baptismal chapel of St. Columba in Cologne, two distinct cloths, unquestionably Joseph’s Hosen, are spread out upon the manger as well.26 Many other examples from across northern Europe reinforce the popularity and effectiveness of this theme. In an Adoration of the Magi from the Bargello Diptych (Fig. 1.8), created by a Franco-Flemish painter, Joseph’s bare leg suggests that he has already removed one of the Hosen and must now warm his feet over some coals. Sometimes, Joseph warms the baby’s swaddling clothes over a fire instead, as in Hieronymus Bosch’s Prado Adoration of the Magi (Fig. 1.9). 26 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert’; de Coo, ‘Addenda zum Weihnachtsmotif der Josefshosen.’

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Fig. 1.6. Master of the Holy Kinship the Elder, Triptych of the Holy Kinship (detail from the inside of the left wing: Nativity), c. 1420. Painting on oak. Inv. WRM 59, Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne. Photo by the author.

Fig. 1.7. Detail of a Nativity scene from a carved altarpiece from Brabant, sixteenth century. Sankt Maria zur Wiese, Soest. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 1.8. Franco-Flemish painter of the late fourteenth century, Adoration of the Magi from the ‘Small Carrand Diptych,’ c. 1355–1360. Tempera on wood, 50 x 31 cm. Inv. 2038C, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Photo courtesy of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello.

Gertrud Schiller suggests that the removal of Joseph’s stockings ultimately derives from the biblical story of Moses removing his shoes in reverence for the appearance of God in the Burning Bush.27 But Josef de Coo posits the origin of the stockings legend in a misunderstanding of the Latin fasciae and fasciolae, which by the early ninth century could mean ‘swaddling clothes’ and had acquired a meaning near to ‘legwear.’28 The varied representations of the relic likely had something to do with the multiple connotations of the Middle High German Hose, which meant any sort of leg 27 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 1: 80–81. 28 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert,’ 153; Flosz, Geschichtliche Nachrichten über die Aachener Heiligthümer, 313.

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Fig. 1.9. Hieronymus Bosch, detail of Joseph drying diapers, left wing of altarpiece, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1495– c. 1500. Oil on oak, 147.4 x 168.6 cm. Inv. P02048, Prado Museum, Madrid. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/ Wikimedia Commons.

or foot covering, including stockings, pants, or shoes. The Middle Dutch variation, laarzen, could have meant boots, gaiters, or some other sort of outdoor shoe, which in the fifteenth century could have included pattens. The Middle French chausse typically translated to ‘stocking,’ while the Latin caliga could translate to ‘boot’ or to a kind of outdoor foot covering, like laarzen.29 These varying translations could account for the frequent presence of pattens lying immediately next to Joseph in early Netherlandish Nativity scenes, as in the Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1475–1478; Uffizi, Florence) and in a Nativity by Petrus Christus (1465; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Of the artists working in the Netherlandish regions, only Rogier van der Weyden and perhaps Hans Memling, who both had connections to Germany, depict the Hosen in their more Germanic, cloth-like form.

29 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert,’ 153.

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1.2.1 The Ivories The detailed quality and size (16.8 x 15.1 (opened) x 2.1 cm) of the ivory tabernacles with the motif of Joseph passing the swaddled child to Mary indicate that these pieces were probably commissioned or bought by members of the rich bourgeoisie or aristocracy of thirteenth-century Paris for their private devotional practices. Their size and shape reveal that they functioned like portable altarpieces, to be placed on top of an altar, table, or pillow, or held in one’s hands like a book of hours. The size and quality of each piece tended to determine who could afford to buy one. Although ivory, like gold, was costly and rare, those who could afford a cheaper book of hours in the thirteenth century could probably also afford to purchase a small ivory plaque, ranging in size from four to six inches (10–15 cm), for their personal devotion.30 Many thirteenth-century ivory tabernacles were dedicated to the Virgin and depicted scenes from her life and that of Christ; and while small devotional diptychs appear to have been made exclusively from ivory, other tabernacles were made using a variety of materials, including silver gilt. Although none made from mixed materials survive, it is possible that they did exist.31 Painted and wooden versions, like the Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold’s small Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of c. 1400 (Plate 1), would have fulfilled a similar devotional function. Concurrent with the popularity of these small, portable tabernacles, and likely driving it, was the widespread increase in devotion to the Virgin Mary, beginning in the twelfth century, and the resultant popularization of the book of hours.32 By 1270, Paris had emerged as a major capital city and the center of illuminated manuscript and ivory production.33 Ivory carving continued to flourish in Paris up to the early fifteenth century, and the fact that as many as twelve of the tabernacles depicting Joseph holding the child exist today indicates that the original production of this type was probably much higher. As Richard Randall points out, iconographic motifs and styles were transmitted among the ivory trade using terracotta impressions, allowing for reproductions to arise quickly in different centers of carving.34 Although only a few examples of German small tabernacles, executed in wood rather than ivory, are extant, centers of ivory carving also existed in Cologne and the Upper Rhine. Ivories that have been attributed to Cologne workshops often have Parisian characteristics, which may be explained by the influential presence of French carvers working in the city. However, the ivories’ portability, like that of manuscripts, renders geographic attributions difficult to pin down. Iconographic, stylistic, and 30 Stahl, ‘Narrative Structure and Content in Some Gothic Ivories of the Life of Christ,’ 95–97. 31 Little, ‘Ivoires et art gothique,’ 61–62. 32 Wieck, Painted Prayers. 33 Barnet, ‘Gothic Sculpture in Ivory,’ 8–15; for more on the ivory trade see also Guérin, ‘Forgotten Routes’; Guérin, ‘Meaningful Spectacles.’ 34 Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery, 180.

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compositional influence probably transmitted both ways, although much of the thirteenth-century evidence in woodcarving, the craft for which German carvers are best known, has disappeared. The few surviving Cologne and Upper Rhine examples of wooden tabernacles,35 as well as some ivory examples, attest to the German tradition of carving these objects.36 Joseph’s particular importance in the Parisian ivory group is evident in his prominent depiction twice in the scenes of the Nativity and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. In the latter he carries the typical basket of sacrificial doves. Henk van Os considers the Nativity, however, ‘particularly interesting for the Virgin is allowing Joseph to hold the child for a moment […] The author of the Meditationes describes this event, and adds that we, too, may follow Joseph in longing for this privilege.’37 Van Os highlights an important point in drawing our attention to a primary purpose of contemporary devotional texts, like the Meditationes Vitae Christi of c. 1300 or 1346– 1364, written by a Franciscan friar for a nun of the Poor Clares.38 The reader of such literature is often urged to experience the described events by transporting her- or himself into the story. A key component of this kind of meditation, desirable as early as the twelfth century according to the sermons of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090– 1153), was the use of one’s imagination to elaborate on events of Christ’s earthly life, even the visualization of things that could not have taken place in order to facilitate a greater spiritual proximity to God.39 The author of the Meditationes writes, ‘And of the saintly old Joseph the Blessed Bernard relates that he often held the child Jesus on his knees, laughing and playing with Him, and comforting Him.’40 However, images cannot be entirely explained by referencing contemporary devotional literature, particularly since such spiritual writings themselves were frequently inspired by images. The author of the Meditationes himself uses depictions as a source of his writing, and St. Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Bonaventura all mention the usefulness of images for one’s spiritual meditation.41 A more reasonable association between text and image is proposed by Peter Barnet, who attributes the increase in popularity of ivory tabernacles and diptychs around 1300 to the greater role afforded to personal worship, evident in texts like the Franciscan Meditationes Vitae Christi: ‘The small scale of devotional ivories provided imagery for private

35 Köllermann and Wenderholm, The Bode-Museum, 72. 36 Little, ‘Gothic Ivory Carving in Germany.’ 37 van Os, The Art of Devotion, 23. 38 Typically attributed to the anonymous ‘Pseudo-Bonaventure,’ the text has been ascribed specifically to Giovanni de Caulibus de Sancto Gemeniano. Recent work dates it between 1346 and 1364. See McNamer, ‘Further Evidence for the Date of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi’; McNamer, ‘The Origins of the Meditationes vitae Christi’; McNamer, Affective Meditation. 39 Ridderbos, ‘Objects and Questions,’ 128–129. 40 Ragusa and Green, trans. and ed., Meditations on the Life of Christ, 55. 41 Ridderbos, ‘Objects and Questions,’ 128–129.

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prayer and contemplation and, like the Book of Hours, ivory carvings were popular with both the clergy and the laity.’42 Van Os himself notes the difficulty of assigning an exact origin for a specific iconographic motif, citing the commonly represented motif of Mary worshipping her child on bended knee after the birth, with the baby lying naked on the ground in the midst of a burst of supernatural light. This motif is attributed to the Revelations of St. Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373), written in the third quarter of the fourteenth century.43 However, the influence of devotional literature upon images could not have been unidirectional. Visions were and are frequently formed from things already seen and familiar to an audience, leading to a common problem overlooked in many iconographic analyses. Jean Gerson expressed the usefulness of images as incentives for meditation, and Henry Suso (c. 1300–1366) wrote that it was necessary for the mystic to rely on his imaginative vision, to go beyond images themselves, in order to partake of Christ’s body in the most visceral manner possible. Ringbom rightly notes that this common practice in mystical devotion ‘should make us wary of explanations of iconographical innovations by reference to verbal or literary formulations of religious concepts and experiences.’44 In one of her visions, the mystic St. Theresa of Avila experienced Christ ‘as it is painted after the Resurrection.’45 Swarenski has shown that the German Andachtsbild of the Christ and Sleeping St. John likely inspired associated literature among a group of fourteenth-century nuns from the Rhineland, rather than deriving from it.46 The depiction of Joseph passing the child to Mary in the ivory tabernacles is more simply explained not as a derivation from devotional literature specifically, but rather as a similar result of contemporary popular devotional practices, particularly imaginative elaborations of Christ’s life. The motif could have, in some instances, inspired related narrative moments in devotional literature, in which Joseph himself plays a role in the human aspects of Jesus’s infancy that were so valued at the time. Most probably, the prominence of the Aachen relic was involved in the development of this kind of scene, whether in the imagination of the artist, writer, or devotee, since this we at least know to have been a popular pilgrimage goal, as Josef de Coo has shown.47 The ivories which most closely imitate altarpieces in format – the polyp�� tychs – appear to afford Joseph the most active parenting role. Though in ivory examples in diptych form Joseph is not depicted passing or holding the child,48 he is still prominent, most often gazing toward Mary and the child with an alert sensitivity, rarely asleep, and never disengaged. 42 Barnet, ‘Gothic Sculpture in Ivory,’ 14. 43 van Os, The Art of Devotion, 4. 44 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 18. 45 Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 19. Ringbom suggests that St. Bridget of Sweden may have also modeled parts of her Revelations on contemporaneous works of art. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 1: 46, note 277. 46 Swarenski, ‘Quellen zum deutschen Andachtsbild.’ 47 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert.’ 48 Barnet, Images in Ivory, n. 35.

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The repetition itself of the motif of Joseph passing the child in the ivories indicates that the action carried meaning, particularly within this precious medium. Unlike woodcuts and engravings, the expensive medium of ivory was most often carved not with a mind to mass reproduction but with a specific patron on the receiving end, or a wealthy individual interested in carefully selecting a singular precious piece.49 Looking at the function of the tabernacles themselves suggests that they were carefully carved not only with a mind toward beauty, but also with the intention to stimulate meditation as part of the typical devotional practices of the time. Thus, Joseph’s prominence was somehow crucial to the viewer’s experience. 1.2.2 The Power of Relics in Fourteenth-Century Europe The bases of ivory tabernacles frequently included a space for holding relics; but many are now lost, and it remains unknown whether any examples from our group held relics themselves. Considering the great importance of Joseph’s relics, and of relics in general in the late medieval period, enhances our understanding of the saint’s significance in devotion as early as the thirteenth century. A relic’s presence or depiction, when combined with painted or carved scenes of Christ’s life and with the ritual of prayer and meditation, would have facilitated an exclusive contact with the sacred, a kind of ‘metaphysical reality […] regarded not only as a preparation for or foretaste of heavenly life, but also a basis for [the owner’s] social prestige.’50 The iconography of relics was not only an effective tool for the ‘salvific gaze’ of the viewer through his meditation; the ‘automatism of salvation’51 carried a power��ful religious and politically propagandistic role as well, particularly in more public forms of art like altarpieces. The iconographic reference to Joseph’s role as swaddler of the baby in tabernacles, illuminations, sculpture, and panel paintings might have intentionally cultivated a link to the northern spiritual and imperial center of power at Aachen. The connection symbolically legitimizes an ideological continuity rooted in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, along with its ninth-century Frankish ancestry. We often look to Paris to understand the power of the most holy relics of western Europe. But the new center of the Holy Roman Empire during the fourteenth century, Prague, provides a revealing example of how the cult of relics flourished among the aristocracy and radiated throughout courtly and civic life in late medieval cities. Relics were of utmost importance in Bohemian circles. The Czech Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1316–1378) continually acquired hordes of relics in imitation of his virtuous predecessors, particularly Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor 49 Sears, ‘Ivory and Ivory-Workers in Medieval Paris.’ 50 Ridderbos, ‘Objects and Questions,’ 143. 51 Lentes, ‘As far as the eye can see,’ 361.

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and therefore Charles’ predecessor. The emperor’s avid collecting practices resulted in frequent, lavish public ceremonies and exhibitions of his relics in Prague’s New Town Square as well as in St. Vitus Cathedral. Charles IV’s institution in 1354 of a ‘jubilee year’ – a year-long feast repeated every seven years in honor of the Virgin’s tunic (translated from Trier to Prague Cathedral) – was unquestionably influenced by his experience in 1349, on the day before his coronation as King of the Romans, of the ceremony of the ‘great pilgrimage’ in Aachen. Prague’s emulation of Aachen is likewise confirmed by the fact that the two cities granted the same number of indulgences to their pilgrims,52 as well as by a rendition of the 24 elders of the Apocalypse in Charles IV’s Holy Cross Chapel, in emulation of the ceiling design at Aachen.53 In addition to legitimizing Charles IV as the continuation of a glorious line of Holy Roman Emperors, his acquisition of relics, as Paul Crossley writes, ‘closed a long chapter of Přemyslid history and triumphantly confirmed Charles’s promotion of Bohemia to the centre of the empire.’54 The crown jewel of Charles’ relic collection was a gift in May 1356 from his nephew, the French Dauphin Charles V, in the form of two thorns from Christ’s Crown of Thorns kept in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. This gift was symbolic of a dynastic linkage and support with the French Valois dynasty; but it also allowed the emperor to create a viable architectural competitor in spiritual power and legitimacy in the form of the Holy Cross Chapel, where Charles kept his collection of the Passion relics. In planning the location and layout of his chapels at Karlštejn and the Wenceslas Chapel at St. Vitus, Charles considered the Sainte-Chapelle as a prototype. Charles’ interaction with the royal chapel, built by Louis IX between 1241 and 1248 to house the Capetian dynasty’s own Passion relics, was extensive; he spent his childhood and the majority of his adolescence in Paris under the protection of his uncle, Charles IV. The Parisian chapel was constructed with two stories, the lower dedicated to the Virgin and used for the celebration of the Mass for the members of the royal court. The upper level served as a grandiose reliquary, infiltrated by light and colored stained glass, designed for the exclusive use of the sovereign and his queen. In addition to the Crown of Thorns, splinters from the Cross, Christ’s vesture, part of Longinus’s spear, and Stephen’s sponge were kept in the chapel on an altar.55

52 Opačić, ‘Architecture and Religious Experience in 14th-century Prague,’ 139–143. 53 Fajt and Royt, ‘The Pictorial Decoration of the Great Tower at Karlštejn Castle,’ 132. 54 Crossley, ‘The Politics of Presentation,’ 123. 55 Jiří Fajt notes similarities between the Sainte-Chapelle and the Holy Cross Chapel beyond their shared emphasis on the Passion relics: in the Lesser Tower of the castle, the Chapel of Our Lady was originally dedicated for the chapter’s services. This more public space led to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the Greater Tower, an exclusive space for the Emperor and his closest clerics, including the Archbishop. Highlighting the importance of the Crown of Thorns, a metal thorned ‘crown’ encircles the walls of the chapel as well. See Fajt and Royt, ‘The Pictorial Decoration of the Great Tower at Karlštejn Castle,’ 128–131.

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As the first palace chapel in which a king kept a prominent relic of Christ exclusively for himself, the Sainte-Chapelle became an ideal for all other private reliquary chapels. The French chronicler Gauthier Cornut legitimized this exclusivity by claiming that possession of the Crown of Thorns ‘extended to the realm itself. The relic had become a source of joy (causa laetitiae) for the Gallican Church (Ecclesia Gallicana) and for all French people (tota gen Francorum).’56 Charles IV’s Passion relics, includ�� ing those present in the Reliquary Cross of the Bohemian kingdom, were similarly present for the well-being of all Czech people. However, his presentation of Prague’s Passion relics to his people was markedly different from the exclusivity of the French monarchy’s Passion relics, an aspect likely influenced by the aforementioned public displays at Aachen’s cathedral. A grand, public procession and display of Passion relics occurred during the Feast of the Holy Lance in the New Town Square.57 Charles V’s demonstration of allegiance through his gift of a relic was particularly important for Charles IV, as the French typically ranked their ruler as equal to the Holy Roman Emperor because of their claimed dynastic linkage to Charlemagne. This sensitive issue is rendered visible in Charles V’s Grandes Chroniques de France (Paris, bn, Ms. Fr. 2813) in a section describing the emperor’s visit to Paris in 1377– 1378. According to the illumination on folio 467, Charles V sent his uncle a black horse to ride from Saint-Denis to Paris, rather than the traditional imperial white horse, as a gesture that France would not accept subservience to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.58 Genealogical and spiritual links to Aachen thus carried substantial political value for northern Europe’s monarchs. The power of relics during this period extended also to images; depictions of relics linked ‘time and timeless.’59 Zoë Opačić shows that the cycle of paintings depicted on the walls of the Prague cloister of Na Slovanech, the Benedictine Emmaus monastery, were created in association with the grand, public procession and display of Passion relics during the Feast of the Holy Lance. The Holy Lance appears in several scenes, as does the Crown of Thorns, evidently linked to the public display of the lance and the two thorns of the crown in Charles Square. According to Opačić, pilgrims visiting the relics in New Town Square could have visited the cloister after the main ceremony: There the images would have played an integral part in the experience and understanding of the relic display and of the pilgrimage to the New Town undertaken in its honour. Tangible relics and symbols of worldly power would have been placed in the historical context of the visible Biblical narrative and its landscapes beginning

56 Brenk, ‘The Sainte-Chapelle as a Capetial Political Program,’ 197. 57 Opačić, ‘Architecture and Religious Experience in 14th-century Prague,’ 145–146. 58 Hedeman, The Royal Image, 128–129; Rosario, Art and Propaganda, 35–40. 59 Crossley, ‘The Politics of Presentation,’ 123.

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with the demise of the Antichrist and the restoration of the True Cross. The paintings’ typological juxtapositions also added an allegorical and moral ‘sensus’ to the liturgical ceremony of the Holy Lance and Nails.60

The integration into these scenes of sacred ceremony and biblical imagery was probably inspired by a similar interest in devotional feeling as the actual presentation of the relics in the New Town ceremony. The symbolic presence of the Josephine Aachen relic in German, Netherlandish, and French Nativity scenes might have performed a similar devotional function for the late medieval viewer, certainly reminding him of Joseph’s significant role as swaddler of the child, but also of northern Europe’s spiritual center at Aachen, the Frankish node of power north of the Alps, and the north’s answer to the papal hegemony of Rome. Aachen’s continual spiritual, as well as political, presence in the minds of the devout and of the various northern principalities was evident in the continued success of the ‘great pilgrimage’ and other pilgrimages to Aachen. The Burgundian Duchess Margaret of York traveled there after her marriage to Charles the Bold in October of 1454. The stated main purpose of her visit was to place her wedding crown on the head of the cathedral’s statue of the Virgin, but she would have unquestionably seen the Hosen as well.61 Aside from the Valois dynasty’s desire to link themselves to Frankish imperial origins at Aachen, Joseph’s prominence in the Parisian ivories is substantiated by the early presence of his cult in France, already by the time of Louis IX (1214–1270). The French crusader Jean de Joinville brought Joseph’s girdle back from the Holy Land in 1254, and built a chapel dedicated to the saint to house this relic. According to Joseph Chorpenning, the shrine was a popular pilgrimage site, but its location is unclear, although it was probably located somewhere in Paris.62 Further evidence of Joseph’s French popularity is a chapel dedicated to him in the Avignon collegiate church of St. Agricola, allegedly initiated by Gregory XI, who was the elected pope at Avignon from 1370 to 1378. The chapel was connected to a confraternity and sodality dedicated to the saint.63 1.2.3 The Hosen and Humor in Royal Commissions: The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold The presence of Joseph’s cult by the late thirteenth century in French regions with strong court connections allows us to revisit the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych (Plate 1), which is now considered a product of the Mosan region by a Netherlandish 60 Opačić, ‘Architecture and Religious Experience in 14th-century Prague,’ 145. 61 Ainsworth, Petrus Christus, 175. 62 Chorpenning, Sermon Texts on Saint Joseph by Francis de Sales, 33. 63 Chorpenning, Sermon Texts on St. Joseph by Francis de Sales, 33.

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artist, although it was probably created for the Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold (1342–1404), the youngest son of the Valois King John II (the Good, 1319–1364) and his wife Bonne of Luxembourg, sister to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. The iconography of the stockings in the painting and its relationship to the Burgundian Duke has never been explained, and has led to its disassociation with his courtly milieu, simply because the stockings legend was elided in ecclesiastically authorized accounts. Marjory Foster writes: It was much more difficult for the serious painter to incorporate the Hosen into a painting of the Nativity without diminishing its pious effect […] it is significant that they [the artists] all avoided showing Joseph in the somewhat awkward act of removing his hose, as a few earlier and more naïve artists had done.64

But from what we glean from the surviving examples, artists did not shy away from depicting the relic or Joseph involved in the act of removing his pants, no matter how humorous the subject, because it was this very risible act of piety that resulted in the perpetuation of a relic from Christ’s childhood and family life, the very subject of early modern prayer and fascination. Prominent pieces of public ecclesiastical art like the Sterzinger Altar include a Joseph at the Nativity who is ‘caught in the act’ of removing his pants.65 Writings of the time can inform us about the reception of such imagery, whether it was ridiculed, despised, beloved, or venerated; but we must again avoid the pitfall of relying solely upon the most ‘official’ dialogues with respect to Joseph’s history. Jean Gerson, who fought against Joseph’s less idealized representations in contemporary drama and art, was one of Philip the Bold’s many advisors, but this fact clearly did not influence the Duke’s artistic commissions.66 By the end of the fourteenth cen�� tury, due to Rome’s validation of Bridget of Sweden’s visions, interest in her writings began to spread at Europe’s major universities, including the University of Prague.67 However, careful reading of Bridget’s text reveals much about preexisting devotional thought with respect to Joseph’s veneration and the importance of his relics to the public. Bridget describes her vision of Mary at the Nativity as such:

64 Foster, ‘The Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art,’ 34. Foster’s footnotes indicate that the painter of the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych is one example of such earlier, more ‘naïve’ artists. 65 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert.’ 66 Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Art, 46; de Coo, ‘Robert Campin,’ 79; Glorieux, ‘Saint Joseph dans l’oeuvre de Gerson,’ 423–425. 67 Kaspersen notes that the library of the Hamburg Jakobi-Kirche contains an accumulative manuscript collection of c. 1407–1409 that includes Bridget’s Sermo Angelicus. He argues that this influenced the program of Meister Bertram’s Buxtehuder Altar of c. 1415. Kaspersen, ‘Der St. Petri-Altar zu Hamburg,’ 34 and 8–46.

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And at once she began to wrap him carefully, first in the linen cloths and then in the woolen, binding his little body, legs, and arms with a ribbon that had been sewn into four parts of the outer woolen cloth. And afterward she wrapped and tied on the boy’s head those two small linen cloths that she had prepared for this purpose. When these things therefore were accomplished, the old man entered; and prostrating on the earth, he adored him on bended knee and wept for joy.68

This section affords Joseph an important role during the birth of Christ, but it is what the account seeks to cleanse from her interpretation of the birth that reveals the most information. Speaking to Bridget, the mother of God tells her: ‘But at once I wrapped him in the small clean cloths that I had prepared long before. When Joseph saw these things, he marveled with great gladness and joy from the fact that I had thus, without help, given birth.’69 The account’s insistence on the newness of Christ’s swaddling clothes and Joseph’s passive role is obviously a conscious refutation of the legend of Joseph’s stockings; but, as de Coo points out, Bridget must have seen the relic herself, since her pilgrimage to Compostella involved a stop at the holy site of Aachen. Her canonization in 1391 by Pope Boniface IX was confirmed at the Council of Constance, the same meeting at which Jean Gerson fought for Joseph’s ecclesiastical status and negated both the stockings’ legitimacy and Joseph’s domesticity in contemporary plays and art.70 It is in accordance with this ‘official’ line of discourse that Hans Nieuwdorp writes of Joseph in the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych: His action serves not only to underline the impoverished circumstances under which the Son of God came into the world, but also illustrates the popular view of Joseph, forced into a submissive, nurturing and thus unmanly role. His figure is contrasted with the grandeur of the Incarnation, in which Mary is the central figure and the embodiment of the greatest mystery of all.71

Yet it should be noted that Mary herself, the panel’s central figure, gazes toward Joseph and not to the baby behind her. Rather than simple derision, such depictions also carried significant weight for Joseph’s veneration, particularly considering his prominence on a devotional tool. The following section on the Hamburg Petri-Altar argues that humor and sanctity functioned hand in hand in art and in dramatic performances, and that Joseph’s ‘demeaning’ role as bumbling Hausvater was in fact also respected. 68 69 70 71

Bridget of Sweden, Revelations, book 7, chapter 21, 204. Bridget of Sweden, Revelations, book 7, chapter 22, 204. de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert,’ 150. Nieuwdorp, ‘The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych,’ 140.

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It is important to note that the locations from which this imagery arose were among the earliest places of localized celebration of St. Joseph, evident in his name’s inclusion in thirteenth-century martyrologies and in the local celebration of feasts.72 In the thirteenth century, Hermann-Joseph of Cologne called for the establishment of St. Joseph’s universal feast in an office dedicated to the saint and composed for Liège’s Benedictine Abbey of St. Lawrence. Likewise, a late thirteenth-century missal from the Lower Austrian monastery of St. Florian includes a Votive Mass dedicated to the saint’s nourishing role, entitled De sancto Joseph nutritoris Domini.73 Jean Gerson’s desire to sanitize devotion to Joseph in his effort to promote his official cult reveals the strength of contemporary movements emphasizing his familial role. It confirms the presence of a significantly developed undercurrent that we should consider in relation to preexistent Joseph imagery, rather than ignoring it in favor solely of that which was institutionally promoted. The writings of the visionary and Dominican nun Margareta Ebner (1291–1351), whose visions weren’t officially validated by the institutional church at the Council of Constance, but were influential nonetheless, provide one example of the influence of the Hosen legend. In 1344, Margareta wrote that she had received a tiny statuette of Jesus in a cradle. She took the child from the cradle and her visions began, unending until her death in 1351. Her visions recount that the Christ child answered a number of her questions regarding his life, but the most interesting for us is her question: ‘kint mins, ist daz auch war, daz dich Joseph want in sin hosen, wan daz was mir ie wider gewesen?’ (‘My child, is it also true, that Joseph wrapped you in his stockings, as I always thought it to be?’), to which the child responds, ‘er want mich in waz er gehaben moth, er het nit daz mir zem’ (‘He wrapped me in what he had to, he had nothing else for me but them’).74 A number of other sacred and secular sources dat��ing after Margareta Ebner – including Das Marienleben of 1382, written by a secular priest, and the Magdeburg Schöppenchronik of 1414 – mention the Josephine relic, excerpts of which Josef de Coo has assembled. In an extant print dated to 1468 from Die großen Aachener Heiligtümer, held in Munich’s Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, the four holy relics of Aachen are displayed for the viewer, with the swaddling clothes described as ‘Joseph’s stockings, in which Jesus was wrapped and laid in the crib.’75 The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych has been linked to its ducal owner, Philip the Bold, firstly through its origin at the Chartreuse de Champmol near Dijon, the Carthusian monastery founded by Philip, and the site he chose to become his family 72 Bonaño, ‘San José en los calendarios y martirologios,’; Filas, Joseph, 486–494. 73 Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Art, 6; Filas, Joseph, 533; Seitz, Die Verehrung des heiligen Joseph, 339. 74 Strauch, Margaretha Ebner und Heinrich von Nördlungen, 100; de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert,’ 154; Wentzel, ‘Eine Wiener Christkindwiege in München und das Jesuskind der Margareta Ebner,’ 277; Rode, ‘Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Kind-Jesu-Visionen,’ 75. 75 de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert,’ 154–159.

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mausoleum. The Duke invited many artists, particularly from the Netherlands, to his court, which traveled frequently to his various residences throughout the Burgundian regions.76 By his marriage to Margaret of Male, heiress of Flanders, the Burgundian duchy inherited the rich lands of the Flemish countship and cities, including Rechel, Antwerp, and Mechelen, and the counties of Artois, the Franche-Compté, and Nevers.77 Among his 40 castles, Philip spent his time mostly in Ypres, but he frequented Paris and Dijon as well for his artistic commissions. The commission for the polyptych thus arose within similar French aristocratic circles of patronage as the earlier ivories depicting Joseph holding the swaddled child: from a workshop familiar with making delicate, transportable devotional shrines useful for meditation upon the life of Christ and the saints. The artist remains unknown, although there are a number of artists’ names preserved in the ducal archives. The work was initially attributed to Melchior Broederlam because of his close association with Dijon through his painting of the Chartreuse de Champmol’s high altarpiece of the 1390s, but the fact that the polyptych is transportable negates the necessity of an artist present in Dijon. Jean Malouel (c. 1370–1416) is another Netherlandish artist to whom this work has been assigned, and his extant examples seem stylistically closer to the mark, but there remain many other less well-known possibilities. Both Snyder and Nieuwdorp have used what the latter describes as the ‘unusual motif of Joseph’s stockings in the Nativity scene’78 to pin down the artist’s origin, both assuming that only those surrounding Aachen and the Lower Rhine region were familiar with the stockings legend, and therefore that its representation is merely a product of the artist’s birth region rather than associated with the Duke’s own devotion.79 But one need only read Josef de Coo’s article to gain perspective as to the widespread presence of the Hosenlegende in art. Furthermore, the profusion of the Duke’s commissions, as well as their expense (evident in the polyptych’s extensive gold leaf), suggests rather that the Duke may have had more control over the purchase than these authors suggest. Also of note is Joseph’s prominent and charmingly humorous placement on Melchior Broederlam’s high altarpiece for the Chartreuse de Champmol (Fig. 1.10) in which he is shown with his back to the viewer, guzzling from his can� teen, as well as on another, small wooden tabernacle of c. 1400 commissioned for the ducal oratory there (Plate 3), which depicts the saint in the role of diaper-dryer. This motif is discussed in discussed Chapter Two, with the tabernacle’s artist catalogued by the Mayer van den Bergh Museum as Franco-Flemish, as by an anonymous Netherlandish or Lower Rhenish artist, or as by a follower of Melchior Broederlam. The interior of the tabernacle once held a sculpted Madonna and Child, much like the 76 Jugie, Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy; Nieuwdorp, ‘The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych.’ 77 Blockmans and Prevenier, The Promised Lands, xi, 1. 78 Nieuwdorp, ‘The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych.’ 79 Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 55.

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Fig. 1.10. Melchior Broederlam, Presentation at the Temple and Flight into Egypt, right wing of the high altarpiece of the Chartreuse de Champmol, 1390s. Tempera on wood, 167 x 130 cm. Inv. CA 1420, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons.

earlier Parisian ivory group.80 A pattern of prominently placed and blatantly human�� ized depictions of the saint is notable in these extant ducal commissions, attesting to a strong Burgundian interest in Joseph outside of the Lower Rhine region. The personalization of the Duke’s polyptych is further evident on the right outer panel of the piece, which depicts a St. John the Baptist opposite St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers – an appropriate choice for a traveling shrine, as Nieuwdorp 80 Collections du Chevalier Mayer van den Bergh, 19; Catalogue du Musée Mayer van den Bergh, 35; de Coo, Museum Mayer van den Bergh I, 120; de Coo, Museum Mayer van den Bergh II, 141; Deneffe and Fremout, PreEyckian Panel Painting in the Low Countries, 84.

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rightly points out. Rather than appropriating his name-saint to flank him as his patron in public commissions, Philip was known for his devotion to John the Baptist, the patron of the Valois dynasty. Claus Sluter carved the saint next to him on the portal of the Champmol monastery church, across from the Virgin and Child and his wife Margaret.81 There is therefore no reason to consider our unknown artist’s rendi��tion of St. Joseph as anything less than desired by the Duke for his own personalized devotion as he traveled between his many residences. The presence of the Aachen relic attests to a Josephine devotion, probably the Duke’s own, but also may have functioned as a politically pertinent link to the foundation and origin of the Holy Roman Empire. It should not be forgotten that the claims of the Valois dynasty to Charlemagne’s lineage were of utmost importance, attested by the aforementioned Grandes Chroniques de France of King Charles V, Philip the Bold’s father. Burgundian interest in the Aachen relic, and in St. Joseph, is evidenced by the saint’s warming of the baby’s swaddling clothes on the small painted, wooden tabernacle from the Champmol ducal oratory. The artist of this work effortlessly blended Joseph’s labor and unmatched devotion to the child in the Nativity scene with the saint’s playfully ridiculed characteristics, evident in the Flight into Egypt scene of the lower right-hand corner, in which Joseph’s visage is placed just behind the ass’s ears. Such bestial parallels are a common trope in Joseph’s depictions, but they are often combined with more elevated iconographic motifs. The clarity of this contrast is discussed in Chapter Two, in which the functional role of humor for ‘earnest’ devotional practices is explored more extensively. For now, a superficial comparison of the Duke’s piece to the earlier ivory tabernacles reveals a strong similarity between the two, with Joseph’s prominence as swaddler of the Christ child apparent in each of the two Nativity scenes. We may conclude from this parallel that Joseph’s role as swaddler of the baby was conducive to meditation upon Christ’s infancy, and was therefore an important leitmotif early on in regions of France associated with the aristocracy and the Burgundian court. Iconographic evidence of devotion to Joseph’s Hosen and domestic role as caretaker is spread throughout the Netherlands and Germany in examples from as late as the sixteenth century. The following section on Meister Bertram’s Hamburg Petri-Altar, completed in 1383, analyses one of these examples within the context of its German literary parallels, revealing the nuances of Joseph’s early modern perception as Hausvater and caretaker of Christ.

1.3  Nutritor Domini and Bumbling Old Fool: The Hamburg Petri-Altar Meister Bertram’s images of Joseph reveal an early example of the intertwining of humor and sanctity on a more public art form: the high altarpiece of the Hamburg parish church of St. Peter. They represent for many an inherent tension in 81 Nieuwdorp, ‘The Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych,’ 144–149; Morand, Claus Sluter.

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the saint’s early modern characterization, which is reflected in equally polarized interpretations of his function in the Hamburg Petri-Altar’s New Testament cycle. His unprecedented prominence and ambiguity have never been adequately explained, particularly his active participation in the scenes of the Nativity and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Figs. 1.4 and 1.11), which contrasts with many of his earlier representations as a peripheral spectator. However, despite his apparent importance in the Petri-Altar, Joseph’s prominent appearance, particularly in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, can also be characterized as comical, and even derisive. Through an examination of Joseph’s central role in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century German Nativity plays alongside Meister Bertram’s seemingly paradoxical presentation of Joseph in the Petri-Altar, the subtlety and social relevance of the altarpiece reveal important aspects of late medieval piety. Bertram’s New Testament scenes reveal parallels to these highly popular plays, which were often performed by lay actors in townhouses or in churches,82 and directed by men of the parish.83 The Petri-Altar’s theological complexity would not have precluded an interest in more vernacular concerns like those of the laity, a burgeoning middle class of increasingly wealthy merchants and craftspeople in Hanseatic Hamburg.84 With this group’s growing importance in the fourteenth century, as well as the thirteenth-century rise of the mendicant orders, the clergy was interested in facilitating an expansion of lay piety.85 This would certainly have been the case for the parish church of St. Peter, the Marktkirche in the very heart of the medieval city.86 Like ‘historical bibles,’ manuscripts that were mass-produced in German fourteenth-century towns and provided a German adaptation of the biblical narration enriched with apocryphal and profane ingredients,87 Nativity plays were important for the piety, edification, and entertainment of the late medieval viewer. Perhaps not unlike contemporary drama, the main goal of such publications was to reconcile biblical with non-biblical history, allocating salvation to its proper place within world history. The Weltchronik is a particular form of historical bible that attempted to describe the natural history of humanity from its creation up to the respective point in time of publication.88 This continuity of the past with the present, which is reflect��ed in art, for example, in representations of biblical figures in medieval dress, can 82 Schmidt, Formprobleme der deutschen Weihnachtsspiele, 11; Simon, ‘Das schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel,’ 47; Simon, ‘The Home Town of the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel,’ 316. 83 Brauneck et al., Theaterstadt Hamburg, 17. 84 Beutler, Meister Bertram, 26–41; Dube, ‘The Grabow Altar,’ 81–89; Hauschild, Meister Bertram, 21–23. 85 Reudenbach, ‘Der Hauptaltar aus St. Petri von Bertram von Minden,’ 188. 86 Beutler, Meister Bertram, 5–7. 87 Reudenbach, ‘Der Hauptaltar aus St. Petri von Bertram von Minden,’ 188. 88 Beutler, Meister Bertram, 27.

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Fig. 1.11. Master Bertram, altarpiece and retable of the former high altar of St. Peter’s Church in Hamburg (Grabower Altar), c. 1379–1383. Retable, double-winged with sculpted inside, oil tempera on oak wood, H: 217.5 cm. Inside of the right outer wing, ‘Flight into Egypt’, inv. no. 500h/6. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle /Elke Walford/Art Resource, New York.

be attributed to belief in God’s eternity, as well as to the desire to emphasize human history as existing within divine continuity.89 However, Mary Carruthers suggests that ‘the medieval institution of memoria by means of which texts of past authors are 89 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 239.

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constantly related in and through present minds’ is just as important.90 The medi��eval text itself was the primary support of memoria, since it could document not just an original source (for example, the Bible), but its entire community of authors and commentators over time as well.91 Weltchroniken and other related late medieval ‘historical bibles’ exemplify a long-standing German tradition of sacred history, and, like these texts, the plays also created a poignant continuity from the biblical past to the present. The biblical drama was rendered up-to-date by its very presence in the midst of the modern town. Contrary to the claims of earlier scholarship, Joseph’s humorous role in the German Nativity plays was not intended exclusively as mere debasement for the purpose of comic relief.92 The character’s humor and exemplarity in these plays attests to an inherent duality in the saint’s fourteenth- through sixteenth-century perception, indicative of his function as an attainable model of domestic responsibility and familial piety for his audience. Joseph’s characterization in the plays thus provides an important window into understanding his paradoxically prominent and humorous portrayal in the Petri-Altar. The iconography, and perhaps also the ordering, of Bertram’s scenes bespeaks a relationship to drama, suggesting that the study of these dramatic texts supports an accurate reading of the saint’s simultaneous comedy and function as a role model. The very fact of the saint’s centrality and prominence on the high altar of this church, comical attributes included, should preclude a stark division between these equally important facets of his character for any inclusive exegesis of the altarpiece’s New Testament scenes. Sheila Schwartz first identified Bertram’s depictions of Joseph as the key to unlocking the Petri-Altar’s social significance, suggesting that Joseph’s importance signifies his role as a model for the church’s priests, the earthly guardians of Ecclesia, and therefore of the Virgin, identified with the church in Marian theology. She discusses Joseph’s prominence in the redemptive scheme, based on his role as nourisher and protector of Mary and Christ, apparent in the iconography of the Nativity and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.93 However, her argument neglects the humanity of the saint in these scenes, presupposing a kind of exclusively sober veneration much more akin to the saint’s seventeenth-century cult, particularly in Italy, France, and Spain. Paul Portmann importantly notes the discrepancies in Bertram’s fourteenth-century depictions of wife and husband, particularly the approachability of Joseph that contrasts with the withdrawn, unattainable holiness and graceful reserve of Mary. We see in Mary ‘less warmth and full-blooded humanity […] it is evidently she who 90 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 239. 91 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 240. 92 Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope’; Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother’; Sheingorn, ‘The Maternal Behavior of God.’ 93 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar.’

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represents the spiritual, heavenly side, like God the father and the angel in the Annunciation […] Joseph must be made to keep his distance.’94 Although Joseph is certainly not belittled by his presentation of the Christ Child, his grimace in the Nativity and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt suggests that Bertram intentionally included an element of humanization in Joseph’s characterization that is not to be found in his depiction of Mary. A hint of baseness is more apparent in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, where Joseph appears to tear into a wine-skin or piece of bread with his visibly protruding front teeth.95 His portrayal on the same diagonal – performing the same action, teeth bared, as the ass in the lower left corner – is somewhat derisive; but, like the Christ child at Mary’s breast, the two are feeding in what appears to be a charming familial scene. Nevertheless, careful examination of the composition reveals that the baby looks toward Joseph, while Mary casts her eye toward the dull beast below that mirrors the behavior of her less gracefully portrayed, self-nourishing husband. The visual parallel of Joseph with the ass, as well as the ox, is in fact quite common: as in an Adoration of the Magi by the Boucicaut Master and his workshop (Plate 4), in which a seemingly perplexed Joseph, ass, and ox lean over the shed’s wooden fence to view the baby; and in a German Adoration of c. 1525 (Fig. 1.12) which plays upon Joseph’s ‘horned’ status as cuckold. Chapter Two documents this parallel, very likely constructed in the comic mode, in a large number of works of various media. Joseph’s apparent humanity is constructed through his juxtaposition with the haloed, aloof, and graceful, otherworldly nature of Mary in the Nativity scene; but his boorish characteristics in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt are revealed through an analysis of what would have been considered ‘appropriate’ behavior within a late medieval German social context. In order to understand this framework of cultural acceptability, we must look to the influence of Tischzucht manuals, or books of manners, which were popularized by the expanding German bourgeois class in the thirteenth century, a group aspiring to behave in concordance with the rules of conduct espoused by the nobility. Adhering to a prescribed code of behavior, Jacqueline Jung writes, ‘enabled individuals to recognize their common ground and define themselves as a community visibly distinct from other social groups (such as peasants) for whom such rules did not matter.’96 Artistic depictions and literary descrip�� tions of peasants behaving as ‘boorish louts barely distinguishable from animals’ and 94 Portmann, The Nativity, 15. 95 The ambiguous object is perhaps a piece of bread, but the presence of the symmetrical loops on either side render it closer in appearance to a wine-skin. See Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 155. The fact that Joseph complains about the empty skins in Chapter 20 of the apocryphal account of PseudoMatthew, from which the Rest on the Flight into Egypt is derived, is further indication that the object is likely a skin of some sort. The account is discussed extensively below. See Roberts and Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 376–377. 96 Jacqueline Jung demonstrates the influence of these books of manners on the depiction of the apostles in the mid-thirteenth-century Last Supper of the Naumburg Cathedral choir screen. See Jung, ‘The Social Iconography of the Naumburg Last Supper,’ 51.

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Fig. 1.12. Württembergisch-Franken artist, Adoration of the Magi, detail of an altarpiece, c. 1525. Mainfränkisches Museum, Würzburg. Photo by the author.

in ways that contradict the manner books’ ‘acceptable’ behavior placed this group under scrutiny and within the realm of the comical ‘other.’97 Books like Wernher der Gärtner’s late thirteenth-century Meier Helmbrecht established a subjugated, liminal space that was activated by and for the reader, reinforcing his dominance and place within a higher social stratum.98 According to a German translation of a twelfth-century poem on manners, the Facetus, the unrefined peasant or ‘rude person,’ who chews on his bread for too long, should be compared to the ass, as is Joseph in Bertram’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Likewise, authors of courtesy books and the priesthood’s instructors in behavior both condemned ‘vigorous engagement’ with food.99 Hugh of St.-Victor’s (1096–1141) On Instruction of Novices shows that restraint and control while consuming food and drink are indicative of good comportment, but are likewise morally crucial as ‘restless agitation and disorder in one’s limbs signifies an intemperate soul.’100 Joseph’s depiction with visible front teeth is likewise a common allusion to baseness in medieval art, and sometimes wickedness as well, particularly when combined with hostile facial expressions. Hugo van der Goes’ shepherds of the Portinari Altarpiece (1475–1476; Uffizi, Florence) expose their teeth while racing toward the Christ child, in clear contrast with the holier figures, who exhibit an aristocratic comportment. The base nature of Robert Campin’s Bad Thief (c. 1410; Städel Museum, Frankfurt) 97 Jung, ‘The Social Iconography of the Naumburg Last Supper,’ 51. 98 Camille, Image on the Edge, 127. 99 Camille, Image on the Edge, 50. 100 Hugh of St.-Victor, De institutione novitiorum, cap. XVIII; Camille, Image on the Edge, 50.

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is likewise apparent in his opened mouth, while animal-like savagery is represented by the exposed teeth of Christ’s torturers in the Idar-Oberstein Felsenkirche Altar (c. 1390; Felsenkirche, Idar-Oberstein).101 In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, one’s external appearance was thought to correspond to inner character, with physiognomy determined by one’s astrological horoscope. If a person’s features were considered imperfect, this indicated an inclination toward specific vices, which one could succeed in resisting, if virtuous enough.102 A medieval and Renaissance understanding of physiognomy was closely related to the classical one, with physicians often well versed in the Aristotelian thought of the popular scientific ‘physiognomies’.103 The anonymous Aristotelian treatise Physiognômonika of the third century bc supports the interrelatedness of appearance, inner character, and status, as do Chaucer’s Pardoner’s, Reeve’s, and Miller’s Tales, revealing the widespread late medieval popularity of such ‘medical’ thought. Chaucer alludes, for example, to the Reeve’s cowardly heart through his description of his extraordinarily tiny legs, while the Miller’s broad, knotty shoulders are an indication of his shamelessness, immodesty, loquaciousness, and irascible nature. According to Aristotelian thought, ‘the signs of an irascible person are these: a broad figure with shoulders large and wide, powerful and strong extremities, a courageous appearance, and a florid complexion.’104 The appearances of Hellenistic statues of peasant men and wom�� en, fishermen, and shepherds corroborate the Physiognômonika’s interpretations. According to the treatise, a stooped posture signified cowardice, wickedness, and a slavish character, while curly hair was a sign of cowardice. Short, stubbly beards that contrasted with the well cared for beards of the philosophers associated man with the monkey, a mischievous, ridiculous, and disgraceful animal. In his Idylls, Theokritos drew a direct and derisive parallel between a shepherd whose beard is like that of a billy-goat and the animals he herds.105 Furthermore, big ears that stick out were thought to signify stupidity and indecency, and typically belong to blathering idiots. Thick and wide lips, as well as stumpy or lumpen noses with large nostrils, denoted stupidity and an array of other negative features. A large, fleshy nose signified lower intelligence, while a thick nose was the mark of a squalid person. Most importantly for our purposes, according to the Physiognômonika, a visibly open mouth, particularly showing teeth, was a mark of a silly, wicked person, typically associated with thick-wittedness and stupidity.106 101 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 2: I.49, VI.4, VI.13, VI.12, VI.2. 102 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 116. 103 Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences, 56–90; Evans, ‘Physiognomy and the Ancient World’; Loux, L’ogre et la dent. 104 Anonymi de Physiognomonia liber Latinus, in Foerster, Scriptores physiognomici, II: 121ff.; Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences, 80. 105 Theokritos, Idyll 1.87; Laubscher, Fischer und Landleute, 53. H.P. Laubscher associates a Hellenistic sculpture of an Old Fisherman in London with these characteristics. 106 Laubscher, Fischer und Landleute, 49–57; Garland, The Eye of the Beholder, 88.

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In classical Greek society, the ideal male nude embodied strength, civic and military commitment, and integrity. That which is ‘beautiful and good’ was equated with the term kalόs k’agathόs. The ‘uglies,’ however, embodied everything that did not fit the elevated ‘beautiful’ and were characterized by the term aischros, that which is shameful and ugly.107 This ancient conception of ugliness also could encapsulate ‘mundane reality, the irrational, evil, disorder, dissonance, irregularity, excess, deformity, the marginal: in short, the Other.’108 Kalos and aischros have also been linked to polarities of class, the aristocracy and the members of the lower classes, barbarians and slaves, the ‘others’ on the underside of society.109 A physiognomical understand��ing of ugliness therefore carried with it connotations of the lower classes or peasantry. As Athanassoglou-Kallmyer points out, the dialectic of beauty and ugliness has always been shaped historically by issues of hierarchy, power, and value: ‘Beauty was equated with dominant “high” culture and hegemonic social, moral, racial, and aesthetic ideologies. Ugliness, much like evil, was linked to marginality, the politically, economically, and socially disenfranchised, the racially Other.’110 The depiction of Joseph tearing into his wine-skin or piece of bread with his teeth is certainly not characteristic of any ideal of appearance or comportment espoused in the Tischzuchten, and his physiognomy alludes to a simpler mind. The image’s content perhaps heightened the scene’s immediacy and gave it a more relevant ethical flavor, rendering the saint into an earthy foil to the idealized realities of Christ and the Virgin. His behavior contrasts strongly with allusions to eating in devotional Andachtsbilder of the Virgin and Child, in which the consumptive imagery of a table laden with fruit and flowers or a piece of fruit cut open evoked the spiritual tasting of ‘sweetness’ by the beloved and the loving soul in the Song of Songs’ hortus conclusis. The sensory appeal never extended to the Virgin or child, however, with ‘the actual act of eating or smelling […] hidden from sight even after 1500.’111 Though allusions to the eating of fruit and smelling of flowers proliferate in the sixteenth century, the deeds themselves are rarely depicted.112 107 Walsh, Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting, 246. 108 Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, ‘Ugliness,’ 281. 109 Sutton, ‘The Good, the Base, and the Ugly,’ 181. 110 Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, ‘Ugliness,’ 283; Pop and Widrich, Ugliness; Eco, On Ugliness. 111 Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion, 4. 112 For more on medieval attitudes toward eating, see Hill, ‘Attitudes towards Food, Eating, and Excess in the Middle Ages.’ For more on Andachtsbilder of the Virgin and Child, see Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion, chapter 1; Camille, Gothic Art, 33; Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral, 59–60. As Katzenellenbogen writes, ‘The early Fathers of the Church had interpreted the Song of Songs as the loving union between Christ and the Church or between Christ and the human soul. Later on, some passages were occasionally related to the Virgin Mary […] this change, in keeping with the growing worship of the Virgin, may well have contributed its share to the popularity enjoyed from the later twelfth century onwards by the representation of the Triumph of the Virgin, who also typifies the Church.’ The motif of the union between Christ and the Virgin, or Sponsus-Sponsa, rose in popularity with the growing cult of the Virgin in the twelfth century, as a new emphasis was placed on her dual nature as the mother and the Bride of Christ, interchangeable with Ecclesia.

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Because of his boorish characteristics, Ruth Mellinkoff and Charles Cuttler interpret Bertram’s Joseph as solely derisive and comical. Mellinkoff accurately notes the correspondence in shape between the wine-skin/roll into which Joseph bites and the Virgin’s breast from which the baby feeds. She writes: Master Bertram’s portrayals of Joseph arouse different reactions from historians. Although many think they are ennobling portraits, I reject that point of view. Bertram never portrayed Joseph with a halo, and although some writers have interpreted Bertram’s Joseph in the Nativity of the Petri Altar as the pious helper of the Virgin, handing the Child to her, other characterizations by Bertram suggest belittlement.113

Cuttler curiously characterizes Bertram’s depiction of Joseph as ‘an early stage of Joseph’s transformation into a comic figure,’ noting that Joseph appears to pull ‘the stopper out of [his] water bottle with his teeth.’114 However, despite the evident humorous nature of Joseph’s depiction, the saint’s centrality and active behavior as provider in the Nativity, the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, and in Bertram’s Harvestehuder Altar (Fig. 1.13), which may have originally constituted part of the Petri-Altar’s interior shrine, must not be discounted. Bertram’s scenes present us with an interesting tension between the character’s paternal exemplarity and base humanity, and it is this tension that has incited such polarized interpretations of the social meaning inherent in the artist’s depiction of Joseph. In order to reconcile the discrepancies and gaps in past scholarship concerning the altarpiece – which characterize Bertram’s Joseph as either a holy, revered saint, having attained full cult status as the nutritor Domini and protector of Mary, or as a bumbling, comical, and oblivious old fool – it is necessary to first understand Sheila Schwartz’s work on the altarpiece. She argues convincingly (and, I believe, correctly) for a fourteenth-century theological interpretation of Joseph’s social significance for the clergy as visualized on the Petri-Altar. However, a full consideration of the late medieval viewer’s encounter with these images of Joseph suggests that there is more to the story. While Schwartz’s discussion of the altarpiece’s relevance to the clergy is convincing, she interprets the iconographic program from an exclusively theological and clerical point of view, which neglects the work’s iconographic involvement with the laity as well. In fact, the concerns of the laity were probably the primary impetus behind the altarpiece’s imagery, particularly because of its location in a parish church. Lynn Jacobs notes that works executed for a church’s high altar were primarily attentive to the religious salvation of the congregation, while for the clergy, they served as liturgical props and as a form of religious propaganda.115 113 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 226. 114 Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel, 55. 115 Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 17.

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Fig. 1.13. Master Bertram, altar triptych from Harvestehude, 1410. General view with open wings. Painting, oil tempera on oak wood, sculpted shrine, inv. no. 502. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle /Elke Walford/Art Resource, New York.

The civic activities of the two brothers who may have commissioned the PetriAltar exemplified the fluid intersection of ecclesiastical and lay interests. Christian Beutler has suggested that these men were Wilhelm Horborch (1330/32–c. 1384) and his brother Bertram Horborch, primarily because Wilhelm was canon of the Hamburg Cathedral, while his brother was a patron of the Petri-Kirche and chief Burgomeister of Hamburg. Wilhelm was particularly invested in soliciting papal protection of Hamburg’s merchants from beach robberies, and Bertram Horborch took part in the amicable settlement of the revolt of Hamburg’s craftspeople in 1375. Furthermore, both Wilhelm and Bertram Horborch apparently met Charles IV in Lübeck in 1375, while Bertram the painter was there. Their meeting in Lübeck was perhaps the moment of the Petri-Altar’s commission, indicated by the sculptural shrine’s year of completion, 1379, inscribed on the back of the altarpiece.116 Schwartz grounds her interpretation in the fact that for the priesthood, Joseph’s marriage to Mary, and his role as her protector, was often exalted as a model for the marriage of Christ and Ecclesia.117 Joseph became the model for priests, bishops, and even the Pope, who were viewed as the visible spouses and protectors of the Church, 116 Both brothers had connections abroad, particularly to Prague and to the papacy, first in Avignon, later in Rome. As mayor of Hamburg between 1366 and 1396, Bertram maintained the city’s relationship to Prague and the papacy in the form of installments. Wilhelm was trained in theology and law in Paris and Bologna, and in 1371, he was appointed by Charles IV to build the law faculty at the newly founded University of Prague. Beutler, Meister Bertram, 68–72. 117 Réau, ‘Joseph,’ in Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3: 752–755.

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the institution instrumental to humankind’s salvation.118 Schwartz therefore asserts that the priests of the Hamburg parish church would have identified with Joseph as local, earthly protectors of Ecclesia. Her claim is reinforced by her adoption of Christian Beutler’s proposal that there was originally a central Sponsus-Sponsa panel in the interior shrine, depicting the mystical marriage of Christ and the Virgin.119 This was probably not the case, however, although Beutler was mostly correct in his dating of the Crucifix.120 Carbon dating of the Christ figure and dendrochronological analysis of the cross indicate that the Crucifix was made between 1278 and 1311 in northern Germany. It could have been taken out of another context and inserted into the newly produced Hill of Calvary in 1596. However, X-ray examination and carbon dating of the wood panel behind the Crucifixion group indicated no marks of re-working or change, and research from a restoration in 1982/83 indicates that the figures of Mary and John are of the same date as the other shrine figures.121 The fact that the Hill of Calvary and the cross do not accord with the date of creation of Bertram’s shrine, and the fact that the figures of Mary and John would not have satisfactorily filled the vertical space of the middle niche before the addition of the hill (and we can safely assume that the 1596 addition served the purpose of repositioning these figures), suggests that other figures were likely to have been originally placed within the niche as well.122 Two propositions have been made: either a Sponsus-Sponsa scene over a Crucifixion, or a Nativity scene below a Crucifixion. A Nativity scene and Crucifixion would have corresponded quite well with the overall theme of typology and redemption in the altarpiece’s painted scenes. Interestingly, the Harvestehuder Altar (Fig. 1.13) contains an interior shrine of the Nativity that fits exactly within the dimensions of half of the Petri-Altar’s central niche (63 x 72.5 x 12 cm).123 The sculptural interior depicts 118 Lalonde, ‘La signification mystique du marriage de Joseph et de Marie,’ 562–563. 119 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 152. 120 The question of whether or not the central niche of the interior shrine initially had its current Crucifixion scene is an issue of controversy. The Hill of Calvary is certainly not from Bertram’s time. It was made in 1596 by J. Rogge, as indicated by an inscription on its back. See Hauschild and Sitt, Der Petri-Altar von Meister Bertram, 37. Perhaps the replacement of the original middle panel, as well as the biblical scenes’ overpainting by Gilles Coignet in 1595, was part of a Protestant reworking of the Catholic medieval scheme, an idea first suggested by Lisch in 1873 and taken up again by Christian Beutler in 1984. Lisch, ‘Der Altar in der Kirche zu Grabow,’ 201; Syamken, Die dritte Dimension, 106. Beutler notes that the body of Christ appears actually older than the work itself, and on stylistic grounds, he dates the Crucifixion group to c. 1260 based on the accentuated physicality of the figures, particularly the delineation of Christ’s chest, ribs, and stomach. He suggests that the group was taken from another context during the altarpiece’s Protestant reworking, and that it supplanted an original Sponsus-Sponsa theme, a ceremonial Coronation of the Virgin. Beutler, Meister Bertram, 13–16. 121 For a full analysis of the dating, see Hauschild and Sitt, Der Petri-Altar von Meister Bertram, 35–37. 122 Wolf, Deutsche Schnitzretabel des 14. Jahrhunderts, 199. 123 According to Georg Syamken, Max Hasse first orally proposed that the Harvestehuder Altar’s interior shrine, with a Crucifixion scene above it, originally constituted the Petri-Altar’s central sculptural niche. The second possibility of a Crucifixion with a Sponsus-Sponsa scene above it would have resembled the high altar of the Braunschweiger Brüdernkirche. See Syamken, Die dritte Dimension, 107, 115.

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Mary lying in bed with her arms outstretched, across from a very pronounced figure of Joseph as Hausvater. He holds a porridge bowl and a small cooking pot. Between them is the crib with the ox and ass, but the baby is now lost.124 Perhaps the exact match in dimensions is a coincidence associated with production practices, or perhaps this is the clue to the answer of what constituted the Petri-Altar’s original central niche. However, Joseph’s nurturing role and his unusual centrality within the scene provide a perfect match to his prominent depiction in Bertram’s painted New Testament scenes. Furthermore, although the Harvestehuder Altar is loosely dated to 1410 based on dendrochronological analysis of its right wing,125 when its central shrine and two outer wings were initially brought together, slight discrepancies in style and execution, as well as large discrepancies in condition, were observed, indicating that the wings and shrine were perhaps not originally paired.126 The painted figures are significantly different in style from those of the Petri-Altar, and are therefore most often attributed to Bertram’s workshop.127 It is likely that when the interior shrine of the Nativity was taken out of its original context, new wings were appended. The style of the Harvestehuder Altar’s sculpted Mary and Joseph appears to match that of the Petri-Altar’s sculptural shrine. Joseph’s portrayal as Hausvater in the Harvestehuder Altar shrine, with porridge bowl and cooking pot in hand, suggests that the saint functioned as a model for a wider audience than the priests of the Petri-Kirche alone, as does Joseph’s portrayal in the Petri-Altar’s painted scenes. Schwartz argues that the cooking pot in the Nativity scene (Fig. 1.4), Joseph’s presentation of the Christ child to Mary, and his atypi�cally dominant, protective portrayal in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Fig. 1.11) are symbolic of the saint’s newfound prominence in the redemptive scheme of salvation history as nutritor Domini, an important role that became increasingly venerated in the fifteenth century.128 She demonstrates that Joseph’s presentation of the child is grounded in Joseph’s lineage, which fulfilled the prophecies of the Savior’s birth from the House of David; according to Jewish law, a child’s lineage was traced through the male line.129 The importance of Christ’s Davidic lineage is indeed apparent in Bertram’s image, in which the stable has been transformed into a ruined structure, perhaps as a reference to the Messianic prophecy of Amos 9:11: ‘In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old.’ The prevalent motif of the ruined hut represents the fallen house of David, from which the son of David is 124 Hauschild, ‘Der Harvestehuder Altar,’ 130. 125 Sitt, ‘Bertram von Minden,’ 75. 126 Gaedechens, Nöter, and Gensler, Von den Arbeiten des Kunstgewerbes des Mittelalters zu Hamburg, 8–10. 127 Syamken, Die dritte Dimension, 115. 128 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 150; Gillerman, Transformations of the Court Style, 56, no. 16; Koechlin, Les ivoires gothiques français, 128, no. 142. 129 Réau, ‘Joseph’; Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 151–152.

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born.130 Paul Portmann notes that where the hut lacks a post, Joseph is placed as the symbolic buttress and sustainer of the structure; as the human father and protector of Jesus, he has raised the ruins of the Davidic line. Joseph’s physiognomic relationship to both Noah and Isaac in the Old Testament panels of patriarchs is likewise a visual indication of his continuation of this holy line.131 The motif of placing a holy figure before or in place of a structural support is in fact quite common, and occurs frequently in depictions of Joseph, even those in which the artist appears to ridicule him. Joseph’s placement at a pillar of the ruined shed of various Nativity scenes – including Rogier van der Weyden’s Columba Altarpiece and Robert Campin’s Dijon Nativity (c. 1425; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon) – alludes to his ancient Davidic lineage, from which new life springs in the form of the Christ child. A clear visual analogy appears in the sprigs of new growth arising from the ruins in the Columba Altarpiece. The motif may arise from images of Marian devotion, like the structural relations Jan van Eyck’s Madonna in the Church (c. 1438–1440; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) establishes between the Virgin and the church.132 According to Schwartz, Meister Bertram’s choice to represent the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, rather than the Flight into Egypt itself, provided him with the opportunity to highlight Joseph’s important role as protector of Mary, or Ecclesia, and by extension, protector of the Church of St. Peter.133 The story of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt itself is not told in the Bible, but rather in the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, likely written in the eighth century.134 The scene of the Rest on

130 Philip, ‘The Prado Epiphany of Jerome Bosch,’ 269. 131 Portmann, Meister Bertram, 146. 132 Carol Purtle writes: ‘There is a very clear parallel between the fluted folds of the Virgin’s robe as it meets the floor and the fluted base of the only free-standing column visible in the church. Further, it is clear that the two structural piers supporting the church crossing come to rest squarely on the shoulders of the Virgin. Thus, the Virgin is seen as a larger and more substantial “column” than the one present at her side; further, she is so placed as to support the weight of both nave and apse on her own shoulders.’ Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, 147. 133 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 152. Schwartz claims that Joseph’s role as a model for the clergy of the Hamburg church is specifically realized through his painted physiognomical similarities to Bertram’s carved effigy of St. Peter on the Petri-Altar’s sculptural interior. To support her suggested link between Bertram’s Joseph and the Hamburg church’s titular saint, she draws a connection between the apparently similar haircuts and beards of the painted Joseph and sculpted Peter; but many of the altarpiece’s male protagonists, both painted and sculpted, are realized with similar hairstyles. The painted images of Noah, Isaac, and Joseph are visually similar, and one need only compare Joseph’s beard and hair to those of the sculpted Matthew or Bartholomew to see an equally apparent similarity. Portmann first noted the physiognomical relationship between the two figures. Portmann, Meister Bertram, 176. 134 The apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was written in Latin, probably in the eighth century, although it draws upon earlier material. The oldest known manuscript copy dates to the eleventh century. The text was known earlier as the Liber de Infantia or the Historia de Nativitate Mariae et de Infantia Salvatoris. The second-century Protoevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, two other apocryphal accounts, apparently influenced sections of the Pseudo-Matthew text. See Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 84–87; Elliott, The Apocryphal Jesus, 10–11; Biggs, ‘Vercelli Homily 6 and the Apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew’.

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the Flight was not represented in art until the fourteenth century.135 In Chapter 20 of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Mary becomes fatigued from walking under the hot desert sun, and the Holy Family stops to rest under a palm tree: And as the blessed Mary was sitting there, she looked up to the foliage of the palm, and saw it full of fruit, and said to Joseph: I wish it were possible to get some of the fruit of this palm. And Joseph said to her: I wonder that thou sayest this, when thou seest how high the palm tree is; and that thou thinkest of eating its fruit. I am thinking more of the want of water, because the skins are now empty, and we have none wherewith to refresh ourselves and our cattle. Then the child Jesus, with a joyful countenance, reposing in the bosom of His mother, said to the palm: O tree, bend thy branches and refresh my mother with fruit. And immediately at these words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of the blessed Mary: and they gathered from it fruit, with which they were all refreshed […] then Jesus said to it: Raise thyself, O palm tree, and be strong […] and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid in the earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be satisfied from thee. And it rose up immediately, and at its root there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling.136

Bertram’s elimination of the bending palm, the spring, and the child’s miraculous role in his scene might be indicative of the intention to highlight Joseph’s role as the heroic provider and protector of Mary, since a literal depiction of the textual narrative itself would prioritize Mary’s desire for food over Joseph’s wish for water.137 While Jesus nurses quietly at Mary’s breast, Joseph passes a canteen toward her. However, in contemporary northern depictions of the Flight into Egypt, motifs from the Pseudo-Matthew account were often included. In Melchior Broederlam’s Flight into Egypt of the Chartreuse de Champmol’s high altarpiece (Fig. 1.10), the spring appears and an idol falls from its base in reference to the apocryphal account of the journey of the Holy Family. As recounted in Chapter 23 of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, when Mary and Jesus walked into a temple in Egypt, ‘all the idols prostrated themselves on the ground, so that all of them were lying on their faces shattered and broken to pieces; and thus they plainly showed that they were nothing.’138 Bertram’s choice to represent a specific instance in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, rather than the biblical Flight into Egypt, in an original manner indicates the impact that this narrative had on art of the time and highlights his originality.139 135 Schwartz, ‘Symbolic Allusions in a Twelfth-Century Ivory,’ 36. 136 Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 376–377. 137 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 152. 138 Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, in Roberts and Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 377; Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 73. 139 J.K. Elliott writes, ‘Much medieval art is indecipherable without reference to books such as PseudoMatthew.’ See Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament, 84.

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Schwartz also interprets the cooking pot in the Nativity scene as a reference to Joseph’s increasing importance as nutritor Domini, and therefore to his role as a model for the priestly protectors of Christ and Ecclesia. It is equally important to note, however, that motifs depicting Joseph cooking were popular in northern art between the years of 1370 and 1450, and are generally associated with contemporary drama because neither the Gospels nor pre-fourteenth-century literature mention Joseph’s cooking.140 Portrayals of Joseph performing household chores like cooking or prepar��ing the baby’s bath frequently appear in art of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries,141 like Conrad von Soest’s Wildunger Altar (Plate 2), and they appear as well in late medieval Italian examples.142 The complexity of Joseph’s increasing status can be seen in Nativity scenes of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art, in which Joseph is variously portrayed as a peripheral spectator or as caretaker of the Virgin and Christ child. This has resulted in various interpretations of images of Joseph’s preoccupation with practical matters of care. Joseph’s domestic behavior in art is often thought to indicate his derision, highlighting the character’s obliviousness to the enormity of the birth of Christ.143 However, Carolyn Wilson assumes Meister Bertram’s fourteenth-century depiction of Joseph to be a precursor to Italian images of Joseph of the later sixteenth century, claiming, based on Schwartz’s theological interpretation, that ‘understanding this panel’s programmatic message forces us to rethink critically any modern assumption of an artist’s intent to ridicule Joseph in scenes that portray the saint cooking or performing other charitable and parental acts.’144 But it is unnecessary to separate Joseph’s derisive portrayal and comparison with the ass in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, or his domesticity in the Nativity scene and on the Harvestehuder Altar, from his prominent role as the literal support of the Davidic line (represented by the ruined shed in the Nativity scene), reinforcing his importance in the redemptive scheme. Recent scholarship concerning Joseph’s duality and significance in late medieval Nativity plays provides one way to reconcile the character’s seemingly paradoxical characteristics, particularly where his domesticity is concerned.

140 Foster, ‘The Iconography of St. Joseph in Netherlandish Art,’ 49–50; Schmidt, ‘Sankt Joseph kocht ein Müselein’; Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother,’ 106; Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, 1: 216; Mâle, ‘Le Renouvellement de l’art par les mystères,’ 285–286. 141 See Schmidt, ‘Sankt Joseph kocht ein Müselein,’ for northern examples. 142 The image seems to have not so quickly ‘lost its appeal as Joseph was transformed from aged, bumbling cuckold to robust provider and intercessor for the Church.’ Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother,’ 106. 143 Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, 168–170. 144 Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, 66.

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1.3.1  The Kindelwiegenspiele By viewing Meister Bertram’s St. Joseph through the lens of late medieval religious drama, it becomes apparent that his unprecedented prominence, coupled with his subtle derision in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, formulated a character to which the devout could relate, but also one to whose virtues they could aspire, thereby highlighting for audiences the dialogic processes entailed in negotiating a life of faith. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century French, English, and German miracle plays, dramatizations that frequently combined biblical verses with apocryphal legends, portrayed Joseph as a silent but respectable spectator at the Nativity. Around the thirteenth century, however, the plays became permeated with more humorous aspects, and Joseph was endowed with a more active, speaking role.145 By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Joseph’s character was transformed into a comical and central figure. The Petri-Altar’s contemporary Nativity plays include four that fit what Louise Berthold has characterized as Kindelwiegenspiele (cradle-rocking plays) because they share the central motif of Joseph rocking the cradle and singing to the baby.146 In all four, Joseph is cast as the protagonist in the unfolding drama. He is a blatantly humanized figure of comic relief, ridiculed by the midwives, wet nurses, and chorus of Jews for his clumsy fulfillment of the maternal duties such as cooking the porridge, bathing and singing to the baby, and offering refreshments to visitors. Meister Bertram’s inclusion of the cooking pot in the Nativity scenes of the Petri-Altar and Harvestehuder Altar partly reveals the analogous nature of Joseph’s artistic depiction to his characterization in contemporary religious drama. The motif of cooking porridge for the Christ child is the most commonly shared, central action in the Kindelwiegenspiele, and recurs in other Nativity plays as well.147 Further possible links between the Petri-Altar and the Nativity plays are apparent in the sequence of scenes. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, with Bertram’s dominant figure of Joseph, abruptly concludes Bertram’s idiosyncratic image cycle. This same scene concludes Kindelwiegenspiele like the Schwäbisches Weihnachtsspiel of c. 1420, the Hessische Weihnachtsspiel of c. 1450, and the Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel of 1511. These plays certainly all had traveling variations, as well as common source material. Given their similarities, the manuscripts of the Hessische and Sterzinger Weihnachts­ spiele are thought to share a common fourteenth-century precursor from which they both derived.148 Furthermore, two Nativity play scripts categorized by Berthold as 145 Filas, Joseph, 152–153. 146 Berthold, ‘Die Kindelwiegenspiele,’ 209. The existing manuscripts classified as Kindelwiegenspiele are the Ludus in cunabilis Christi of the Erlauer Spiele from Kärnten (Gmünd, early fifteenth century), the Hessische Weihnachtsspiel of Friedberg (dated between 1450 and 1460), and the Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel of 1511 (Bozen, South Tyrol), written by Vigil Raber. Eckehard Simon added the schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel to Berthold’s category. See Simon, ‘Das schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel,’ 45. 147 Schmidt, ‘Sankt Joseph kocht ein Müselein,’ 147, 159–164. 148 Jordan, ‘Das Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel und das Hessische Weihnachtsspiele,’ 31; Berthold, ‘Die Kindelwiegenspiele,’ 210; Simon, ‘The Home Town of the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel.’

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Dreikönigspiele (Three Kings plays) conclude, like Bertram’s painted cycle, with the successive Massacre of the Innocents and Flight into Egypt, episodes following the Nativity.149 These plays are the Ludus trium magorum of the fifteenth-century Erlauer Spiele and the fourteenth-century St. Galler Weihnachtsspiel.150 The latter is one of the oldest known Christmas plays. The script’s linguistic analyses have dated its origins to the last quarter of the thirteenth century.151 In 1922, Alfred Rohde noted a connection between Bertram’s Massacre of the Innocents and a fourteenth-century Easter play from Maastricht, and suggested that Bertram’s image is a visual conflation of two specific parts of the performed scene.152 Herod’s dialogue with his soldier in the Maastricht play is represented in the painted image, as is the character of Rachel on the far right, who is horrified by the slaying of the innocents and subsequently sinks into prayer.153 Although no existing fourteenth-century Nativity play can be definitively linked to Hamburg and Bertram, one or more versions of the Kindelwiegenspiele would probably have been performed there, perhaps at Hamburg’s most important parish church. The earliest documentation of any religious drama in Hamburg is a passion play from 1466, attesting to a preexisting tradition.154 The extant plays also shared common precursors and traveled widely.155 The ‘mothering’ role of Joseph in late medieval German Nativity plays was not intended as mere debasement for the purpose of comic relief, as Rosemary Hale, Stephen Wright, and Pamela Sheingorn have demonstrated.156 In the Hessische Weihnachtsspiel of Friedberg, dated between 1450 and 1460, in a nod to the famous Aachen relic, an impoverished Joseph sacrifices his old, worn stockings to swaddle the Christ child. He then proceeds barelegged to an inn to solicit help with the cooking of the baby’s porridge. He meets the maids Hillegart and Gutte there, who scorn him, demanding, ‘What do you want, old goat-beard?’157 Hillegart and Gutte then begin to beat the old, barelegged Joseph. After this initial confrontation, however, it is Joseph who ultimately mediates a second fight between the two kitchen maids; and, as a result, he, the two women, and their landlords enthusiastically direct their 149 The two scenes are switched in the St. Galler Spiel; Alfred Rohde first noted this play’s relationship to the Petri-Altar: Rohde, ‘Das geistliche Schauspiel des Mittelalters.’ 150 Berthold, ‘Die Kindelwiegenspiele,’ 209. For the texts, see Kummer, Erlauer Spiele, 15–30; Mone, Schauspiele des Mittelalters, 132–181. 151 Klapper, ‘Das St. Galler Spiel von der Kindheit Jesu,’ 35; Berthold, ‘Die Kindelwiegenspiele,’ 209. The St. Galler and Ludus trium magorum of the Erlauer Spiele are characterized by Berthold as Dreikönigspiele because the three magi play a dominant role. 152 For the text, see Haupt, ‘Mittelniederländisches Osterspiel.’ 153 Rohde, ‘Das geistliche Schauspiel des Mittelalters,’ 177–178. 154 The earliest documentation of religious drama in Hamburg is a passion play from 1466: Neumann, Geistliches Schauspiel im Zeugnis der Zeit, 1: 400; Brauneck et al., Theaterstadt Hamburg, 17. 155 Reudenbach, ‘Der Hauptaltar aus St. Petri von Bertram von Minden,’ 188. 156 Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope’; Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother’; Sheingorn, ‘The Maternal Behavior of God.’ 157 ‘Was wiltu, alder zegenbart?’ Hessische Weihnachtsspiel, line 615. For the text, see Froning, Das Drama des Mittelalters, 902–939.

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attention to singing, leaping about, and rocking the cradle, an action derived from the liturgical origins of the Kindelwiegenspiele.158 He therefore serves as an important ‘bridge to the act of joyous worship within the drama.’159 As Wright indicates, the very fact that it is the chorus of Jews and the kitchen and nursemaids who chastise Joseph for his feminine activities should indicate that the audience was fundamentally on his side.160 A fourteenth-century audience would have understood Joseph’s behavior as cook, bather, host, and nurse to be categorically ‘feminine’ and ‘maternal’ because of the existing socially constructed gender roles, substantiated by extant period texts like Le Ménagier de Paris (1392–1394).161 Joseph’s passing of the swaddled child to Mary in Bertram’s Nativity scene (Fig. 1.4) mirrors the father’s task in period religious drama as comedic bather and swaddler of the baby.162 Although this is fact discounts a purely sober interpretation of Joseph as presenter of the Christ child and continuer of the Davidic line, revealed by the ruined shed, it does not at all negate this important theological component. The image of the ruined shed appears in other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century scenes of Joseph performing household chores, like Conrad von Soest’s Nativity scene (Plate 2), indi� cating that Joseph’s more domestically maternal characteristics were not perceived as separate from his important genealogical role. Meister Bertram’s knowledge of the Hosen relic is substantiated by the text of a fourteenth-century hymn, Von der bort Christi, that was sung by members of the Confraternity of the Holy Cross of St. John in Hamburg, a group of which Bertram and his wife, Grete, were documented members:163 Her Joseph hadde sorge noch, sine hosen dat he ut toch Maria nam de in ere hant unse heren se dar in want. Dat wil ik in de warheit tehen, de sulve hose ist to sehen To Aken in der goden stad, 158 Hessische Weihnachtsspiel, lines 648–715; Walsh, ‘Breikocher Josef.’ 159 Walsh, ‘Breikocher Josef.’ 160 Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope,’ 158. 161 Commissioned in 1392–1394 by a wealthy member of the Parisian bourgeoisie for his fifteen-year-old bride, Le Ménagier de Paris instructs its young reader on proper feminine behavior, including how to successfully manage the household and please her husband, thus providing insight into late medieval gender roles from a male perspective. The wife is instructed on how to properly ‘perform’ her feminine duties, including the planning and execution of dinners, the hiring of servants, and the proper entertainment of guests. The manual likewise illuminates her expected maternal role as nurturer, caretaker, and instructor of her future children. 162 Schmidt, ‘Sankt Joseph kocht ein Müselein,’ 147, 159–164. 163 Bertram and his wife were listed as deceased members in the confraternity’s death and inventory book of 1414–1415. For the text, see Jensen, ‘Meister Bertram: Quellen und Untersuchungen,’ 159.

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da men se gewiset hat Vor mennigen pelgrim openbar, unde godes windeldecke sin aldar.164 At first] Joseph was hesitant to take his stockings off. Maria took them in her hand, and in them, she wrapped our Lord. This I assume to be accurate, as these same stockings can be seen in the godly town of Aachen. Before many pilgrims, there it is known: God’s swaddling clothes with his altar are presented.

Because we can actually be certain that Bertram was familiar with this important story of Joseph, and because of the widespread fame of the ‘great pilgrimage,’ we can conclude that the Petri-Altar’s depiction of Joseph passing the swaddled Christ child to Mary likely spoke to this story as well. The iconographic similarity between this motif on the Petri-Altar, the ivories, and many other examples is significant. The Hosenlegende was clearly at the forefront of popular devotion, appearing in a wide geographical and chronological range of artworks throughout northern Europe, even appearing in Italy as well. Joseph’s initial hesitation and anxiety in the fourteenth-century hymn indicates his flawed humanity, yet also suggests that he is not fully aware of the magnitude of the child’s importance. In the end, however, he does the right thing, and assumes the role of the responsible parent and loving father, sacrificing his dignity in the face of poverty for his foster-son’s benefit. Although Joseph’s donation of his stockings in the Hessische Weihnachtsspiel incorporates an important element of comic relief, the audience would have been familiar with the importance of this act, and certainly with the relic in Aachen as well. This is further indication that Joseph was not perceived as exclusively a bumbling old fool, merely worthy of ridicule. His humorous, boorish humanity, most evident in the Rest on the Flight, as well as his feminized portrayal as cook and nurse and his clearly active, paternal role as provider in the Petri-Altar, are all reflective of the saint’s early modern perception. The humorous and flawed aspects of Joseph’s character, above all, showed his humanity, but a humanity also marked by the exemplary virtues of unparalleled familial love, responsibility, and piety. His characterization in the plays, ‘while denigrating or demeaning the image of the Biblical character, more Homer Simpson than dignified Patriarch,’ should therefore be considered as existing ‘not necessarily in 164 Hymn no. 543, Von der bort Christi, lines 62 and 63; Wackernagle, Das deutsche Kirchenlied, 398; de Coo, ‘In Josephs Hosen Jhesus ghewonden wert,’ 155.

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binary opposition to the newly sanctified Joseph of the late medieval theologians.’165 Joseph’s centrality in both the plays, and in the Petri-Altar, seems to have carried deep social relevance; as an honest, loving husband who faces the challenges of the everyday (whether poverty, cold, hunger, or thirst) to provide for his family, he was an important figure to which his viewers could relate, and one whose virtues they could aspire to emulate. Although he is at times portrayed in the plays as a bumbling old man, his attentive caring nature is highly valued by Mary, who clearly considers him loyal and dear to her.166 In the Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel, Joseph devotes himself entirely to the care of her child: Ich pin der, der euch trostn soll. Ich will dir daz kind helfen ziechn. Du solst sechn, daz ich von dier nit bill fliechn. Was ich nur guetz han, daz will ich dir gebnn, Dieweill ich han daz lebmm, Und ich will dir stetz wesn pey.167 I am the one who should comfort you. I will help you raise the child. You will see that I will not run away from you. Whatever I have, I will give to you as long as I shall live, and I will always be by your side.168

Rosemary Hale has suggested that Joseph’s maternal behavior in the plays should be interpreted as an imitation of Marian virtues, thus bringing ‘Incarnation theology into the context of the laity’s everyday life,’ further supporting his role as a model for human fathers:169 165 Walsh, ‘Breikocher Josef.’ 166 In the Hessiche Weihnachtsspiel (line 719), Mary sings, ‘Ioseph, lieber nebe my nut prius’; Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope,’ 156–158. This interpretation is radically different from earlier interpretations of Joseph’s role as caretaker in art. See Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, 168–170. 167 Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel, lines 816–821; Lipphardt and Roloff, Die geistlichen Spiele des Sterzinger Spielarchivs, 3: 392. 168 Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel, lines 816–821; English translation from the Middle High German in Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope,’ 156–157. 169 Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother,’ 104. Hale describes the complexity and tension of Joseph’s ‘popular’ character in religious drama as a development of the fifteenth century, leading into the flowering of his cult in the sixteenth century and its pinnacle in the seventeenth century. This dating is certainly due to the fact that the earliest surviving Kindelwiegenspiele manuscripts date to the fifteenth century; however, some of these are thought to have fourteenth-century precursors. This same tension that took form in drama seems apparent in Joseph’s depictions in the Petri-Altar, perhaps suggesting that the phenomenon began sooner. See also Réau, ‘Joseph,’ 753.

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Joseph’s imitatio Mariae is an essential element in the cradle-rocking plays and rituals. His performance’s relation to the plays’ reflective image of the family is critical to our understanding of the ordinary worshipper’s imitatio Mariae. Mary was primarily responsible for the Child’s nourishment; Joseph could not nurse Him. Hence he is depicted preparing food, rocking Him, warming the bath—all manifestations of a paternal imitatio Mariae. The cradle play was a ritualized presentation of the Incarnation carrying with it the image of Christ’s childhood with two parents: it portrayed a family that was holy, but human. Even behind the humorous abuse of Joseph there was thus an admonition to imitate Mary. Joseph’s behavior taught the male worshipper that he was obligated to care for and nurture the infant in imitation of Mary […] The stereotype of incompetence may have been the source of merriment and humor, but the comic scenes were thoroughly based on an imitation of Mary’s maternal behavior.170

The domestic Joseph is both comical and exemplary at once. His maternality, perhaps an imitatio Mariae, is based upon his unparalleled familial piety and devotion to the Christ child and his Virgin mother, and is therefore worthy of emulation. The combination of this facet of his character with his humorous attempts to provide for the child in the best way he possibly can ensures his sustainability as a role model, as well as his successful gender parody within the social framework of the Nativity play. Joseph’s bumbling seems rather similar to the last three decades’ slew of ‘Mr. Moms’ on TV and in film, a trend symptomatic of the evolving nature of female responsibility in the workplace. Pamela Sheingorn asserts that women, too, would have related to Joseph’s humanity in dramatic performances, as he ‘resembles the actual husband of the medieval female viewer,’ but it seems that Joseph’s behavior would not have functioned successfully as comic relief or as a role model unless it stood in contrast with typical characteristics of masculinity.171 Turning to a twentieth-century example, would Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire be so hilariously admirable without her straggly alter ego?

1.4  Conclusion Late medieval Kindelwiegenspiele and art reveal a strong relationship between Joseph’s apparent, and even humorous, human frailties and his exemplary status as a familial role model. This relationship illuminates the saint’s paradoxically humorous and elevated prominence in Meister Bertram’s New Testament schema, and reconciles the discrepancies and gaps in previous scholarship – which characterize Joseph as either 170 Hale, ‘Joseph as Mother,’ 106–107. 171 Sheingorn, ‘The Maternal Behavior of God,’ 86.

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a holy, revered saint, having attained full cult status as the nutritor Domini and protector of Mary, or as a bumbling, comical, and oblivious old fool. It is unnecessary to separate Joseph’s exemplary piety and familial devotion from the baser aspects of his character, visualized in fourteenth- through sixteenth-century art and dramatic performance. Joseph’s prominence in the Petri-Altar, human and saintly attributes included, manifests his important social role as a sustainable and attainable model for the devout, capable of emulation within the context of everyday life. The relatability of the saint, most of all, functioned as a tangible connection between the real and the sacred, fostering a popular piety distinctive to late medieval devotion. Joseph’s status in the Petri-Altar, dually bumbling and prominently revered, is shared by such royal commissions as the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych and a small retable from the ducal oratory of the Chartreuse de Champmol, a work whose humor is discussed extensively in the following chapter. These works attest not only to the strong presence of Joseph’s cult in northern Europe, but also to a form of veneration that valued the humorous facets of his story not in spite of, but in addition to, his theological significance. Exclusive attention to official doctrine being developed and confirmed by the Pope and theologians like Jean Gerson has occluded our perception of this important facet of Josephine devotion, as has our inheritance of the Panofskian conception of humor in art as antithetical to veneration. The group of Parisian ivories discussed above, as well as the Joseph of Chartres, may mark two of the earliest appearances in art of a link to Joseph’s holy relic, and thereby to his cult – although the Freiburg Psalter’s date of c. 1200 hints to the possible presence of the Hosenlegende at an even earlier date than previously known. The Hosen were valued politically for their ties to Aachen, the spiritual epicenter of northern Europe and of the Frankish dynasty. But, most importantly, they were valued as part of Joseph’s story. Joseph’s pants (or lack thereof) were marked by the humor of plays, tales, and art that were never merely making fun of the saint, but rather celebrated the hilarity of his actions and circumstances as part of the most sacred of Christian histories.

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Seitz, Joseph. Die Verehrung des heiligen Joseph in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung bis zum Konzil von Trent. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1908. Sheingorn, Pamela. ‘The Maternal Behavior of God: Divine Father as Fantasy Husband.’ In Medieval Mothering, edited by John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, 77–100. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996. Simon, Eckehard. ‘Das schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel: Ein neu entdecktes Weihnachtsspiel aus der Zeit 1417–1431.’ Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 94 (1975): 30–50. Simon, Eckehard. ‘The Home Town of the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel (ca. 1420) and its Original Setting.’ Euphorion 73 (1979): 304–320. Sitt, Martina. ‘Bertram von Minden (um 1345–1415).’ In Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Bd. 1: Die Gemälde der Alten Meister, 53–65. Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2007. Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. 2nd edition. Edited by Larry Silver and Henry Luttikhuizen. Upper Saddle River, nj: Prentice Hall, 2005. Stahl, Harvey. ‘Narrative Structure and Content in Some Gothic Ivories of the Life of Christ.’ In Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, edited by Peter Barnet, 94–114. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and In Modern Oblivion. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Strauch, Philipp. Margaretha Ebner und Heinrich von Nördlungen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik. Amsterdam: P. Schippers, 1966. Sutton, Robert F., Jr. ‘The Good, the Base, and the Ugly: The Drunken Orgy in Attic Vase Painting and the Athenian Self.’ In Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, edited by Beth Cohen, 180–202. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Swarenski, H. ‘Quellen zum deutschen Andachtsbild.’ Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 4 (1935): 141–144. Syamken, Georg. Die dritte Dimension: Plastiken, Konstruktionen, Objekte. Bestandskatalog der Skulpturenabteilung der Hamburger Kunsthalle. Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1988. Tydeman, William. The Theatre in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. van Os, Henk. The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe. Translated by Michael Hoyle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Wackernagle, Philipp, ed. Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Teubner, 1867. Walsh, David. Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting: The World of Mythological Burlesque. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2009. Walsh, Martin W. ‘Breikocher Josef: The Medieval Origins of a Grotesque Comic Motif in the German Christmas Play.’ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Société Internationale pour l’étude du théâtre médiéval, Elx/Elche, Spain 2004. http://www.medievalists.net/2010/12/22/breikocher-josef-the-medievalorigins-of-a-grotesque-comic-motif-in-the-german-christmas-play/ (accessed 10 February 2011). Wentzel, Hans. ‘Eine Wiener Christkindwiege in München und das Jesuskind der Margareta Ebner.’ Pantheon 18, no. 6 (1960): 276–283. White, Lynn Townsend, Jr. Medieval Religion and Technology. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978. Wieck, Roger. Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art. New York: George Braziller, 1997. Wilson, Carolyn C. St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art: New Directions and Interpretations. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2001. Woelk, Moritz, ed. The Magi: Legend, Art and Cult. Cologne: Museum Schnütgen, 2014. Wolf, Norbert. Deutsche Schnitzretabel des 14. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2002. Wright, Stephen K. ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope: Gender and Transgression in Medieval German Drama.’ Theatre Journal 51, no. 2 (1999): 149–166. Zinke, Detlef, ed. Verborgene Pracht: Mittelalterliche Buchkunst aus acht Jahrhunderten in Freiburger Samm­ lungen. Katalog der Ausstellung des Augustinermuseums Freiburg in der Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg, 8. Juni–28. Juli 2002. Freiburg im Breisgau: Augustinermuseum, 2002.

2. Satire Sacred and Profane Abstract Chapter Two reveals the extensive visual puns and tropes that exist in Joseph’s fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century imagery by contextualizing them within contemporary profane forms of satire and comedy related to the fool, peasant, henpecked husband, and unequal couple. The chapter argues that satires of Joseph’s old age, virginity, cuckoldry by God, and incomplete understanding of the significance of Jesus’s birth did not undermine the saint’s veneration; rather, laughing at the saint became equivalent to reinstating his important theological role, and in itself, therefore, a form of veneration. Art, festival, and ritual illuminate the nature, power, and purposes of early modern humor, and reveal how laughter and religious practice were often interconnected throughout the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Key Words: Saint Joseph, humor, laughter, World Upside Down, peasant, fool

2.1 Introduction: Laughter as Veneration From the fourteenth through the early sixteenth centuries, varieties of humor and satire increasingly lent themselves to religious images, demonstrating the many ways that sacred and profane inextricably intertwined with respect to Joseph’s veneration. This chapter examines the nature, power, and purposes of popular fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century forms of humor and satire, as well as their origins in high medieval marginalia and the ‘World Upside Down’, in order to translate and contextualize their functions in Joseph’s iconography. The iconographic types discussed below – which mock the saint as a frustrated, chaste old cuckold, an unenlightened, unsophisticated fool, and an unequal mate to his young wife – served an important purpose in devotional and liturgical celebration. Far from being inappropriate for a saint, these satirical types celebrated doctrinal necessities: the saint’s chastity, old age, and care for Mary and her miraculous child despite his incomplete understanding of the situation.1 The increasing consolidation of humor as an artistic device in Joseph’s depictions between c. 1400 and 1550, as his cult continued to increase in strength throughout western Europe, encourages us to reconsider humor, joking, and laughter as forms of veneration for many of his devotees. 1

Alberti, ‘“Divine Cuckolds”’, 157.

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In many ways, the increasingly personal and affective nature of fifteenth-century devotional practices, as well as their concomitant manifestations in art like the Andachtsbild, allowed for the possibility of humor, play, and laughter to enter religious art and practice. From the sober thirteenth-century representations of Joseph as swaddler in the Parisian ivories and at Chartres Cathedral, through the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, we witness a steadily increasing variety and strength in forms of satire, caricature, and parody in depictions of the saint, handin-hand with a continued willingness to satirize – and increasingly to simultaneously revere – the foils of early modern urbanity: the rustic, bumbling peasant, the uncivilized ‘Wild’ or natural man, and the henpecked or ill-matched husband. Artists’ continued willingness to satirize Joseph, as well as the interrelationship of the sacred and profane arts discussed in this chapter with respect to humor, suggests that laughter was an integral tool in the increasing spread and popularity of Joseph’s cult, despite official doctrine against it. As this chapter argues, visual jokes on Joseph’s foibles moved beyond the purpose of introducing socially binding mirth for those doing the laughing. Anthropological approaches to understanding inversion in medieval and early modern religious practices, discussed in the following section, illuminate the relevance of humor, play, and the ‘World Upside Down’ to late medieval religious culture and art. Although the objects discussed in the next sections vary greatly in temporal span and origin, their shared visual puns and tropes – whether inspired by traveling sketches, model books, prints, tales, or cradle plays – unite them as manifestations of Joseph’s cult in diverse communities, just as the Vita Christi literature joined and transformed devotional communities of the later Middle Ages. In their shared functions as Catholic images encouraging devotion to their depicted holy persons, Conrad von Soest’s Bad Wildunger Nativity (Plate 2) and Frans Floris’s Antwerp Holy Family (Fig. 2.1) are perhaps not so different; their jokes, at least, remain the same, juxtaposing the elderly, prostrate foster-father and ill-matched husband with a radiantly young wife and baby. But in Reformation-era northern Europe, the devotional image’s power was rapidly changing, and laughter’s function as veneration began to merge and compete with Leonardesque conceptions of physiognomic caricature as a means of exploring, cataloguing, and pushing the limits of the empirical world. As the sacred image increased in its devotional efficacy through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, so did humor’s efficacy as a devotional tool; but, as the Reformation-era image lost its devotional power and emotional tangibility, transforming into what might be simply called ‘art,’ its humor became spiritually powerless as well.2 Floris’s leering porridge-cooker and laundry-washer is a lingering manifestation of a long, increasingly pronounced use of religious caricature to celebrate Joseph’s virtues as his cult continued to intensify in Catholic Europe. But devotional response 2 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 14–16.

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Fig. 2.1. Frans Floris, Holy Family, 1553–1554. Oil on oak panel, 132 x 166 cm. Inv. 2796, Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai. Photo © Musée de la Chartreuse (Photo: Hugo Maertens).

in Catholic Antwerp cannot have been immune to the profound changes occurring in Reformation-era northern Europe. Humor’s role in Joseph’s veneration may have remained the same – this is suggested by the material evidence – but the different intimacies of response to religious humor in art between 1400 and 1550 escape a written record comprised primarily of official doctrine. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century comedic Josephs discussed in this chapter in many ways mirror, but also enhance, their counterparts in the works and cradle plays discussed in Chapter One, whose origins date to the fourteenth century. Analogous to the poetic license of an actor or writer, the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century artist innovatively used the tools in his (or her) arsenal: popular tropes and jokes satirizing old fools, cuckolds, rustics, beasts of burden, and ‘whipped’ husbands who perform women’s work and as a consequence lose critical attributes of their masculinity. The German poet Jörg Wickram’s (c. 1505–1560) tale in Das Rollwagenbüchlein of a cradle play gone wild, which apparently happened quite frequently, highlights both the

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freedom of the actors and the extent to which the sacred could become screamingly funny in the sixteenth century: In the bishopric of Cologne it happened once during Christmastime, on Christmas Eve, that they cradled the child that night; and they took a large choirboy, who was to be the little child, and laid the baby Jesus in a cradle, and Mary rocked it. And the babe began to cry fiercely. As the child did not wish to keep silent, the Joseph ran swiftly to him and wanted to cook a porridge or pap and give it to him to eat, with which to silence him. But however faster he cooked, the child cried out that much more. Because nothing would silence him, the good Joseph took a spoon full of hot porridge, ran with it to the cradle, and thrust the spoon into the child’s throat and burned his mouth so badly that all crying and wailing left him. The child sprang swiftly out of the cradle, grabbed the Joseph by the hair, and they beat each other. But the child was too strong for the good Joseph; he threw him to the ground and went at him to such an extent that the people who were in the church had to come to his aid.3

Contemporary with these riotously funny tales and plays in which Joseph is beaten and scorned for his faulty attempts to do housework, as well as for his ‘goat-beard’ and the loss of his pants, is the hugely popular theme of the ‘Battle for the Pants’ depicted on misericords, prints and broadsheets, and in satirical writings. The similarities between the humor of Joseph’s representation and that of these more secular portrayals indicate the degree to which ostensibly sacred figures could be shaped by popular preoccupations with gender relationships. But the inverse is also true; Joseph and Mary provided the prototypical model of the ‘ill-matched pair’ or old, cuckolded husband, for example, and certainly structured secular prints depicting these types as well.

2.2 From the Margins to the Center: Humor and the ‘World Upside Down’ in Sacred Art and Ritual As we have seen, Joseph’s perceived marginalization before the Counter-Reformation is predicated upon the assumption that any humorous depiction of the saint was intended to be solely deprecatory. It is my contention that scholars of the saint’s history, and of medieval and early modern history in general, have treated the power and purposes of humor too categorically, seeing no accord, for example, between Joseph’s humorous representations and his role as exemplar; he becomes therefore either a figure of pure derision or one completely devoid of humor. Like the Russian 3 Wickram, Das Rollwagenbüchlein, CVIII–XXXI; Kurz, ed., Jörg Wickram’s Das Rollwagenbüchlein, 182–183.

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philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, they consider the sober ecclesiastical and the ‘irreverent’ popular consciousnesses as occupying exclusive realms in the late Middle Ages. Laughter and the bawdy – considered to constitute merely ‘low’ culture – are deemed appropriate to the laity and irrelevant to the sacred. With an understanding of late medieval joke-making, however, we are able to perceive humor in prayer books and churches not as subversive, but rather ‘at once against the law and on the side of the law,’ according to Howard Bloch, who wrote on the genre of medieval fabliaux.4 The restorative nature of the joke, according to Mary Douglas and Sigmund Freud, makes it ‘frivolous in that it produces no real alternative, only an exhilarating sense of freedom from form in general.’5 Laughter in the late Middle Ages could also operate within the controlled and acceptable framework of society, sometimes creating freedom from fear and the ‘other.’ This is made manifest particularly in the gargoyles of Gothic cathedrals, once ‘intended to turn away evil [… then] tend to become mere comic masks; by the fifteenth century the process is complete and, instead of threatening, they are intended to amuse.’6 René Girard writes about laughter and crying as closely related, in that both respond to a loss of control on some level.7 For carnival revelers, for example, all hier��archy and social control are suspended through celebration. The loss of social order and control, writes David Smith, is at once socially recuperative because it ‘evokes a special kind of sociable laughter, one that at its best frees us from the norms, fears and constraints that ordinarily rule our lives. But to the extent that it entails reversal, it’s also deep laughter, in that it means defeating some of our deepest fears.’8 The humor of the porridge-cooking, diaper-drying Joseph finds its roots in the high medieval ‘World Upside Down’, which provides an important context for the emergence of Josephine humor in devotional contexts. The ‘World Upside Down’ flourished within the aristocratic court centers of the High Middle Ages, perhaps arising in part from the desire for social order, an affirmation of a society’s cultural values in the face of chaos. Keith Moxey and Michael Camille suggest, however, that the satire of traditional sex roles, chivalric attitudes, or the clergy could occur only in circumstances in which the status quo was not actually questioned; the margins actually reinforced the patron’s class-based assumptions.9 Peasants were a particu�� larly popular embellishment for the aristocratic owner of a manuscript, whether in the margins of the Hours or the illuminations of a calendar sequence, because of 4 Bloch, The Scandal of the Fabliaux, 125. 5 Douglas, ‘Jokes,’ in Implicit Meanings, 96; Douglas, like Sigmund Freud, sees jokes as forms of subversion: Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious; see also Cohen, Jokes. 6 Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, 213. 7 Girard, ‘Perilous Balance.’ 8 Smith, ‘Sociable Laughter, Deep Laughter,’ 4; According to Bakhtin, this loss also entails ‘free and familiar contact among people.’ Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 123. 9 Moxey, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the “World Upside Down”,’ 130; Camille, ‘Labouring for the Lord.’

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their relegation to their ‘proper’ place in the mind of their beholder.10 The calendar of the Très Riches Heures of the Valois Duke Jean of Berry (Musée Condé, Chantilly) – left incomplete upon the death of the artists, the Limbourg Brothers, and their patron in 1416 – is an expanded illustrative version of the cycle of the months established over the two previous centuries. In the February scene an array of ‘uncultured, boorish, and vulgar’ peasants expose their underskirts and genitalia to their aristocratic viewer.11 According to Jonathan Alexander, the socio-historical situation of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as well as that of the Duke Jean, explains these images’ strong contrasts between the behavior of the peasants and that of the aristocracy. The Jacquerie of 1358, during which northern French peasants rose up and massacred landowners and their deputies, had been ended with brute force not long before the date of this manuscript, and the Duke was particularly well known for embezzlement and over-taxation of his lands, according to Froissart.12 The Lim�� bourg Brothers’ inclusion of the Duke’s numerous castles within the calendar scenes, according to Alexander, acted as a repeated statement of Jean’s military power, and a powerful stance against rival feudal lords such as Jean sans Peur, the Duke of Burgundy and his nephew, and against the peasantry.13 The marginal imagery in the Luttrell Psalter (1320–1340; British Library, London) documents the productivity and riches of the lord of the manor’s estates, celebrating a healthy economy, but often exhibiting a degree of nostalgia as well. As the medieval aristocracy was gradually losing its former political power, marginal imagery documented this decaying social class’s fear of the lower classes and displayed ‘their wish to retain the signs of rank, blood, gesture and manners, all of which subjected their courtly bodies to a pseudo-spiritual code of ethical chivalric behaviour and, in turn, subjugated all other bodies beneath them.’14 Camille emphasizes the fact that ‘the inversion and release of liminality works only for those in power, those who maintain the status quo and have something at stake in resisting change.’15 While peasants are quite active in the margins, their presence as a subjugated social stratum operating within this liminal space negates their adoption of any power of their own.

10 Bosch’s shepherds of the Prado Adoration of the Magi mirror another satirical type that appears frequently in the art of the aristocracy: the bad or lazy peasant or the shepherd who ignores his flock, thus inviting the wolf, which frequently doubles as a signifier of the Devil, as in an English bestiary of c. 1200 at Aberdeen. This type contrasts particularly with the frequently represented image of the Good Shepherds of Bethlehem, those who are vigilant in a world full of evil, ‘keeping watch over their flocks by night’ (Luke 2:8). Peasant laziness is depicted in Psalters and Books of Hours as ‘both a sin against God and a moral iniquity.’ Alexander, ‘Labeur and Paresse,’ 447, fig. 16. 11 Alexander, ‘Labeur and Paresse,’ 439. 12 Alexander, ‘Labeur and Paresse,’ 440; Froissart, Chronicles, 361–370. 13 Alexander, ‘Labeur and Paresse,’ 440. 14 Camille, Image on the Edge, 100; Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. 15 Camille, Image on the Edge, 127.

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To understand the origins of humor’s move to the center of later religious scenes, we might look to the margins of high medieval manuscripts and churches and their ‘irreverent’ commentary on sacred events depicted or enacted ‘center stage.’ Michael Camille revealed for us this interaction of the margins with the center, not just in terms of their meaning, as Lilian Randall has successfully established, but with respect to the margin’s function in conveying meaning for the whole. The center is dependent upon the margins for its existence because ‘things written or drawn in the margins add an extra dimension, a supplement, that is able to gloss, parody, modernize and problematize the text’s authority while never totally undermining it.’16 Courtly con�� ventions like the service of ladies were satirized in the margins of manuscripts as well, with the marginalia of romances often self-referential, functioning as a spectacle for the delight of the courtly viewer, while satirizing the very social practices of the aristocracy. In a book owned by the French aristocrat Guillaume de Termonde (1278–1312), for example, the ‘arrow in the hindquarters’ motif provides an ironic commentary on the tale of Arthur in the center.17 By interpreting marginal and monstrous forms as crucial to the visual product as a whole, Camille is able to adduce the images’ ability to convey meaning to both lay and clerical viewers simultaneously. In his discussion of a twelfth-century procession of monstrous creatures on the south door of St. Pierre at Aulnay-de-Saintonge, Camille draws a distinction between ‘ambiguity’ and the ‘ambivalent’: ‘while ambiguous things cannot be defined in terms of any specific category, things that are ambivalent belong to more than one domain at a time.’18 The marginal imagery in monastic foundations and cathedrals or parish churches therefore existed in two interpretive spaces. For the monks at Aulnay, the violent and greedy procession over the south door could have signified the ‘vulgar rabble’ of the illiterate layfolk traveling on pilgrimage. But for the laity, the same images, particularly the ram-Bishop and harp-playing ass, critiqued clerical greed and illiteracy.19 This ‘ambivalence’ is latent in many of the images that adorn churches, altarpieces, paintings, and manuscripts – any of the spaces in which sacred and secular concerns intertwined in the late Middle Ages – and this phenomenon was a constant for any God-fearing individual.20 But the relegation of the ram-Bishop, for example, may be extended beyond lay interpretation alone. A critique of greed within the Church would have been just as poignant for a lesser cleric. Throughout the Middle Ages, the ecclesiastical elite are 16 Camille, Image on the Edge, 10. 17 Camille, Image on the Edge, 90–100. 18 Camille, Image on the Edge, 67. 19 The ass, fox, wolf, and sow of Aulnay also appear in parodic animal fables popular in the oral tradition, but they are particularly powerful within the ecclesiastical context: ‘One of the most powerful statements that the monstrosities of marginal art make is that they violate the taboo that separates the human from the animal. Christianity held it essential that man and nature were “discontinuous”, but marginal art constantly mixes them up.’ Camille, Image on the Edge, 70. 20 Dale, ‘Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms’; Valdez del Alamo, Palace of the Mind.

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criticized for exchanging penance for money and for selling divine forgiveness and justice – the unsellable, ‘any decision that was God’s to make.’21 The development of a commercial economy based on the exchange of money rather than traditional loyalty was a concern particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for clerics, and the clergy’s concomitant sins became fodder for satires of papal and clerical avarice that continued through the Renaissance.22 Witty collections of Latin verses, called cento, written in the syntax of biblical verse, portray a pope who expounds to his cardinals on the doctrine of avarice. Such Latin texts were produced and consumed by the clergy for the clergy, since few laymen could read them at the time – a tradition that expands the agency of Aulnay’s images across occupational divisions. Greedy clerics were frequently described as predatory beasts, like the wolf, or mocked for their gluttony and guzzling of wine.23 Of course, humor and satire could be present in works that reflect sincere devotion, as evidenced in the well-known imagery of the Betrayal and Annunciation miniatures in the Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (1324–1328, Fig. 2.2). Here, the basde-page includes a bawdy mock-joust on goats, the object of which is to ‘pierce the barrel’ in the center, a visual pun on the vagina or womb.24 The expression aforer le tonel a quelqu’une (‘to broach someone’s barrel’) is common in Old French fabliaux in the discussion of sex.25 But this scene does not detract from its related central image across the page in the Annunciation scene; it may have entertained the young Jeanne, but it also reiterates what occurs at that moment, when Christ is incarnated in Mary’s womb. Similarly, the playful game of Froggy in the Middle mirrors the Betrayal and Mocking of Christ on the opposite page. We may interpret motifs of Joseph cooking or drying diapers analogously – as well as further motifs discussed below that poke fun at his foolishness, old age, or cuckoldry – as a kind of playful adornment and refocusing upon central tenets of the Christian faith. Joseph’s role as nutritor Domini in the Hamburg Petri-Altar’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt scene, Sheila Schwartz’s primary focus in her article on the altarpiece, is not really negated, or even reduced, by the saint’s portrayal on the same diagonal, performing the same action, teeth bared, as the ass in the lower-left corner.26 Furthermore, the humorous reading does not preclude clerical laughter; play did not belong to the realm of the laity alone, whether in the medieval arts, festivals, or rituals. Play is a concept perhaps easier to define, or at least explain, with respect to religious experiences for both laity and clergy, and itself anchors satire, comedy, humor, laughter, and the ridiculous. Johan Huizinga’s thought-provoking study on the 21 Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire,’ 55. 22 Yunck, The Development of Mediaeval Venality Satire, 112–114. 23 Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire,’ 56–58. 24 Randall, ‘Games and the Passion.’ 25 Pearcy, ‘Obscene Diction in the Fabliaux,’ 166–167. 26 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar.’

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Fig. 2.2. Jean Pucelle, Betrayal of Christ and the Annunciation, miniature from the Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, 1324–1328. Grisaille, tempera, and ink on vellum, 8.9 x 6.2 cm (single folio). The Cloisters Collection, 1954, inv. 54.1.2, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

fundamental significance of play to civilization, which went beyond the standard biological interpretation that the act of playing merely serves physiological purposes, is an enduringly compelling analysis explaining one way that humor and sacrality could overlap.27 He points to the irreducibility of the fun itself of playing, which confounds analysis and interpretation grounded in logic. Laughter, he writes, is not always bound up with play and fun because play itself can be quite serious, whether in sports, chess, children’s games, contests, exhibitions, or performances. But laughter does arise from the fun of these actions, even when they are ‘played’ in earnest. It is from this fact, we could say, that the association of laughter and seriousness, or earnestness, arises. Huizinga’s line of inquiry itself disproves his theory that play and seriousness formed two exclusive ‘moods’ in the Middle Ages.28 Out of play come laughter, the joke, the comic, wit, and folly; such things can thus arise from a situation of earnestness. 27 Paul Barolsky’s seminal work on humor in Italian Renaissance art indicates the usefulness of Huizinga’s study for understanding early modern play in art history: Barolsky, Infinite Jest. 28 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 3–6; see also Paul Hardwick, ed.,The Playful Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Elaine C. Block.

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Although, as Huizinga writes, play is ‘a stepping out of “real” life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own,’ it has ‘real’ consequences:29 It adorns life, amplifies it and is to that extent a necessity both for the individual – as a life function – and for society by reason of the meaning it contains, its significance, its expressive value, its spiritual and social associations, in short, as a cultural function […] It thus has its place in a sphere superior to the strictly biological processes of nutrition, reproduction and self-preservation.30

In festival and ritual, exhibition can be equally ‘play’-ful, no matter its degree of seriousness, and therefore adds to the group’s well-being. It creates order, bringing ‘a temporary, a limited perfection’ into ‘an imperfect world and into the confusion of life.’31 It creates a powerful illusion, which Huizinga notes means literally ‘in-play,’ from inludere, and it temporarily suspends all ‘real-life’ ill will or vendettas, even class distinctions. This functional ‘play’ takes place in the inversions of carnival festivity, as well as in smaller inversions like that of the ‘Boy Bishop’ of Constance, the original setting for the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel of c. 1400. The play incorporated a choir-boy from the cathedral school who had been selected to be the schuler Bischoff. Equipped with cope and crosier, he temporarily reigned supreme over the ludic cradle play’s performance several times a day and the festivity of the Twelve Days of Christmas.32 Ritual further links play and seriousness, demonstrating that the two are in fact not each other’s antithesis. In transporting participants to a different realm, the ritual act has all the characteristics of play. Like play, according to Romano Guardini, liturgy is useless, but useful. Representation and display in a performance can constitute play in that they involve removing oneself from common life, and stepping into a ‘higher order.’ A sacred performance, whether a Christmas play or the liturgy from which such a dramatic form arose, actualizes an ideal through more than just symbolism. A rite is representation, and thus more than merely imitative, particularly for the late medieval mind; the principle of transubstantiation during the Mass denies this outright. Worshippers ‘play’ the sacred event, in effect actualizing a higher order much as the contest participant displays something out of the ordinary or particularly admirable. Similarly, in play, ‘the distinction between belief and make-believe breaks down. The concept of play merges quite naturally with that of holiness […] The ritual act […] will always remain within the play category, but in this seeming subordination the recognition of its holiness is not lost.’33 By extension, laughter and 29 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 8. 30 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 9. 31 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 10. 32 Simon, ‘The Home Town of the Schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel.’ 33 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 25–27.

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the comic, arising from play and fun, though not always present therein, can emerge easily from ‘sober’ holiness, particularly in performance and ritual. Along with play, it produces an exhilarating freedom from the ordinary, and is therefore socially beneficial for all involved. As scholars like Johan Huizinga, Aron Gurevich, Michael Camille, and Paul Binski have rightly demonstrated, no strict separation between the Church and the social dynamics of popular culture actually existed, despite the earlier and much-endorsed thought of Bakhtin.34 Even so, as Paul Binski notes, recent publications on marginality ‘such as Camille’s have understood mixture and ambiguation, yet have persisted in setting against them a binary socio-cultural and usually class-based critique.’35 Bakhtin’s influential Rabelais and His World qualified the laughter of the carnivalesque, the ‘World Upside Down,’ and the grotesque of the medieval festival as the ‘low’ popular cultural sphere of the common layfolk who were allegedly rebelling against the ‘high’ official culture of the dominant Church and state. The lower class’s employment of humor, parody, and folklore supposedly fortified them with strategies of resistance to the ‘norm’ imposed from above. According to Bakhtin, the propensity of the lower classes for the scatological is an example particularly of the desire to rebel against the upper class’s desired decorum.36 Bakhtin understood carnival behavior as an expression of medieval popular culture, which he equated with a culture of laughter. The source of carnival was, to him, the desire of ‘popular culture,’ or the lower classes, to invert socio-political reality in a culture supposedly dominated and strictly restricted by the Church (and its associated educated classes) who suppressed laughter.37 In fact, however, reversal and trans��gression appear to have permeated the festal behavior and humor of the clerical and lay higher and lower orders. The Feast of Fools, a festival typically celebrated on Innocent’s Day (28 December) or on the Feast of the Circumcision (1 January), typifies an instance in which the clergy themselves sanctioned societal inversion, when their lower ranks were allowed to run wild. Despite many accounts of clerical participation in such celebrations, the festum stultorum, festum fatuorum, and asinaria festa were suppressed by the Church hierarchy as early as 1207, the year that Pope Innocent III condemned deacons who wore masks or participated in other revelries.38 The problem particularly incensed Jean Gerson, writing on 12 March 1445 as Chancellor of the University of Paris: Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the Hours of the Office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the altar while the celebrant is saying mass. They play dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles 34 Gurevich, ‘Bakhtin and His Theory of Carnival,’ 57. 35 Binski, Gothic Wonder, 284. 36 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 368–436. 37 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 96. 38 Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 1:287–295.

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of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts; and arouse the laughter of their fellows and bystanders in infamous performances with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste.39

The playful carvings on Rouen’s Portail des Libraires also reveal the clergy’s ability to harness the humor of the inversionary mode for themselves, as does the ordo of Baalam of the Prophet’s Play performed at Rouen, in which a pantomime ass takes center stage.40 The liberation, parody, and social inversion of religious rituals and festivals could have an ‘inoculating’ rather than ‘infectious’ effect on society and the city in that through the containment of transgressive actions, the city’s institutions could be strengthened.41 Mahadev Apte’s anthropological study of humor, laughter, and rever��sal in ritual groups categorizes reversals into three types that accord with medieval celebrations: that of status, behavior, and sex. He suggests that a kind of ‘immunity’ is granted to those doing the reversal, such as friars dressing as women and wealthy burghers ‘playing peasant’; in other words, their performance, although it transgresses social norms, does not provoke punishment or censure while it is contained within an already allocated space or time.42 The creation of set spaces and times by society for societal inversion to take place seemingly occurs because the result of such temporary disorder is ‘innocuous’ or apotropaic. It is believed to drive away dangerous disorder. In the iconographic inversions of medieval marginalia, we see this loss of social order occur in the form of donkeys dressed like monks and knights fleeing snails (a clever play of words in Middle High German, in which schnell can translate to ‘fast’ or ‘valiant’). While the world is turned upside down for the aristocratic reader and laughter is elicited, the chaos is simultaneously contained, perhaps in a kind of inoculation from fear, including that of actual societal upheaval, as Jonathan Alexander suggests occurs with peasant imagery. In a way, therefore, apotropaism could be at work. But laughter’s freedom comes from many sources and is not always easy to explain – nor does it always merit explanation. As Binski notes, ‘a very large percentage of all medieval marginal imagery is actually, and deliberately, nonsense. In possessing sense, but not reference…it is necessarily beyond the domain of the moral in any practical sense of the term. Its sense is rhetorical or artificial, and therein lies the experience of pleasure.’43 No matter the source, this study offers ample evidence that humor, play, and the inversionary mode were central to religious and civic life in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Clerical and civic authorities alike considered the most 39 Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 1:294; Harris, Sacred Folly, 1–2; Camille, Image on the Edge, 92. 40 Camille, Image on the Edge, 93. 41 Castle, Masquerade and Civilization, 88–99. 42 Apte, Humor and Laughter, 155–161. 43 Binski, Gothic Wonder, 286.

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bawdy, raucous behavior during religious festivals like carnival and kermis to serve an important overall function. Considering humor as exclusively characterizing ‘low’, secular culture ignores its broader societal, emotional, and religious implications. Humorous forms and visual puns graced the column capitals, walls, misericords, and exteriors of cathedrals, churches, and cloisters, and proliferated throughout religious books of the high and late Middle Ages. The idea that the humor of prints, panels, plays, and stories would infuse religious representations of St. Joseph, a figure whom God himself deems a cuckold on some level, accords well, therefore, with an already-acknowledged, strong medieval trend of ‘holy laughter.’ But this form of humor is no longer restricted to the margins – it permeates the center.44

2.3 Diaper-Washer Josephs and the ‘Battle for the Pants’ While it is never exactly clear to the twenty-first century eye what specifically the artist intends to mock in paralleling Joseph with the ass of the Flight, Nativity, or Adoration scenes, as Chapter One shows, the parallel is a common one, and the human dressed in ass’s ears or being ridden/driven like a beast of burden is ubiquitously cast as the fool and outsider. This could be the old man whose young wife ‘places horns on his head’ (makes him into a cuckold), or the base peasant or vagrant who is hopelessly unenlightened. Chapter One already presented some of the many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century images of Joseph drying or warming the baby’s swaddling clothes, holding his stockings which would become the baby’s diaper, or presenting the freshly swaddled child to Mary. But Hieronymus Bosch’s Prado Adoration of the Magi (Fig. 1.9) presents an enigmatic, marginalized father that highlights the particularly close relationship between secular, satirical iconography and religious art of the late fifteenth century. Bosch’s placement of Joseph in the corner, far away from the main event of the Adoration and busied with the process of drying diapers, not only accords with preexisting Josephine iconography but also exposes the satire inherent in such depictions of the saint. The marginalization of a relic and holy figure central to popular devotion, particularly on an altarpiece of the Upper Rhine region close to Aachen, simultaneously calls attention to the evil present in the main scene of the Adoration: the figure inside the shed, who is understood to represent King Herod or the Antichrist.45

44 Or perhaps, the ‘margins’ as a concept never really existed. As Binski writes, ‘In fact, there is little evidence for thinking that marginalia in our sense – as a genre defined by a socio-spatial metaphor – were deemed to have existed at all.’ Binski, Gothic Wonder, 284. 45 Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch, 114. The small figures surrounding the doorway to the outside world – a toad, a figure in a pointed hat (denoting Judaism or Synagoga), and a demonic, simian-like figure – may function as commentary on the virtue and corruption presented in the main scene.

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Scholars including Walter Gibson and Larry Silver agree that Bosch developed his iconography for his aristocratic patrons and buyers in part through his imaginative fusion of common profane and sacred tropes with earlier medieval marginalia. In 1949, Dirk Bax showed that Bosch’s forms, rather than being derived from the working of the subconscious, appeared frequently as visual puns and metaphors, much like contemporary and earlier prints and manuscript marginalia. Not only the Church’s teachings, but also popular thought in the form of folklore, for example, formed the artist’s sources. Many of Bosch’s details are related to carnival exuberance and folly, as well as to their associated sensual overindulgence.46 Whether the art��ist’s inclusion of such references in his work functioned exclusively as an attempt to moralize against overindulgence remains a topic of debate; but the most convincing arguments – those of Walter Gibson, Larry Silver, and Keith Moxey – are informed by late medieval courtly artistic traditions, which seems appropriate considering that Bosch’s patrons were primarily aristocratic. As in the medieval margins, Bosch’s religious paintings mix fantastic and sexualized imagery – like lascivious wild men and hybrid monsters, or mischwesen, composed from parts of reptiles, insects, birds, and amphibians – with religious imagery, like the birth of Adam and Eve in The Garden of Earthly Delights or the Temptation of Saint Anthony. Although The Garden of Earthly Delights was fabricated in triptych form, a format typically reserved for altarpieces, its central theme derives directly from the courtly tradition in its depiction of a luxurious Garden of Love, popular in late medieval romances like the Roman de la Rose, as well as in painted panels, prints, manuscript marginalia, and calendar page illuminations.47 The art from which Bosch developed his ideas, often dependent upon the concept of the ‘World Upside Down,’ is considered emblematic of a widely popular, satirical, and entertaining form of humor, satirizing and inverting relationships between the sexes and between the lower levels of society and the clergy and aristocracy. This imagery arises not solely from the margins of chivalric romances, but also from the marginalia of missals, prayer books, and psalters. Moxey aptly notes: Bosch used the satirical and entertainment value of the notion of the ‘world upside down,’ as well as that of fabricated monsters, in order to demonstrate the humanist artist’s new claim to artistic freedom [… his] appreciation of the subversive potential of these ‘world upside down’ reversals, the way in which, for example, inversions of scale might be used to marginalize the activities of humans by centralizing the presence of birds and fruit, thus suggesting that the former are captive to their sensual desires, enabled him to extend the principle so as to organize certain sections of the composition and even the central plan as a whole.48 46 Bax, Hieronymus Bosch. 47 Silver, Hieronymus Bosch; Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch. 48 Moxey, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the “World Upside Down”,’ 124.

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During the fifteenth century, the ‘World Upside Down’ manifested itself with increasing popularity as a ‘Battle for the Pants,’ both literally and figuratively. The ‘Battle for the Pants’ is often shown symbolically by a married couple tugging on a pair of men’s breeches, but sometimes the woman rides the man like a donkey or attacks him with a weapon associated with household chores – this could be a spoon, a spindle, a distaff, a washing paddle, or a piece of furniture. The image of the man ridden by the woman or performing household chores functioned as a popular visual metaphor of the ‘abasement and humiliation to which men were liable as a consequence of their susceptibility to the seductive attraction of women [… and] to satirize marriages in which the woman had usurped her husband’s “natural” position of authority.’49 The theme was influenced particularly by the popularity of the thirteenth-century legend of Aristotle and Phyllis, which tells of how the philosopher was so overcome with foolish infatuation that even he succumbed to allowing a woman ride him like a beast. Again, the relationship to Mary and her husband’s often hilarious domesticity must be noted. The subjects of the ‘Power of Women’ and the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ appear frequently in both literary and visual form in the Low Countries and France, and especially on misericords. The widespread destruction of church furniture in Germany makes it difficult to know how often the subjects appeared in churches there, but their frequency in the German portable arts suggests that it was once prolific as well.50 On a mid-sixteenth-century misericord from Hoogstraten’s collegiate church of St. Catherine, for example, a woman and a pant-less man struggle between themselves for the breeches.51 In woodcuts satirizing wifely insubordination, such as those by Erhard Schön, the inversion of marital order is apparent by the presence of a sword, a purse, or a pair of pants in the woman’s hand. Such articles are stolen by the wife of Hans Sachs’s carnival play The Angry Wife, and quite clearly symbolize domination, which the woman appropriates in the ‘topsy-turvy’ world depicted by such plays and images.52 The man, who often carries cooking pots or diapers, like Joseph, performs the ‘woman’s work’ and is therefore stripped of the power intrinsically tied to notions of medieval manhood. The satirical ‘Battle of the Sexes’ developed during a time when marriage was considered spiritually inferior to celibacy. But towards the end of the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century, with the flood of reformative discourse into the cities and towns of northern Europe, marriage and parenthood began to attain greater status, particularly as the concept of the urban family developed toward the more modern, nuclear form. The role of the husband or father became increasingly 49 Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, 103. 50 Van Buren, ‘On the Sources of Early Netherlandish Painting.’ 51 Block, Corpus of Medieval Misericords, plate X, NH-11. 52 Gibson, ‘Some Flemish Popular Prints.’

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Fig. 2.3. Israhel van Meckenem, Henpecked husband, 1480. Engraving, 9.7 x 10.1 cm. After Lehrs 649.

important during the fifteenth century, with the family’s financial state more directly linked to his individual fiscal responsibility. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century prints and paintings especially mock the husband and father who cannot provide for his family because of his own failings, and it is easy to see how the ‘Battle for the Pants’ became increasingly relevant in this setting. The social developments underlying these changes in familial ideals and anxieties toward the roles of the sexes are treated more extensively in Chapter Four, but the proliferation of the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ itself must be noted first, as well as its close relationship with the development of Joseph’s iconography. Israhel van Meckenem (c. 1445–1503), a German printmaker and goldsmith, produced a prolific number of engravings on the topic for his buyers, who apparently avidly collected images of the theme. In Henpecked Husband of 1480 (Fig. 2.3), the pant-less husband does the spinning while the wife puts on the pants and prepares to strike him with her spindle.53 Images of this subject appeared on church capitals and in manuscripts as well.54 Their presence in religious environ�� ments, written and built, again casts the sacred as a realm of both humor and veneration, much like the plays of Christmastime and Shrovetide. St. Joseph’s loss of his pants, literally and figuratively, in drama and in art, easily occupied this same realm.

53 Benton, Medieval Mischief, 83–86; Grössinger, Picturing Women, 116, fig. 47. 54 Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, figs. 527–543; Bovey, Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts, 53–55; Benton, Medieval Mischief, 86.

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Imagery satirizing the diaper-washing husband abounds in popular prints. Engravers like the German artist known as the Housebook Master, who worked during the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and like Bosch, on the Middle Rhine, brought the satirical marginalia of medieval manuscript illumination to the center in the form of humorous prints of the henpecked husband, the peasant being ridden by his wife, and parodic coats of arms referencing the lower classes’ attempts to emulate the higher orders.55 A woodcut by Erhard Schön of 1533, entitled There is No Greater Treasure Here on Earth than an Obedient Wife Who Covets Honor (Fig. 2.4), exhibits the characteristic humiliation of the husband who is made subordinate to his wife. Notably, the husband’s humiliation results from his own lack of capability in the role of husband, to which the text above the image refers. The foolish husband bemoans his ill luck for the wrong reasons: Oh woe, oh woe is me, poor fool How I must work to pull this cart! And why? Because I took myself a wife. Would that the thought had never crossed my mind! A shrewish scold has come into my house; She has taken my sword, my pants, and my purse. Night and day I have no peace, And never a kind word from her.56

To which the wife responds: Hey, dear boy, what you say is true, But be quiet or I’ll hit you over the head. If you want a beautiful and pious little wife Who obeys you at all times, Then stay at home in your own house And stop carousing about. […] If you will not work to support me, Then you must wash, spin, and draw the cart And be beaten on your back.57

The fool, dressed in ass’s ears toward the right of the image, tells the young man nearby who is considering marriage to avoid it at all costs, and that he should seek out loose women instead. The laundry basket in the cart that the husband pulls refers 55 Moxey, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the “World Upside Down”,’ 129. 56 Quoted in Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, 108 and adapted from Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, 52–53. 57 Quoted in Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, 109.

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Fig. 2.4. Erhard Schön, There is No Greater Treasure Here on Earth than an Obedient Wife Who Covets Honor, 1533. Woodcut, 25 x 21.9 cm. After Moxey (1989) 102.

Fig. 2.5. Hans Schäufelein, Diaper Washer, woodcut to lost poem ‘Ho, Ho, Diaper Washer’ by Hans Sachs, 1536. Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg. Photo © Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg/Germany.

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to his humiliation as Windelwascher, or diaper-washer, a popular term that derogatorily referred to a henpecked husband. A woodcut dated 1536 by Hans Schäufelein (Fig. 2.5) that once illustrated a lost poem by Hans Sachs entitled ‘Ho, Ho, Diaper Washer’ exhibits a husband washing diapers while his wife threatens to beat him.58 In Dutch, the German Windelwascher became the character Jan de Wasscher, who was reduced to minding the baby, washing everything, and receiving beatings from his wife.59 It is safe to say that Joseph himself subsumes the role of Windelwascher and is therefore open to similar derision for his subservience to his wife, and yet we cannot necessarily blame him, for whose wife could approximate Mary? His old age, by comparison to the youth of Mary, as well as his status as the impotent, ultimate cuckold, is similarly satirized in contemporary works like the Hoogstraten Tableau, discussed below.

2.4 Joseph, the Ass, the Peasant, and the Fool A small, painted wooden retable of c. 1400 in the Mayer van den Bergh Museum, discussed in Chapter One for its depiction of St. Joseph drying the holy diaper (Plate 3), presents a second, even more blatantly humorous image of the father in its scene of the Flight into Egypt in the tabernacle’s lower-left corner. It might be argued that for reasons of space, the artist compressed the composition so much that the ass’s ears overtook Joseph’s head. However, a competent artist patronized by the Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold certainly could have raised the terrain of the right-hand side instead, in order to present the saint’s face more clearly. Contextualized by similar Joseph/donkey parallels that appear as early as 1379 (Fig. 1.11), the image appears to be nothing less than a demonstration of satirical humor at its finest, comparing the poor, weary foster-father with the ass, and thus with the popular contemporary type of the Fool, in contrast with the youthful perfection of his wife. A similar visual play appears a century later, around 1500, in an Adoration of the Magi by the Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece (Fig. 2.6), a seemingly innocent juxtaposition until we place it within the wider context of contemporary artistic and literary treatments of derided characters. These reveal just how popular and clear the risible meaning of such a comparison between beast and human could be for a fifteenth-century audience – and that the conspicuous prominence of the ass’s ears near Joseph can be understood as an unequivocal reference to foolishness, a form of mockery.60 We have seen such a juxtaposition before in an Adoration of the Magi by the Boucicaut

58 Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, 106. 59 Kunzle, ‘World Upside Down,’ 48–49. 60 Grössinger, Humour and Folly, no. 63.

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Fig. 2.6. Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1500. Oil on panel. Inv. 10651, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Photo by the author.

Master and his workshop from c. 1415 (Plate 4) and in the Würzburg Adoration of c. 1525 that plays upon Joseph’s ‘horned’ status as cuckold (Fig. 1.12). In addition to the Mayer van den Bergh tabernacle, Philip the Bold commissioned two other works depicting St. Joseph that intertwine humorous themes with the sacred, including the pant-less Joseph who knits his stockings together in the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych (Plate 1) and the guzzling Joseph of the Chartreuse de Champmol’s high altarpiece, discussed further below.61 The Windelwascher and ‘fool’ Joseph of the smaller Mayer van den Bergh tabernacle conforms to the nature of this collection, and was probably commissioned by the Duke for his private oratory chapel at the Chartreuse de Champmol. The most common characteristic of the ridiculed country bumpkin in late medieval society was his affinity to animals like the ass, both in terms of physical appearance and morals. French fabliaux and German Schwankliteratur 61 Mayer van den Bergh, Collections, 19; Catalogue du Musée Mayer van den Bergh, 35; de Coo, Museum Mayer van den Bergh I, 120; de Coo, Museum Mayer van den Bergh II, 141; Deneffe, Peters, and Fremout, Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting in the Low Countries, 84.

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characterized peasants, for example, as easily tricked and cuckolded because of their bestial stupidity. As the type of the rustic or vilain, peasants represented the base and the ridiculous. In a fourteenth-century short poem by Jean de Condé entitled ‘Des Vilains et des Courtois,’ the rustic epitomizes how not to act, in clear contrast with the virtuous, chivalric knight.62 German literature before 1400 tend�� ed to describe the rustic as boorish or exhibiting uninhibited, frenzied behavior, while in French literature he was characterized as hideous because of his dark skin, attributed to proximity to the ground. Peasants were depicted in art in a variety of ways, as Paul Freedman has shown us – some ‘as a familiar subordinate, lowly in a normal way (ill-dressed, bent over, dark), while others rendered him as a disturbing inhabitant of a world apart, subhuman.’63 In any of these cases they could be presented as animals, but the draft animal, and especially the donkey, was the most common selection for less threatening, yet still ridiculous, toiling peasant: the one who knows his place.64 It cannot be pure coincidence that the characteristics for which peasants, rustics, and fools were ridiculed from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, including bestial stupidity and intemperance with drink and food, were those that also colored humorous depictions of St. Joseph – although his character may, as in the Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece’s Adoration, be dignified in the same image. By the second half of the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries, although rustics were derided in prints and paintings by the same bestial qualities as they were in earlier images, extreme exaggeration frequently rendered their debasement even more explicit. Even members of the bourgeoisie became implicated in the lack of decorum, as in a group of prints by Sebald Beham in which they adopt the animalistic behavior of the peasant and fool, feasting uncontrollably or working in the fields in close company with their

62 Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 133; Galpin, ‘Cortois and Vilain,’ 8–9. Further studies of literary treatments of peasants include Martini, Das Bauerntum im deutschen Schrifttum, 41–102, 135–213; Hügli, Der deutsche Bauer im Mittelalter; Wunder, ‘Der dumme und der schlaue Bauer’; and Coulton, The Medieval Village, 231–252. 63 Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 139. 64 Christa Grössinger writes about humor and folly in secular prints of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in northern Europe: ‘Of all classes of society it was the Peasant who was made to look and act the Fool […] they were portrayed as boorish and vulgar [… while] in medieval literature the concept of the good ploughman culminated in the person of Piers Plowman […] towards the end of the fifteenth century some of the sermons warned more and more frequently of changes in society and attempts by peasants to elevate their station in society, coinciding with the decline of chivalry and its social order. In general, the peasant was praised as long as he kept to his lowly position and fulfilled his tasks, as ordained by God. This fact was most noticeable at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany [in 1525], when, as long as the peasants remained God-fearing and steadfast like Job in their submission to hardships, Luther spoke of them as the “salt of the earth” and the “Volk”, whereas, once they took up arms to actively defend their rights, everyone including Luther condemned them.’ Grössinger, Humour and Folly, 89. In the marginalia of the Luttrell Psalter, laboring peasants are likened to their draft animals, while wild babewyns provide commentary on their presence. Camille, ‘Labouring for the Lord,’ plates 83 and 85; Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 140.

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beasts. Peasant intemperance was shown particularly by comparing their eating and drinking habits with those of animals, that is, as out of control.65 Jonathan Alexander’s discussion of the peasants’ derision in the Duke of Berry’s early fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures rightly emphasizes the Limbourg Brothers’ frequent, and sometimes subtle, comparisons between the peasantry and beasts of burden in the calendar cycle miniatures. The September miniature, designed by the Limbourgs but completed by Jean Colombe after their death (c. 1416; Musée Condé, Chantilly), places a peasant in the center of the page, framing him with a donkey and oxen: ‘His role as constructed in this representation is analogous to theirs, both in his task and in his unselfconscious behavior, with his stockings falling down and his underclothes showing.’66 Similar ‘mooning’ peasants are shown in the March minia��ture and in the February miniature. According to Detlev Fehling, the presentation of the posterior was understood to be a submissive action by inferiors to their superiors.67 The loss of one’s stockings as something worthy of mockery, as we have already seen in the ‘Battle for the Pants’ imagery, was also, of course, taken up by writers and artists in the representation of St. Joseph. We need only remember the pant-less Joseph of the Hessische Weihnachtsspiel. The increasing ridicule of the peasant in art and literature from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries was a trend that Walter French ascribed to a greater contrast between city and country than in the earlier Middle Ages. During the high medieval period, the distance between urbanity and rusticity was more frequently also a pleasant one, with poets like Neidhart von Reuental (c. 1190–1236/37) and Tannhäuser (d. after 1265) contrasting the joys of a natural life in the country with the affectation of courtly life.68 Increasing hostility towards the peasantry appeared in the manner books of the thirteenth century, discussed in Chapter One, which attempted to safely distance the aristocracy and upper classes from the lower classes and their adoption of courtly behavior and dress, particularly by ridiculing the latter’s behavior through drawing parallels with the behavior of the beasts with which they lived and worked. As in the calendar scenes of the Très Riches Heures, the bliss of uninhibited country life and the satisfying ‘otherness’ of the peasantry for the more elevated elites appeared in a number of fourteenth-century courtly commissions that depict buffoonish peasants laboring or behaving like beasts and fools while nobles leisurely move about their land, like the cycle of the months on the walls of the Torre d’Aquila of Buonconsiglio Castle in Trent, painted by a fifteenth-century Bohemian artist before 1407.69

65 Grössinger, Humour and Folly, 101. 66 Alexander, ‘Labeur and Paresse,’ 442. 67 Fehling, Ethologische Überlegungen, 28; Alexander, ‘Labeur and Paresse,’ 442. 68 French, ‘Kulturgeschichtliches in the Fastnachtspiele of Hans Sachs,’ 15. 69 Castelnuovo and de Grammatica, Il Gotico nelle Alpi, 1350–1450; see Raupp, Bauernsatiren, 40–81 for the figure of the peasant in early prints.

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French, and specifically Burgundian, devotion to St. Joseph and its associated humor appears as well in the Book of Hours of Philip of Burgundy (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 76), made for Philip the Bold’s grandson by the artist Jean le Tavernier, who was active in Oudenaarde c. 1434–1469. The manuscript has been dated to 1454. The many large miniatures of the Book of Hours allowed for further personalization of the ducal commission, with Philip himself appearing as the youngest magus, Caspar, in the Adoration scene (Plate 5). In keeping with meditational traditions of the time, the setting is rendered in contemporary fashion to facilitate the reader’s devotion, with Mary’s throne becoming a tester bed, typical of aristocratic lyings-in.70 Joseph is depicted in the background as the domestic host of the kingly retinue, seated at a table with a jug of wine, his typical attribute in the Nativity plays and many images of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. His pose and the angle of his head closely mirror the horned beast by his side, and his expression appears to be one of confusion or weariness; yet he is also conspicuously placed at the site of the post supporting the old shed, the continuously recurring analogy for the ancient House of David.71 In the Nativity scene (Fig. 2.7) he is even more prominent as he warms the swaddling cloth that he will use to diaper the naked child.72 Henk van Os describes the saint as ‘too busy to adore the Child as fervently as Mary does. Joseph fans a fire with a lappet of his cloak in order to keep Jesus warm.’73 Reading the composition, however, we see that Joseph gazes concernedly toward his wife, a motion that is probably intended to encourage the actual devotee to do the same. Rather than identifying Salome, the midwife whose hand withered after questioning Mary’s purity, as the owner’s ‘recognizable model for his own behavior,’ Joseph’s acts are far more conducive to the Duke’s devotion and imitation.74 It is easy to bypass Joseph as the viewer’s object of identification, due to his seemingly menial actions and confused appearance, but the saint’s action is significant in its evocation of the holy relic at Aachen. The parallels between Joseph and the ass in Jean le Tavernier’s Adoration scene are easy for us to miss; but for someone exposed to the visual and dramatic language of derision, an audience that grew especially large in the fifteenth century with the circulation of cheaper, mass-produced satirical prints and broadsheets, the humor of Joseph’s juxtaposition with his beast of burden would have been explicit. Early Netherlandish parallels between ass and saint appear as well in a Book of Hours from Bruges (Fig. 2.8), in which Joseph and the ass are engaged in the same, bestial behav� ior of watering themselves.75

70 Campbell, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools, 187–190; van Os, The Art of Devotion, plate 2. 71 See Chapter One. 72 van Os, The Art of Devotion, fig. 3. 73 van Os, The Art of Devotion, 21. 74 van Os, The Art of Devotion, 21. 75 The International Style, plate XLVII, n. 71.

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Fig. 2.7. Jean le Tavernier, Nativity, Book of Hours of Philip of Burgundy, 1450–1460. The Hague, Koninklijke Biblioteek, Ms. 76, fol. 12r. Photo courtesy of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Like Neidhart and the Middle High German poets, artists like the Limbourgs and the anonymous master of the Trent fresco cycle served an aristocratic audience, rather than the wider, more heterogeneous, urban mixture of patricians, merchants, and artisans of the early modern cities for which comic plays like the Fastnachtspiele were performed. Their adopted view of the lower classes was perhaps somewhat functionally different in serving the class for whom the waning of the feudal era was most detrimental. The rise of an art market, as opposed to private commissions, for broadsheets, prints, and paintings that ridiculed character types like the peasant, the poor, the vagabond, the profligate, the miser, the money-changer, and the henpecked husband, however, documents the extent to which an interest in humorous ‘types’ permeated the burgher classes as well. The unbounded hilarity of comic literature including the Fastnachtspiele and Nativity plays concomitantly rose in popularity. In addition to satires of peasants, rogues, Jews, Landesknechten, artisans, and innkeepers, no authoritative figure was safe from ridicule, including the priest, noble, and

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Fig. 2.8. Master of the Gold Scrolls, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, from a Book of Hours, in Latin with a French rubric, c. 1440. Parchment. Inv. W.211, fol. 155v, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo © Walters Art Museum, used under a Creative Commons Zero License.

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merchant. Much can be learned about the humor of these characters from writers like Hans Sachs and Sebastian Brant. Walter French, who surveyed Sachs’s Fastnachtspiele in 1918, describes the playwright as one who adopts the viewpoint of the casual observer of the common man, caricaturing figures like the priest and peasant while simultaneously leading the audience to a thoughtful, idealistic conclusion.76 Ridi��cule and play frequently appeared in such comic literature and art in ‘satiro-didactic’ form, but the paradoxes of such examples are often seemingly much more incongruous.77 The popularity of the peasant in chivalric poetry developed particularly into a means of parodying courtly ideals. Humor in the peasant genre was characterized in earlier medieval literature and art by a kind of ‘double-edged sword […] while on the one hand mocking aristocratic cultural institutions such as love service, tournaments and feasts, it offered the reader or listener a vicious satire of uncouth manners and obscene sexual conduct attributed to the peasantry.’78 A prime example of such humor exists in the German Heinrich Wittenwiler’s poem Der Ring, written c. 1400, which tells the story of the peasant wedding of Betsy Wagglebottom and Berty Dripnose, whose manners, ugliness, and vulgarity are even more amusing because of their attempts to imitate chivalric behavior. By the fourteenth century, the theme of the raucous peasant wedding had already been established.79 Many of its characteristics, such as the parallels between the behavior of the unruly, gluttonous peasants and their beasts of burden, had appeared much earlier in the thirteenth-century manner books discussed in Chapter One. Carnival plays like those of Hans Sachs, which attend to bad manners, sexual and scatological offenses, and deformity and ugliness, were already an established form of humorous entertainment as well.80 Carnival behavior itself merged the human with the animal. The costumes worn by carnival revelers were frequently of animals, peasants, and devils, and it is these three types which Eckehard Simon most closely associates with the bawdy spirit of carnival. In one carnival play, ‘Dame Shrovetide’ is accused of ‘turning people into animals: foolish calves, apes, jackasses, and pigs […] when people disguised themselves as animals, it is likely that they also behaved in the lewd ways that the medieval mind associated with beasts.’81 Sebastian Franck writes that ‘some crawl on all fours like animals/ others sit on eggs hatching fools.’82 The comparison between human and ass was particularly ubiquitous in the exhibition of foolishness. Wickram’s charming tale of the monk who brayed like an ass makes this apparent: 76 French, ‘Kulturgeschichtliches in the Fastnachtspiele of Hans Sachs,’ 15. 77 French, ‘Kulturgeschichtliches in the Fastnachtspiele of Hans Sachs,’ 35. 78 Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 127. 79 Jones, Wittenwiler’s Ring; Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 127. 80 Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 128. 81 Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 202; see also Stewart, Before Bruegel. 82 Franck, Weltbuoch, fol. 131r; Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 202.

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In Poppenried there lived a monk, who oversaw its parish. He had an exceedingly abrasive voice; when he stood on the pulpit, whoever had not heard him before thought he had lost his senses. One day he had been crying out rather pitiably when a godly old widow in the church beat her hands firmly together and wept bitterly; the monk observed this well. After the sermon was finished, the monk asked the woman what had moved her to such devotion. ‘Oh dear sir,’ she said, ‘my beloved, deceased husband, as he parted from this life, knew well that I must share his goods and property with his relatives; therefore he bequeathed me in advance a handsome young ass. But not very long after my blessed husband’s death, the ass died too. This morning, as you began to cry out on the pulpit with such a great and painful voice, you reminded me of my darling ass; he had rather the same voice as you.’ The monk, who himself had expected a kind compliment from the old woman, or a praise greater than that of which he was worthy, found a disdainful answer, just like her comparison between himself and an ass. Thus it befalls in common all those greedy for commendation; when they think to obtain great praise, sometimes the greatest of mockeries comes instead.83

A number of depictions that affiliate Joseph with his bestial companions exist, in ways both overt and tacit, including the Hamburg Petri-Altar (Fig. 1.11) and an Adoration dat� ed to c. 1480 by the Master of the Legend of St. Barbara (Plate 6), which presents, in pose and action, a complementary vision of bent-over saint and ass. The humor of this image is likewise apparent in Joseph’s persistent drilling into a piece of wood, analyzed below. Artists often render the parallels between ass and saint through compositional construction, but these are most clear when the two exhibit similar behavior. In more subtle examples, Joseph’s comparison to his beastly companions is merely apparent in their portrayal on the same diagonal, looking in the same direction, often with similar expressions. Examples of this method include two German reliefs from the early sixteenth century (Figs. 2.9 and 1.12). A painting of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt of c. 1500 (Fig. 2.10) by a follower of Martin Schongauer presents a fumbling St. Joseph and ass in true bestial fashion. Their facial expressions, both with mouths open and a dumb, uncomprehending stare, probably did not fail to amuse, since the depiction of an open mouth with exposed teeth was considered particularly demonstrative of baseness, rooted in both physiognomic thought and standards of behavioral conduct outlined by popular thirteenth-century books of manners.84 Depictions of an ungraceful, self-nourishing or ‘guzzling’ Joseph abound in early Netherlandish, German, and French art; and, again, the visual vocabulary of these presentations derives from the base behavior of the animal-like rustic. In the Buxtehude Petri-Altar, executed c. 1410 by Meister Bertram’s workshop, Joseph is 83 Wickram, Das Rollwagenbüchlein, LXIII; Kurz, Jörg Wickram’s Das Rollwagenbüchlein, 114–115. 84 Jung, ‘The Social Iconography of the Naumburg Last Supper,’ 51; Camille, Image on the Edge, 50–127; Hugh of St.-Victor, De institutione novitiorum cap. XVIII.

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Fig. 2.9. Circle of Erasmus Grasser, Nativity, from a Life of Mary cycle, chapel of the Schloss Grünwald, early sixteenth century(?). Painted limewood. Inv. MA 1233, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich. Photo by the author.

depicted in the Nativity scene in the process of gulping down the contents of his canteen (Fig. 2.11). The same motif appears in Melchior Broederlam’s scene of the Flight into Egypt (Fig. 1.10), which Charles Cuttler interprets as a mere space-fill�ing device.85 According to Ruth Mellinkoff, Broederlam’s Joseph is ‘barely squeezed into the picture, almost an afterthought.’86 She notes that ‘an excessive love of drink was attributed to Joseph and elaborated in some of the German dramas, and it is sometimes reflected in the visual arts,’ and describes the Buxtehude Petri-Altar’s Joseph as ‘a peasant boor who drinks too much.’87

85 Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel, 55. The presence of the falling idol in the background is evidence of the scene’s indebtedness to the popular Pseudo-Matthew account. See Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 73. Both Bertram’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt and Broederlam’s Flight into Egypt are influenced by this apocryphal text, and perhaps also by religious drama. 86 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:82. 87 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:226.

Plate 1. Mosan/Netherlandish artist, Nativity, panel of the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold, c. 1400. Tempera and gold leaf on wood, 33 x 21 cm. Inv. MMB.0001.1-2, Mayer van den Bergh Museum, Antwerp. Photo courtesy of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp.

Plate 2. Conrad von Soest, Nativity, detail of the Wildunger-Altar, left wing, 1404. Tempera on wood, 188 x 152 cm. Evangelische Stadtkirche Bad Wildungen. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 3. Mosan/South Netherlandish artist, detail of a tabernacle with the Nativity and Flight into Egypt, c. 1395–1400. Tempera on gilded oak, 137 x 47.5 cm (full size). Inv. MMB.0002, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp. Photo courtesy of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh.

Plate 4 Boucicaut Master and workshop, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1415–1420. Tempera colors, gold paint, gold leaf, and ink on parchment. Leaf: 20.5 x 14.8 cm, Ms. 22, fol. 72. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Plate 5. Jean le Tavernier, Adoration of the Magi, Book of Hours of Philip of Burgundy, 1450–1460. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 76, fol. 143v. Photo courtesy of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Plate 6. Master of the Legend of St. Barbara, Adoration of the Magi, central panel of a triptych, c. 1480. Oil on oak, 90.7 x 96.7 cm. Inv. 234, Galleria Colonna, Rome. Photo © Galleria Colonna, Rome.

Plate 7. Master of the Little Garden of Paradise and his Workshop, The Doubt of Joseph, Strasbourg, c. 1430. Tempera on pine panel, 114 x 114 cm. Inv. MBA 1482, from the hospice of Saint-Marc, Strasbourg, on loan from the Hospices Civils de Strasbourg, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre Dame, Strasbourg. Photo courtesy of the Musées de Strasbourg, M. Bertola.

Plate 8. Master of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Holy Family at Supper, detail from the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440. Tempera on vellum, 19.2 x 13 cm. Ms. M.927, pp. 150–151, Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Photo courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.

Plate 9. Circle of the Master of the Fröndenberger Marienretabels (after Conrad von Soest), Blankenberch Retabel, right wing, inside, Adoration of the Magi (detail), c. 1430–1440. Oil on wood, 154.5 x 396 cm (overall). Inv. 6 WKV, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), loan from the Westfälischer Kunstverein. Photo courtesy of the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur.

Plate 10. Bartolo di Fredi, Adoration of the Magi, panel from an altarpiece, 1385–1388. Tempera on panel, 195 x 163 cm. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Museale della Toscana, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena.

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Fig. 2.10. German School (Cologne), Rest on the Flight into Egypt (after Martin Schongauer), c. 1500. Oil on panel, 88.7 x 78 cm. Inv. P.1947.LF.68, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London. Photo © Courtauld Gallery.

However, as with the Hamburg Petri-Altar discussed in Chapter One, Josephine humor could function as something more than merely derisive joke-making. The image of Joseph ‘guzzling’ is an important motif in the aforementioned cradle plays. Toward the end of the Schwäbisches Weihnachtsspiel, when Mary asks Joseph to take her and Jesus to Egypt, Joseph replies: Maria, daz will jch gar gern ton, wen dein kind geit gar guten lon.

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Fig. 2.11. Master Bertram, ‘The Nativity,’ double-winged altarpiece of St. Peter’s Church in Buxtehude, inside of the right altar wing. Painting, oil tempera on oak wood, inv. no. 501 c-1. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Hamburger Kunsthalle /Elke Walford/Art Resource, ny.

dar um so will ich nehmen die wiegen uf den ruggen, aber sie wirt mich gar übel trucken. doch so will ich us meiner fleschen meinen alten goder weschen.88 Maria, I will do that very gladly, for your child gives a very good reward. And so I will put the cradle upon my back, but it will weigh me down quite heavily. And I’ll wash my old windpipe with a drink from my bottle.89

In the Ludus in cunabilis Christi of the Erlauer Weihnachtsspiel, Joseph also drinks and offers wine to visitors, Mary, the midwife, and even the child to help him sleep.90 In the Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel, Joseph drinks frequently himself and offers the 88 Schwäbisches Weihnachtsspiel, lines 215–220; Simon, ‘Das schwäbische Weihnachtsspiel,’ 39. 89 Schwäbisches Weihnachtsspiel, lines 215–220, English translation from the Middle High German in Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope,’ 154. 90 ‘Tunc Joseph bibat et det Marie et puero.’ Ludus in cunabilis Christi of the Erlauer Weihnachtsspiel, lines 45–50. Kummer, Erlauer Spiele, 8.

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Fig. 2.12. Veit Stoss, Flight into Egypt, interior left wing of the Bamberg Altar, c. 1520. Limewood, Bamberg Cathedral. Photo by the author.

midwife a drink of gueth wein, dapey magstu woll frelich sein (‘Good wine, which will cheer you up’).91 Also evocative of Joseph’s character in the Kindelwiegenspiele, whether intentionally or not, is the appearance of Joseph’s canteen in the Nativity of Philip the Bold (Plate 1), as well as its inclusion in the Hamburg Petri-Altar’s Nativity and Rest on the Flight into Egypt scenes (Figs. 1.4 and 1.11). In a panel depicting the Flight into Egypt (Fig. 2.12), part of Bamberg Cathedral’s high altarpiece by Veit Stoss of c. 1520, a prominent Joseph takes a swig from his canteen, a scene which appeared over a century earlier in 1400, in the Flight into Egypt miniature of a Middle Dutch Speculum humanae salvationis.92 French examples of the scene include the Char��treuse de Champmol high altarpiece by Melchior Broederlam, a fourteenth-century illumination from a Rouen Book of Hours, and an illumination in a Book of Hours by the Bedford Master and his associate, dated c. 1410–1415.93 Aside from equating Joseph’s behavior with that of the uncouth, intemperate, animal-like rustic, Joseph’s drinking and conviviality in the Nativity plays is implicit in his important role as the faulty, yet well-intentioned caretaker of Christ and Mary.94 He is not only a drinker, but also a devoted father, provider, and host; and in these 91 Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel, lines 877–878. Lipphardt and Roloff, Die geistlichen Spiele des Sterzinger Spielarchivs, 3:396. 92 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 2: XI.33–34. 93 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 2: XI.31–32. 94 Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope,’ 156.

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characteristics he is a model of familial love and responsibility for late medieval fathers. His self-nourishing, rustic behavior in examples like the Buxtehude Petri-Altar and Bamberg high altarpiece does not appear to encompass the complexity of his character in the contemporary plays, and could have appeared less admirable. It is impossible to say, of course, with certainty, but the motif’s wider context suggests that it was at least understood to be somewhat derogatory. The common view of such behavior, evident in medieval manner books, satirical writings by Hans Sachs and Sebastian Brant, and depictions of drinking and eating which appear mostly when peasants behave badly, was less accepting. Sebald Beham’s early sixteenth-century prints of church anniversary holidays, for example, depict a boisterous group of carousing, eating, drinking, vomiting, and shamelessly dancing peasants, which clearly differs from representations of the sober, restrained burgher and aristocratic classes by Hans Schäufelein, such as his Dance Leaders and Torchbearers in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett. These juxtaposing visual and literary characterizations in fact reinforce each other in that the aspirations of the urban, wealthy bourgeoisie and aristocracy, marked still by the dwindling chivalric ideal, are defined in opposition to social classes that are considered lacking in any code of behavior. For the owner of such imagery, the peasantry is depicted as unruly; dancing with abandonment was regarded as a vice in Nuremberg city ordinances. Moreover, the peasants’ intemperance categorizes them as fools, and they are thus frequently depicted with the ass’s ears typical of that character type. A woodcut illustrating Sebastian Brant’s ‘On Dancing’ of his Ship of Fools (Chapter 61, Basel, 1494) portrays a group of figures dancing around the Golden Calf, symbolic of their unrestricted sensual pleasures. Similarly, a broadsheet titled The Nose Dance at Fools’ Town, dated to 1534, is accompanied by verses written by Hans Sachs, who likewise connects the greed, drunkenness, and dancing of the peasants with their foolishness: One day I found much enjoyment In going to a peasant Kirchweih At a village called Fools’ town There I found many greedy peasants All full to the gills Eating and drinking and shouting The maids sang to the bagpipe music While the youths ran and sprang about Throwing one another down on their backsides So that many of them were badly hurt.95

95 Quoted and translated in Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 114–115.

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The offense of the peasantry is not their social class, but their folly, which is central to the satirical texts of Sachs and Brant.96 Yet in such writings and analogously, in associat��ed works like Sebald Beham’s Large Peasant Holiday, the lower classes tend to be characterized most frequently as the fools for their stupidity and unruly behavior. In Dürer’s woodcut illustration to Chapter 47 of Brant’s Ship of Fools, the fool himself, wearing the typical ass’s ears, takes the place of his beast of burden, accompanied by the text: Some men persist in folly’s road And draw a cart with heavy load The right cart awaits in heaven’s abode.97

The image of the cart-pulling fool is closely associated with German carnival celebrations, during which humans were substituted for beasts in a symbolic inversion of the social order, intended to invoke folly. In plays and ritual actions like these, prosperous members of the upper and middle classes would dress up like the peasantry, wear ass’s ears, and exhibit the kinds of obscene behavior depicted by artists like Sebastian Beham. Craftsmen and even sons of the leading families of Nuremberg also dressed up as peasants during carnival, with the city’s Shrovetide plays filled with dirty, lewd peasants who were meant to personify the ‘Shrovetide fool,’ rooted in a long tradition back to Neidhart that cast the peasant in direct opposition to the courtier.98 Such mockery of, and at times hostility towards, the peasant class and the strong desire among the aristocracy and burghers to situate them in their proper, lower, social state can be attributed to the feudal era’s decline. It is often rooted in an upper-class fear of the lower class’s strength, particularly post-1525, the year of the German Peasants’ Revolt.99 However, many of these characterizations contin�� ued to exist not solely due to hostility and a desire to humiliate, as Keith Moxey and Hans-Joachim Raupp assert, but due to a simultaneous kind of fascination, discussed in the following section.100

2.5 Complexities of Early Modern Humor: The Virtue of the ‘Natural Man’ Like the character of St. Joseph, the figure of the peasant could be regarded with a warmer form of humor, despite his brutish character and appearance, or more aptly because of it. The peasant’s ‘otherness’ was reassuring to the viewer or reader who 96 Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 107–120. 97 Brant, The Ship of Fools, 170; Quoted in Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, 102. 98 Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 203. 99 Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 128. 100 Moxey, ‘Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humor,’ 107–130; Raupp, Bauernsatiren.

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considered himself higher in social status, because the peasant’s faulty attempts to imitate the dress or behavior of the higher social spheres only reaffirmed his lower existence in society. The crisis for the burgher viewer, whom René Girard would call the ‘disciple’ in his discussion of ‘triangular’ desire, only occurs when the rival or ‘mediator’ – in this case, the peasant – rises in social standing, thus coming closer to the ‘disciple’s’ same desire, higher status. In this case, a crisis of ‘indifferentiation’ is reached in which there is no longer a stable hierarchy or class system upon which the city-dwelling viewer can count.101 Someone must be subordinated to reinstate the desired status quo – thus, the continued increase in popularity of prints, paintings, and plays portraying the peasant during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after the collapse of the rigidly hierarchical feudal era. Although in the German Shrovetide plays the peasant was generally presented as an uncouth, comic figure, Hans Sachs’s peasant could also retain some dignity as a figure constantly plagued by over-taxation and foul treatment, not only due to his own stupidity but also to the advantages and evil of others. He was therefore, in addition to being a boorish lout, a ‘comic exemplar of �natural man�ʼ in his base, animal-like instincts but his innate goodness as well.102 The character of the peasant was thus entirely analogous to that of Joseph in the Nativity plays, and in many contemporary artistic depictions, as I have suggested. The Shrovetide plays and prints of peasant themes by the German Little Masters give their characters insulting names like Herman Hirnlos and Velle Mistfinck, but this derision did not preclude the peasant’s morphing into a powerful emblem of the ‘natural man’ and even becoming a source of political identity. Stephen Goddard describes Sebald Beham’s version of the peasant, as in his Market Peasants and Weather Peasants (c. 1542; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City), as manifesting a variety of characteristics: he appears as ‘a rural bumpkin spouting rustic wisdom, as a lewd and uncouth lout, and as a strong and simple fighter in the Peasant Revolt.’103 Barthel Beham, Sebald’s brother, frequently presented the peasant in a more dignified, subdued manner, an understanding enhanced by the lack of a script which so often accompanies Sebald’s peasant figures. Like the early modern development of the Wild Man, the peasant in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was regarded in some instances as a kind of proto-nationalistic emblem of northern robustness, fecundity, vigor, and exuberance because of his earthiness and important nourishing function as the base of civilization. The Brabantine landjuweel, despite being run by prominent burghers, celebrated the farmer as the ‘most necessary […] and most honorable, nevertheless, very little valued’ in

101 Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 1–52. 102 French, ‘Kulturgeschichtliches in the Fastnachtspiele of Hans Sachs,’ 37; Carroll, ‘Peasant Festivity and Political Identity,’ 293. 103 Goddard, The World in Miniature, 17.

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their rhetorical competitions.104 Contempt and sympathy are inseparable in Pieter Breughel the Elder’s peasantry as well.105 Notable, too, is the presence of the peasant as a civic figure of pride in town halls. The sculptural program of the Überlingen Rathaussaal, in the place of personifications, depicts four peasants by Jacob Russ performing different tasks, one each from Cologne, Regensburg, Constance, and Salzburg, dated to 1494.106 Perhaps less of a civic symbol, but an object of fascination on some level, the lower level of the wall paintings in the Basel Haus zum Tanz, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in the 1520s, displayed an array of peasant dancers exhibiting their ‘innate’ character in exuberant, unrestrained dance. Stephen Goddard suggests that the frieze’s context, the midst of a program composed mainly of classical architecture and figures from classical mythology and ancient history, places ‘the peasant dance on par with the grandeur of classical antiquity and thus presents it in a positive light.’107 It should not be forgotten, however, that the ‘positive light’ of such an image was probably still motivated by an upper-class fascination for the base, much like the engravings of the Little Masters, whose primary patrons were the urban patriciate and educated merchants. The irony of the situation should not be ignored. Margaret Carroll has argued that some sixteenth-century images of the peasantry, particularly of peasant festivity at weddings or church festivals, ‘may have served as important political gestures in validating a culture of resistance to foreign papal and imperial control.’108 In the 1420s, the widely influential Germania by Tacitus was found in a German monastery, perhaps in Hersfeld or Fulda, although the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) had known of its existence previously. An ethnographic account written c. 98 ad of Germanic tribes ranging geographically from modern-day Bavaria to the Netherlands, it was first published in Venice in 1470 and in Nuremberg in 1473, and described ‘Germany’s’ early inhabitants as rustics who especially enjoyed celebrating quite liberally with copious amounts of food and drink.109 The writings of sixteenth-century scholars including Aventinus (Johannes Turmair, 1477–1534), Johannes Agricola (1494–1566), and Johann Boemus (c. 1485– 1535) translated, mined, and embellished this account as a means of defining a kind of Germanic political identity rooted in their native lands’ indigenous folklore. The humanist Sebastian Franck, who happens to have been the Behams’ brother-in-law, was important in the reclamation of a German past, describing village life and festivals enthusiastically and ‘at times with references to pagan antecedents.’110 Although 104 Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, 56. 105 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, 56. 106 Raupp, Bauernsatiren, 77–79. 107 Goddard, The World in Miniature, 211. 108 Carroll, ‘Peasant Festivity and Political Identity,’ 295. 109 Silver, ‘Forest Primeval,’ 4–43. 110 Goddard, The World in Miniature, 16.

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the Behams’ images certainly could have invoked negative feelings toward the peasantry amongst their upper-class viewers, peasant intemperance and overindulgence could also be viewed positively due to their ties to indigenous Germanic culture and its associated joie de vivre in excessive feasting and drinking. Johannes Agricola states that although burghers would claim higher nobility than peasants, their only difference is that they live inside the city walls.111 He writes of the benefits of rustic exuberance: It is a joyful and good thing to live well. To eat and drink lavishly is praiseworthy when it happens rarely. But when it happens daily, then it should be punished. We Germans observe Carnival, St. Burchard’s feast, St. Martin’s, Whitsun and Easter as seasonal occasions when people should be happy and gorge themselves: St. Burchard’s eve, because of the new cider, and St. Martin’s, because of the new wine. Then the fattened goose is roasted, and the whole world rejoices. At Easter people cook pancakes. At Whitsun they make wreathes of greenery in Saxony and Thuringen, and they drink ‘Whitsun beer’ for a good eight days. In Saxony they also celebrate ‘Panthaleon’ with ham, bacon, sausage and garlic. On church anniversaries, four or five German villages gather together, but it only happens once a year. Therefore it is praiseworthy and honorable, since people come together for this so that they might live amiably and honorably among each other.112

After lecturing on Tacitus at the Vienna University, the German humanist Conrad Celtis (1459–1508) published an edition of the Germania in 1500 as well, while a number of other literary humanists took interest in debating the origins of Germanic culture, stirred on by the discovery of other texts describing the northern lands, their people, and particularly their forests.113 Christopher Wood describes Celtis as the Germania’s first creative reader: ‘The key intellectual maneuver was the conversion of the forest from the blight into the pride of the land. The forest became at once a hazardous wilderness and a stage for chivalric heroism; it sheltered the satyr, the wild man, even […] the Druid priest.’114 For the Roman geographers, the forest became the source of Teutonic strengths. In the first century, Pomponius Mela wrote of the Germanic lands: Germany is inhabited by a hardy and robust people who find in war an outlet for their natural ferocity and in strenuous exercise an employment for the vigour of their bodies. They take pleasure in braving the cold and go about naked until the 111 Carroll, ‘Peasant Festivity and Political Identity,’ 291. 112 Agricola, Sybenhundert und funfzig Teütscher Sprichwörter, 1: no. 342, 291–292; Quoted in Carroll, ‘Peasant Festivity and Political Identity,’ 291. 113 Silver, ‘Forest Primeval,’ 14. 114 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, 130.

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age of puberty […] When they reach manhood they cover themselves with a skin or a garment made of the bark of trees.115

It was this fascination with the brutal wildness of the northern forest, admired particularly by the Italians in the work of artists like Albrecht Altdorfer, that became particularly attractive to the German humanists for the assertion of an identity distinct from the Italians, whose own version of the rustic fantasy was well known in the legacy of Virgil and Horace. Particularly after the publication of Aeneas Silvius’s Germania in 1496, when Tacitus’s text finally drew widespread attention, the Germans were able to assert their better existence and origins against the hegemony of Rome and the papacy’s unchecked exploitation through indulgences. Rather than the pastoral or georgic retreat, the wild forest had produced a people innocent of excess and hypocrisy; the Germania ‘staged simple contrasts between the piety, familial coherence and military virtue of the German tribes on the one hand, and the corruptions of city life on the other.’116 It was in this context that the preexisting figures of the Wild Man and the rustic could be seen in a positive light as emblems of an indigenous Germanic identity. Accompanying a broadsheet by Hans Schäufelein, which illustrates a kind of hirsute Wild Family version of Adam and Eve with an uprooted tree, is a poem by Hans Sachs, first published in 1530, entitled the ‘Lament of the Wild Forest-People over the Perfidious World.’ The Wild Man, like the primeval German, was assigned the virtues of marital fidelity and hospitality, much like St. Joseph.117 The Wild Man was already beginning to be seen in a more positive light in fifteenth-century northern Europe, as the personification of the local landscape, particularly where it was most wild. Like the peasant in northern European art and literature, the Wild Man was considered the fascinating antipode to the civilized, courtly ideal. He was particularly prevalent in the fifteenth-century descendants of the earlier medieval courtly arts, appearing as the subject of playing cards, engravings, and drypoints by artists like the Master E.S. and the Housebook Master. While on love-caskets and ivories, the Wild Man’s unchecked, lustful behavior frequently contrasted with that of the chivalrous knight, his completely unrestrained, animal-like nature was also imbued with the simplicity of Christian humility. While he was the opposite of the refined courtier or member of the burgher class, the Wild Man’s function as an antitype to civilization meant that he eschewed corruption, and thus led an existence closer to what Tacitus described in his account of the indigenous German tribes who lived in forest groves rather than Roman cities, wearing pelts and worshipping Hercules, Mercury, and Mars.118 Altdorfer’s unusual specificity 115 Pomponius Mela, Libri de situ orbis tres, quoted in Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, 128. 116 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, 158. 117 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, 157; Smith, Nuremberg, n. 50. 118 Silver, ‘Forest Primeval,’ 4–43.

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in his rendition of the pagan idol as Mercury in his painted Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1510; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) may have something to do with contemporary humanist studies of the ‘Germanic’ before the coming of Christ.119 Even the Wild Man’s raw, unchecked lust, like that of the peasant, could be viewed in a positive light, particularly on a marriage chest, where he could appear as a paradigm of fertility and eroticism.120 Even as an object of derision and a confirmation of the beholder’s superiority, therefore, the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Wild Man and peasant could embody the uncorrupt virtues of humility, honesty, hospitality, fidelity, and piety – many of which came from the same aspects for which they were also derided. Their lack of decorum and affinity to animals remained worthy of laughter for the superior eye, yet the resulting aspects of their ‘otherness’ could be simultaneously viewed as virtuous. Ultimately, the Wild Man and peasant were considered exceptional figures, eliciting the viewer’s fascination, which could result in either fear or marvel. It is with these complex cultural figures in mind that we should understand the fusion of ridicule and veneration toward Joseph in the arts, who, like the Wild Man and the peasant, frequently mirrors the animal in his lack of full intelligence and capability, his bumbling, and his uncivilized behavior in his exuberant partaking of beer and wine (which he doesn’t hesitate to share in the Nativity plays, like the ideal host). Stephen Wright has suggested a plausible link between Joseph’s behavior as reveler and host in the Nativity plays and the popular folk tradition of the Kinderbier, a celebration given by a newborn’s father that involved copious amounts of beer and wine.121 Either way, Joseph’s virtues in the form of his hospitality, fidelity, piety, and purity would have remained obvious to the viewer in his comic presentation, even while he remained the object of laughter.

2.6 Dirty Old Man: The Bawdy and the Chaste Saint The medieval fact of poor, old St. Joseph’s purity and marriage to a teenage wife who happens to carry a child that is not his own, but rather that of the omnipotent Father, resulted in a variety of comic depictions. Unarmed with any familiarity with medieval humor, however, the joke can fall flat for today’s viewer. The centrality of the erotic and bawdy in late medieval comic art and literature could be overwhelming by today’s standards, and frequently occupies what many today would consider the realm of base or ‘low’ humor; yet it permeated aristocratic commissions and courtly themes 119 According to Silver, ‘Although there is no proof that Altdorfer had direct contact with the members of this Celtis circle, circumstantial evidence suggests the likelihood that Altdorfer’s Regensburg environment was oriented toward Celtis and the Vienna University.’ See Silver, ‘Forest Primeval,’ 17. 120 Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages, 166–173. 121 Wright, ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope,’ 156; ‘Kinderbier,’ in van der Meer et al., De Katholieke Encyclopaedie, 15: 408–409.

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like the Garden of Love. Its recurrence in prints, like the Beham Brothers’ engravings, appealed to the moneyed classes who purchased such objects for collection. The same jokes and puns that appealed in these and other images, as well as in the fabliaux, facetiae, and other comic tales of the time, easily shared features with artistic creations that made fun of Joseph’s cuckoldry and old age, particularly in juxtaposing his bumbling, foolish nature against that of his young, pregnant, divinely elevated wife. The juxtaposition of such ‘Unequal Couples’ was itself a highly popular theme in late fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and early sixteenth-century prints and paintings, so we must look to this trend to understand the humor of these depictions of the Holy Family; indeed, the theme’s popularity probably had much to do with the prototypical illmatched pair’s own notoriety in popular devotion. But it should also be remembered that laughing at St. Joseph’s imperfections returned the devout to his perfections – his old age and purity, ensuring the purity of Mary, and his readiness to care for the Christ child; thus, the comic ultimately did not truly detract from the saint’s exemplarity. The strength of late medieval bawdy humor, like that which appears in the Master of the Legend of St. Barbara’s Adoration, in which Joseph drills persistently into the makings of a mousetrap (Plate 6), lay not in a situation’s sexualization but in the success of what Howard Bloch defines as a linguistic substitution or deflection, in this case made visual. The erotic effect of medieval comic literature like the Old French fabliaux lay not within the act of sex itself; this rarely itself occupies more than one or two lines, while the tales do not concern themselves with varying types of sexual activity. Rather, the act of watching sex, or of displeasure in watching sex, in addition to imagining it, serves as the source of erotic stimulation.122 Genitalia are frequently the subject of discussion, either directly or indirectly, as in the Facetiae of Poggio Bracciolini, first published in 1470 and probably written for the pleasure of intellectuals, since the basest of stories is written in good Latin. Most of the satire in his collection is directed toward corrupt clerics, stupid peasants, and female sexual insatiability. In one facetia, a virtuous woman makes a clever bawdy joke: Matrona è nostris honestissima mulier, quaerenti tabellario. Nunquid literarum ad maritum dare uellet? aberet enim longius Reipublicae legatus. Quomodo inquit possum scribere, cum uir calamum detulerit secum, mihi pugillare uacuum reliquerit. Faceta atque honesta responsio. A very virtuous woman of my acquaintance was asked by a postal runner if she didn’t want to give him a letter for her husband, who had been absent for a long time as an ambassador for Florence. She replied: ‘How can I write, when my husband has taken his pen away with him, and left my inkwell empty?’ A witty and virtuous reply.123 122 Bloch, ‘Obscenity in the Fabliaux.’ 123 Faceta responsio mulieris pugillare uacuum habentis, 488; Bowen, One Hundred Renaissance Jokes, 9.

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The highest form of eroticism in the fabliaux, and in many other comic tales, tends to arise from ‘a profuse celebration of the body, and especially of the sexual organs. Indeed, the creators of the comic tale derive as much pleasure from the description of genitalia as they do from any sexual act.’ The tales themselves contain ‘a good deal of transgressive joy in the use of words to describe body parts. Pleasure is to be derived, for example, from the repetition of forbidden words.’124 Most often ‘naughty’ body parts are discussed using euphemisms that are quite frank, such as the ‘tool’ worn by the apprentice of the blacksmith in ‘Du Fevre de Creeil.’ The blacksmith’s erotic stimulation arises from imagining his wife’s pleasure in his apprentice’s penis: Et pensa, se sa fame set, Qui tel ostil mie ne het Com Gautiers lor serjant porte, Ele voudroit miex estre morte Qu’ele ne s’en féist doner. (1.233) And he thought that if his wife knew, His wife who hardly disliked such a tool As Walter their apprentice wore, She would prefer to die Than not to have him give it to her.125

This trend toward ‘linguistic deflection [… which] both acknowledges a taboo and makes it more acceptable’126 excites the fabliaux’s characters by the ‘turning of language from a proper signification to an improper one or metaphoric one.’127 Word�� play on the sexual organs guides the fabliaux, with words like osti (instrument), tuiel (tool), mailluel (mallet), bordoun (staff), bon bourdon (good stick), and fuisil (twig) among the most frequently used words for the penis, and afère (business), bourse (purse), sac (sack), sachet (little sack), forel (satchel), and maillaus (change purse) used for the testicles. Female genitalia are discussed as a fountain, a hole (pertuis or treu), a doorway, a ring, a wound (plaie), and a little mouse (sorisete).128 The example of the purse or bourse as a metaphor for the male genitalia is particularly common. In ‘Boivin de Provins,’ the bourse has a dual meaning:

124 Bloch, ‘Obscenity in the Fabliaux,’ 297–298. 125 Quotation and translation from Bloch, ‘Obscenity in the Fabliaux,’ 297. 126 Beyer, ‘The Morality of the Amoral,’ 36. Various other theories are discussed by Bloch, ‘Obscenity in the Fabliaux,’ 300. 127 Bloch, ‘Obscenity in the Fabliaux,’ 300. 128 Muscatine, The Old French Fabliaux, 110–114; Pearcy, ‘Obscene Diction in the Fabliaux,’ 167; Bloch, ‘Obscenity in the Fabliaux,’ 301.

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Ses braies monte; s’a veü De sa borse les deux pendanz: ‘Hai las!’ fet il, ‘chetiz dolanz, Tan tai hui fet male jornée! Niece, ma borse m’est copée; Ceste fame le m’a trenchie.’ He lifts his pants; he saw The two straps of his purse: ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘woe is me. I’ve had such a bad day! Niece, my purse has been cut. This woman cut it off.’129

The expressions marteler (to hammer), percier (to pierce or penetrate), and ferir un cop (strike a blow) are among the most frequent figurative expressions used in the discussion of sex. In the unequivocally erotic allegory of La Saineresse, a woman tells her husband of the ‘treatment’ she received from one who he supposes to be a visiting blood-letter: Par .iii. rebinées me prist, Et à chascune fois m’assist Sor mes rains deux de ses peçons, Et me feroit uns cops si lons; Toute me sui fet martirier, Et si ne poi onques sainier. Granz cops me feroit et sovent; Morte fusse, mo nescient, S’un trop bon oingnement ne fust. L’oingnement issoit d’un tuiel, Et si descendoit d’un forel D’une pel moult noire et hideuse, Mais moult par estoit savoreuse. He made three attempts at me, and each time he placed two of his lancets on my thighs, and struck me such a hard blow; I surrendered myself completely to being tormented, 129 Quoted and translated in Bloch, The Scandal of the Fabliaux, 74.

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and yet I could not once let blood. He struck me with great and frequent blows; I would have been dead, it seems to me, had it not been for an exceedingly fine ointment. The ointment came from a pipe, and ran down from a satchel with a very black and hideous skin, but it was extraordinarily delicious.130

The most common ‘linguistic deflections’ that permeate these tales were equally popular in the secular arts in the form of visual puns, which would have been easily recognizable to one familiar with the bawdiness of period humor; see, for example, the toolset of the courtier in the foreground of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry’s January miniature (c. 1412–1416, Fig. 2.13). One of the most obvious meanings of the mouse for the late medieval viewer was sexual, a fact that Meyer Schapiro noted in his seminal article on the Mérode Altarpiece (c. 1425, Fig. 2.14), which discusses an Augustinian and Gersonian theological interpretation of the mousetrap as the devil’s bait, and therefore a metaphor for Joseph’s role as Mary’s husband. While noting the object’s ‘double character,’ Schapiro’s appeal to the humanist language of Erasmus and Alciati, who focus on the lascivious, destructive, and evil nature of the female vagina or womb, detracts from a simpler signification – but one that was certainly not the sole signification intended.131 Joseph’s use of his drill on a passive piece of wood, a depiction of percier or screwing, draws attention to his chastity and impotency as an old man,132 but this is not incompatible with the theological meanings of the image as a whole – a point revisited at the conclusion of this study. The same witty play that reinstates the theology of Christ’s incarnation occurs in the earlier Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (Fig. 2.2) – only in the early Renaissance painting, the joke is brought to the center. Though the potential for humor in the Mérode Altarpiece is not explicit, other versions of Joseph in his workshop or scenes that involve his tools were more overtly humorous to a fifteenth-century audience fluent in the linguistic deflections of fabliaux, facetiae, and other popular tales. In the Master of the Legend of St. Barbara’s Adoration (Plate 6), in which Joseph is juxtaposed with the ass by his side, the old man’s persistent drilling away at a passive piece of wood – perhaps in an attempt to trap the elusive furry ‘mouse’ – could have easily been understood as funny by its contemporaries, who were mostly well-versed in such popular wordplay, as Louise

130 Quoted and translated in Pearcy, ‘Obscene Diction in the Fabliaux,’ 179–180. 131 Riegler, ‘Maus,’ in Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 6: 31–59; Schapiro, ‘Muscipula Diaboli,’ 185–187. 132 Louise Vasvari notes this, but suggests that the bawdy nature of such signification precludes a simultaneous sober theological one. Vasvari, ‘Joseph on the Margin.’

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Fig. 2.13. Limbourg Brothers, January: The Feast of the Duke of Berry. Illuminated manuscript page from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c. 1412–1416. Tempera on vellum, 22.5 x 13.6 cm. Ms. 65, fol. 1v, Musée Condé, Chantilly. Photo: René-Gabriel Ojéda, Musée Condé. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, ny.

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Fig. 2.14. South Netherlandish, Workshop of Robert Campin, Annunciation Triptych (Mérode Altarpiece), c. 1425– 1432. Oil on oak, 64.5 x 117.8 cm (overall). Inv. 56.70a-c, The Cloisters Collection, 1956, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Vasvari points out.133 Like the mouse/vagina trap, the ‘tool’ and ‘stick’ are readily tak��en up in images of Joseph the carpenter at work that also mock his lack of sexual prowess as an old, chaste cuckold living with a young, unattainable wife. In a scene of Joseph’s Repentance of his Doubt from the Hoogstraten copy of Robert Campin’s lost Life of St. Joseph of c. 1425 (Fig. 2.15), the saint kneels before his pregnant wife, sur� rounded by an overflowing pile of useless, oversized tools. His pouch, tools, and knife are presented rather limply and in amusing locations in the c. 1430 Doubt of Joseph in the Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre Dame of Strasbourg (Plate 7), and in an Annunciation scene by the Master of the View of St. Gudule (c. 1480; Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels), in which Joseph’s sword hangs between his legs as he trudges off to work.134 The Strasbourg Doubt of Joseph is particularly reminiscent of fifteenth-century prints satirizing the young, phallic sword-wielding dandy’s advances on the chaste, knitting girl whose cat rests conspicuously near her ring-shaped basket of yarn, like Israhel van Meckenem’s Visit to the Spinner from his Scenes of Daily Life engravings, dated c. 1495–1500 (Fig. 2.16).135 The young dandy’s phallic sword is notably larger than poor Joseph’s diminutive knife. In the Strasbourg panel, a single, 133 Joseph’s drilling and mousetraps also appear in a Nativity in Berlin by a North Guelders or Cleves master (c. 1410–1415; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2, plate 56, n. 110. 134 Vasvari, ‘Joseph on the Margin.’ Vasvari documents these images in her brief analysis of the humor evident within them, but she neglects to address the fact that they also document Joseph’s centrality, religious importance, and veneration as his cult developed. 135 Cormac Philip Deasy discusses the similarities between Joseph and Mary and the plights of young wives with old husbands in vernacular literature. Deasy, St. Joseph in the English Mystery Plays, 42–83; see also Coletti, ‘Purity and Danger.’

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Fig. 2.15. Artist unknown, The Life of St. Joseph (copy after Robert Campin, The Life of Saint Joseph, c. 1425, now lost). Oil on panel, 64 x 203 cm. Sint-Katharinakerk, Hoogstraten. Photo courtesy of Sint-Katharinakerk.

Fig. 2.16. Israhel van Meckenem, The Visit to the Spinner, c. 1495/1503. Engraving, 16.2 x 11.1 cm. Rosenwald Collection, inv. 1953.4.1, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

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Fig. 2.17. Master of the Little Garden of Paradise (Upper Rhenish), The Little Garden of Paradise, c. 1410–1420, Strasbourg(?). Tempera on oak, 26.3 x 33.4 cm. Inv. No. HM 54, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, on loan from the Historisches Museum Frankfurt. Photo courtesy of the Yorck Project/Wikimedia Commons.

isolated knife protrudes from the dense, unyielding wood of the table that divides the old man from his young wife. The Strasbourg Doubt of Joseph has been attributed to the Master of the Little Garden of Paradise, also known as the ‘Upper Rhenish Master,’ and the painter of the Frankfurt Städel’s charmingly diminutive garden scene of Mary and Jesus surrounded by saints and their various attributes (Fig. 2.17). Humor and play are prevalent, and sometimes irreverent, throughout this tiny panel. The artist blends the humor and charm of more secularized gardens depicting the romping nobility with a devotional scene of Mary and Christ in the hortus conclusus, a kind of fusion of sacred and chivalric themes that mirrors the meeting of veneration with humor in many depictions of Joseph. The link between the Little Garden of Paradise panel and the Doubt of Joseph is partially evident through the artist’s inclusion of a tiny potted bush reminiscent of a walled garden in the Strasbourg scene, certainly a symbol of (or play on) Mary’s virginity. Despite what some might consider the ‘crudeness’ of these humorous visual puns, jokes on the impotency of Joseph could be simultaneously charming, as in the Holy Family at Supper miniature from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (c. 1440, Plate 8) in

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which Joseph’s ‘dagger and pouch’ lie uselessly limp, in contrast to those of the phallic cup-bearers of the earlier Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry’s January miniature (Fig. 2.13). Satires on male sexuality that use the sword, dagger, purse, and tool to humorous effect appear frequently in art of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Swords and daggers were common phallic symbols, especially in fifteenth-century secular prints, in which they are often prominently displayed between a man’s legs, as in the Master E.S.’s mid-fifteenth-century Pair of Lovers on a Grassy Bench (Fig. 2.18) and Love Garden with Chess Players (mid-fifteenth century; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin), as well as Dürer’s The Promenade of c. 1498 (Fig. 2.19).136 Manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and murals, as well as marriage chests, ivories, and jewelry, all depict the medieval Garden of Love – one of the most popular themes in the secular arts not only as the setting for trysts in the chivalric romances, but also for the union between Bride and Bridegroom in the biblical Song of Songs. The erotics of love abound in these scenes and are emphasized in visual puns, particularly in the ‘foreplay’ of making garlands and playing games, but quite frequently in the presence of the Fool, identified by his characteristic hood with ass’s ears, and sometimes portrayed with exposed genitalia. His genitalia are often emphasized by the placement of his dagger.137 In the Master of the Banderoles’ The Fencing Room of c. 1460–1470 (Fig. 2.20), the pant-less figure of the Fool appears to have potency problems, which the surrounding women offer to fix by inviting him into the bath. The humor of the inscription in the Master of the Banderoles’ scene is made visually apparent to even those who could not read the Latin in the satirical scene on the left of men who fence vigorously.138 The January miniature of the Très Riches Heures (Fig. 2.13) depicts a scene which Michael Camille describes as incomparably phallic, although, as we have seen in the prints, its visual ‘deflections’ or substitutions were common. In this case, the aristocratic viewer, the Duke of Berry, sits before his hearth amidst an array of fashionably dressed, young male attendants, whose tools and sacks are readily apparent and, in the case of the cup-bearer in the bottom left corner, rather erect. Camille notes the affinity between this particular character and Ganymede, Jupiter’s beautiful boy cup-bearer, a classical allusion that was popular in medieval poetry. The naked, androgynous image of Aquarius in the opposing upper-right corner of the miniature, a personification that was synonymous with Ganymede in the Middle Ages, reinforces the image’s wit.139 136 Kok, The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, fig. 58; Goddard, The World in Miniature, fig. 39. See also the Master of the Love Gardens’s Large Love Garden (engraving, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin): Kok, The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, fig. 46. 137 Moxey, ‘Master E.S. and the Folly of Love.’ 138 Goddard, The World in Miniature, 162–168, plate 44 and fig. 40. 139 Like Gerhard Jaritz, Camille rightly calls attention to the scholarly neglect of the eroticized medieval male body. Camille, ‘The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry,’ 169–194; Jaritz, ‘Young, Rich and Beautiful.’

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Fig. 2.18. Master E.S., Pair of Lovers on a Grassy Bench, c. 1450–1467. Engraving, 13.4 x 16.4 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1922, Accession Number 22.83.14, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. 2.19. Albrecht Dürer, The Promenade, c. 1498. Engraving, 19.5 x 12.1 cm. Fletcher Fund, 1919, Accession Number 19.73.106, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Fig. 2.20. Master of the Banderoles, The Fencing Room, c. 1460–1470. Engraving, 22.7 x 31.9 cm. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, inv. DG1926/935. Photo © Graphische Sammlung Albertina.

The theme of the Unequal Couple or Ill-Matched Pair, which gained particular popularity in northern Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, also allowed for ample visual ingenuity in mocking the type of the old, impotent cuckold or ‘dirty old man’ who marries or lusts after a young girl. Many of these images elucidate the humor of Joseph’s underused, or erotically placed, tools. Even as the truth of Joseph’s ill-matched pairing remained central to Christian doctrine and devotion, sacred scenes of the prototypical unequal couple were not at all divorced from the satire of popular carnival plays, stories, tales, and the secular arts dealing with ill-matched pairs that flourished particularly from around 1470 to 1535. An intensified fifteenth-century focus on domestic scenes of the Holy Family probably in turn spurred the popularity of such profane equivalents. The theme of the old cuckold and fool paired with or tricked by the young beauty, however, finds its roots as early as the third century bc in the comedies of the Roman poet Plautus (c. 251– 184 bc) and emerges throughout the Middle Ages in such works as the twelfth-century short poems of Marie de France and the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose (begun c. 1237). From the second half of the thirteenth century, Franciscans and Dominicans used moralizing exempla in their sermons that mocked and warned against marrying old men and women for money. Fourteenth-century sources like Boccaccio’s Decameron (begun c. 1350), Netherlandish farcical sotternieën (Feasts

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Fig. 2.21. Urs Graf, Lustful Old Fool and Woman with Baby: Allegory of Fiddling, early sixteenth century. Drawing. Inv. U.X. 108, Kunstmuseum Basel. Photo © Kunstmuseum Basel.

of Fools), Chaucer’s ‘Merchant’s Tale’ (begun 1386–1389), and the Miroir de Mariage by Eustache Deschamps (d. 1406?) all engage with the theme, as do fifteenth-century German manuscripts and carnival plays like Vom Heiraten Spil. Boccaccio’s Ameto tells the story of the young Agapes, whose marriage to a repulsive old man, rife with snoring and impotent love-making, drives her to seek her pleasure with a handsome, younger man. Von einem plinten, dated to c. 1425–1476 and sharing its sources with Boccaccio and Chaucer, tells of how an old blind man’s young wife climbs into a fruit tree with her young male friend, whom she enjoys while her husband wraps his arms around the trunk, thinking he is preventing the young man from climbing up. All of a sudden St. Peter and Jesus walk by and decide to restore the old man’s sight, forcing the wife to explain herself. But the old cuckold’s stupidity saves the day, since he gratefully accepts her tale that her only intention had been to restore her husband’s vision.140

140 Holthausen, ‘Die Quellen von Chaucers “Merchant’s Tale”,’ 170–176; Stewart, Unequal Lovers, 23.

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Fig. 2.22. Lucas van Leyden, A Fool and a Woman, 1520. Engraving, 10.3 x 70.3 cm. Rogers Fund, 1922, Accession Number 22.67.52, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Many carnival plays, tales, and sayings, called Spruch in German, addressed the theme of the old cuckold and fool. Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (1494), Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1509), and Hans Sachs’s poems and plays from the first half of the sixteenth century all include sets of unequal couples, and all incorporate the figure of the fool from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century moralizing tales, plays, and folk festivals like the Netherlandish sotternieën that mock such ill-matched pairs.141 In Sachs’s poem Zweierlei Ungleiche Ehen, written in 1533, a young woman encourages the lust of an old man in order to gain his money. He, like so many other old people in Sachs’s work, wears the fool’s cap with ass’s ears to signify his stupidity. A drawing by Urs Graf, the Lustful Old Fool and Woman with Baby: Allegory of Fiddling (Fig. 2.21), depicts to particu�lar effect the often recounted theme, with the old, pant-less fool with his ass’s ears a telling exaggeration of Joseph’s most frequently depicted comical attributes, including the 141 See Stewart, Unequal Lovers; Silver, ‘The Ill-Matched Pair by Quinten Massys,’ 115; Swain, Fools and Folly, 85; Welsford, The Fool, 121.

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holy stockings, depicted in Philip the Bold’s devotional polyptych.142 Lucas van Leyden likewise alludes to the impotency of old fools in a 1520 engraving in which a fool with a sagging purse embraces the young object of his affections (Fig. 2.22).143 Such images enliven our understanding of Joseph’s own endowments and their positioning in the Strasbourg Doubt scene and Holy Family at Supper miniature of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves.144

2.7 Conclusion: Satirizing the Sacred The images discussed in this chapter discredit entirely the traditional partitioning of ‘low’ profane humor from ‘high’ veneration and theology – for example, the idea that the mocking of Joseph as a willing cuckold ‘would certainly not have been appropriate for a saint.’145 They also suggest that much more remains to be understood about the role of humor in devotional and liturgical works of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries. As this chapter has shown, rather than focusing exclusively on symbolism rooted in the theological, or on forms of devotion to St. Joseph being confirmed by papal circles, the religious experience of Joseph’s image could also privilege humor, play, laughter, and satire as central, reinforcing components of sanctity. Furthermore, humor and play cannot be relegated exclusively to the realm of ‘low’ culture, but rather bound lay and clerical participants of varying socio-economic status in shared religious experiences. From the margins of high medieval books and buildings, satire permeated the center of early Renaissance sacred narratives in a fashion contradictory to post-Reformation and Tridentine understandings of sanctity, and of sanctity’s functions in art. Scholars in many fields have attempted to categorize variations in laughter, humor, satire, and ridiculousness with varying conclusions and effects.146 David Smith writes that early modern satire should be qualified as ‘insider’s laughter’ in

142 Stewart, Unequal Lovers, fig. 2. 143 Stewart, Unequal Lovers, fig. 39. 144 These all contrast clearly with more erect equipment of the foolish young dandies in Dürer’s Basel woodcut illustration to Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, Old Wife and a Young Fool (dated 1494) and Niklaus Manuel’s drawing, Old Woman, Young Man and a Demon (c. 1515; Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum, Basel). See Stewart, Unequal Lovers, 11–68, figs. 32 and 37. 145 Alberti, ‘Divine Cuckolds,’ 157. 146 Three major approaches have defined the study of humor since the sixteenth century. While Francis Hutcheson identified incongruity as the source of humor, Thomas Hobbes theorized humor as arising from a desire to assert superiority. Herbert Spencer pioneered the relief theory suggesting that humor results from a release of nervous energy. See Morreall, Comic Relief, 1–23; Critchley, On Humour, 3. More recently, the three major theories have been mixed, with humor understood as a source for ‘amused laughter’ in varying forms. See Carroll, ‘Humour,’ 344–365; Zillman and Cantor, ‘A Disposition Theory of Humour and Mirth,’ 93–116; Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 417. Considered the ‘founding father of a German aesthetics of humour,’ Jean Paul’s theory

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that it ‘ridicules the deviant: the outsider as one who doesn’t measure up [… while] comedy, defined as the outsider’s laughter, [is] targeted at the norms themselves.’147 In contrast to satire, comedy, he writes, ‘is tolerant of diversity, and its plots tend to reconcile divisions, often by ending in weddings, a recurrent feature of carnival.’148 But these distinctions between comedy and satire do not necessarily conform to the humor of St. Joseph’s characterizations, either in art or in the cradle plays, whether in the fourteenth or early sixteenth centuries. Both forms, not comedy exclusively, are socially recuperative in their reconciliation of divisions. Joseph’s satire tends to be rather incongruous, and quite distinct from pointed and cohesive versions that tend to take a side, to serve a constructive purpose in shaming specific targets, ultimately for the betterment of society. Pointed, cohesive satire generally revolves around a criticism of vice or immorality, often with the desire to enact change or awareness.149 But late medieval satire and humor, similar to that of Joseph, could also be ‘neutral, detached, or cynical,’ marked by inconsistency with respect to its message, and even its target, and lacking in individualization of the occupations or ranks being mocked.150 Many of the images discussed in this chapter can be qualified as satirical (according to Smith’s definition) in that the laughter they elicit is the ‘insider’s laughter’ at the outsider – while jokes about Joseph’s old age and imperfections in caring for the child, for example, might stir the hearts of the youngest of men (old age claims all), his confusion about the true nature of God’s plans, as well as the fact that his young wife carries a child that is not his own, are often used in the satirical mode. But Joseph’s satire is often more complex than the ‘insider’ vs. ‘outsider’ theory suggests, just as it often slips the mold of satirical cohesion, to be discussed further in Chapter Four. According to Jacobus Voragine’s Golden Legend, compiled c. 1260, it is precisely the imperfections of the saints, by comparison to the perfection of God and Christ, which allow them their functionality and appeal.151 In Joseph’s case, however, even his perfections – his readiness to care for a child who is not his own, as well as his old age, which assured Mary’s purity – were satirized; yet these were simultaneously part

of humor as Weltanschauung, or a philosophy of life, includes comedy and ridicule in its overall hierarchy. Laughter at the ridiculous, for example, is understood to be aimed toward inappropriate behavior and driven by superior insight, but is ‘without bitterness or hints of satirical derision, and is instead distinguished by harmless pleasure.’ But satirical derision and superior laughter at the ridiculous seem to overlap quite frequently, and not just in the early modern world. See Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 418; Paul, Vorschule der Ästhetik, 6: 114; Carroll, ‘Humour’; Zillman and Cantor, ‘A Disposition Theory of Humour and Mirth.’ 147 Smith, ‘Sociable Laughter, Deep Laughter,’ 3; see also Le Goff, ‘Laughter in the Middle Ages’ 148 Smith, ‘Sociable Laughter, Deep Laughter,’ 3. 149 Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire,’ 53. 150 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 72. 151 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 1: 288–289.

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of his all-important approachability in the very human roles of parent and husband. The ‘empathic’ function of religious art – increasingly evident in fifteenth-century attention to anecdotal detail, realism, illusionism, and naturalism – must be understood to encompass humor as well, as this chapter has shown. Like the Vita Christi literature that described the intimate details of Christ’s human life and encouraged devotees to experience these themselves, religious images encouraged the devout to immerse themselves in the depicted event, surrounded by the joy, pleasure, and pain of Christ’s life. The humanization of Christ and the saints in literature and art was key to this accessibility for the devotee.152 St. Joseph’s humanization in art, to the point of allowing the humor of his virtues and faults to arise for the artist and beholder, speaks to this larger trend in devotional practices. Despite the caricature of Joseph as the porridge-cooking, laundry-washing, leering, elderly husband with his young, fecund wife, executed to particular effect in Frans Floris’s Holy Family (Fig. 2.1), Catholic works that satirized Joseph were not exempt from prayerful use. The centrality of humor within Floris’s image could be attributed to many possible reasons, particularly among humanist circles (with which Floris was involved in Antwerp).153 But the same visual jokes on Joseph’s foi��bles that Floris employs appear as early as the fourteenth century. Their continued presence in art, as Joseph’s cult expanded and intensified, suggests that for many, humor continued to provide an affective pathway to the virtues of Christ’s foster-father and family, encouraging an unequivocally tangible experience of Christ’s life. Rather than detracting from Joseph’s veneration as a cult figure, humor and satire became vehicles for highlighting his most important virtues: his chastity, old age, and care for the Son of God despite his incomplete understanding of the situation. These very qualities in question were doctrinally necessary in order to ensure God’s earthly paternity and Mary’s purity. The status quo, therefore, was in no way questioned or undermined by such characterizations of the saint. Like the knights fleeing snails of high medieval marginalia, Joseph’s inversion is contained within the safe realm of his own religiosity. Laughing at St. Joseph could become the equivalent of reinstating his important theological role. Laughter, in this sense, may be understood as a form of veneration itself, in that it reinstated the central tenets of the Christian faith with respect to Joseph’s role in the salvation of mankind.

152 See the Introduction for an analysis of late medieval devotional practices and their relationship to images and texts. Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative, 12; Marrow, ‘Symbol and Meaning.’ 153 van de Velde, Frans Floris; Zuntz, Frans Floris; van de Velde, ‘Painters and Patrons in Antwerp.’

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Valdez del Alamo, Elizabeth. Palace of the Mind: The Cloister of Silos and Spanish Sculpture of the Twelfth Century. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. van Buren, Anne H. ‘Thoughts, Old and New On the Sources of Early Netherlandish Painting.’ Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 16, no. 2/3 (1986): 93–112. van de Velde, C. Frans Floris: Leven en werken. Brussels: Palais der Academiën, 1975. van de Velde, C. ‘Painters and Patrons in Antwerp in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.’ In Concept, Design, and Execution in Flemish Painting, edited by Hans Vlieghe et al, 29–42. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. van der Meer, P. et al., eds. De Katholieke Encyclopaedie. Amsterdam: Joost van der Vondel, 1945–1955. van Os, Henk. The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe. Translated by Michael Hoyle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Vasvari, Louise O. ‘Joseph on the Margin: The Mérode Tryptic and Medieval Spectacle.’ Mediaevalia 18 (1995): 164–189. Welsford, Enid. The Fool: His Social and Literary History. London: Faber and Faber, 1935. Wickram, Jörg. Das Rollwagenbüchlein. In Jörg Wickram’s Das Rollwagenbüchlein, edited by Heinrich Kurz. Leipzig: J.J. Weber, 1865. Wood, Christopher S. Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Wright, Stephen K. ‘Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope: Gender and Transgression in Medieval German Drama.’ Theatre Journal 51, no. 2 (1999): 149–166. Wunder, Heide. ‘Der dumme und der schlaue Bauer.’ In Mentalität und Alltag im Spätmittelalter, edited by Cord Meckseper, 34–51. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1985. Yunck, John A. The Lineage of Lady Meed: The Development of Mediaeval Venality Satire. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963. Zillman, Dolf and Joanne R. Cantor. ‘A Disposition Theory of Humour and Mirth.’ In Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications, edited by Antony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot, 93–116. London: Wiley, 1976. Zuntz, Dora. Frans Floris. Strasbourg: Heitz, 1929.

3.  Urbanitas, the Imago Humilis, and the Rhetoric of Humor in Sacred Art Abstract Chapter Three explores a range of functions – social, intellectual, devotional, economic, and aesthetic – that humor, satire, wit, and irony could perform in sacred art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. These rest upon classical, late antique, and medieval rhetorical theories of humor and laughter in treatises on poetics and in the Latin discourse on rhetoric that emphasize the role of humor in constructing urbanitas and solidifying courtois-oriented socio-economic bonds. The tradition of early Christian irony continued by the late medieval sermo humilis provides another context for understanding what we might call the imago humilis. The chapter refutes notions that humor existed in late medieval devotional or liturgical art solely to appeal to or educate an uneducated lay audience. Key Words: medieval humor, medieval rhetoric, rhetorical theory, irony, sermo humilis, Saint Joseph

3.1 Sacred Humor beyond Edification The iconographic trends in devotional and ecclesiastical images of St. Joseph may be explained not only with recourse to the functional roles of humor, play, and inversion. Their development and popularity had much to do with the nature of religious practices in the early modern period. Even the most public form of religious image, the altarpiece, was typically commissioned by a member of the laity, and decorated with respect to the laity’s salvation and devotional concerns, despite the piece’s liturgical function as a prop for the celebration of the Eucharist.1 Thus, even more secularized, comical iconography relevant to Joseph would not be out of place on an altarpiece, whether in a parish church or cathedral. But this fact is not even necessarily relevant to the explanation of humor on a functionally religious altarpiece. Once we accept that humor and play were in fact central to late medieval and early Renaissance religious life for both laity and clergy, and that jokes both obvious and subtle are present in an overwhelming number of religious depictions of St. Joseph, we can begin to see that play and humor are in fact present in many kinds of religious commissions. What we formerly might have considered an artist’s weakness – for example, a rather diminutive dragon of unconvincing ferocity held prostrate by the foot Williams, Anne L., Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789462983748_ch03

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of a St. Michael – becomes instead a comical display of the artist’s wit in reducing a fearsome demon to an accessory. Humor and satire are also present on altarpieces that were painted by members of the clergy, revealing that such forms of play cannot be explained away by citing the concerns of the laity – and certainly not understood as a tool for religious education alone. The high altarpiece of the Franciscan Göttingen Barfüsserkirche, which now resides in the Niedersächsiches Landesmuseum Hannover, was probably painted by one of the brothers in 1424 and commissioned by a family with close ties to the order. Miniaturized scenes of a hunting group and a pilgrim playing the bagpipe satirize the human weakness present in the central religious imagery, while tiny dogs cavort throughout the panels, and a ridiculously small midwife cooks porridge beneath a vision of Christ that conforms to the papalendorsed doctrine of the Nativity described by St. Bridget of Sweden. Humor, play, and theology were in no way irreconcilable for this artist and his audiences. Of the scholars who note the inherent comical nature of some of Joseph’s Renaissance iconography, only two have accepted its potential ability to mirror the saint’s importance for the history of salvation. Louise Vasvari first pointed out in 1995 that visual puns on Joseph’s cuckoldry could be present in images of the saint that have been interpreted as theologically rich in symbolism. To explain her astute observations on the sexualization in the Mérode Altarpiece, however, she makes a sharp distinction between medieval clerical culture and what she calls the ‘popular-oral consciousness of lay religiosity’ that probably was not so distinct during the late medieval period – for what would preclude the clergy from laughing at cuckoldry?2 Almost to excuse her excellent arguments that could be perceived as ‘sacrilegious,’ she writes that ‘the fifteenth century Joseph was as yet very far from achieving sainthood.’3 This was not the case, however, considering the extensive evidence of pil��grimages to Aachen to see the Hosen, as well as the already well-established oral and visual culture surrounding that relic. Francesca Alberti’s essay on the ‘divine cuckolds’ St. Joseph and Vulcan underscores Vasvari’s contributions and notes that ‘the comic persona of Joseph played an important role in the theology of Incarnation as it was able to communicate basic doctrine to a large public that was not particularly acquainted with religious matters.’4 But the issue of Mary’s pregnancy by God and Joseph’s foster-paternity was known by all viewers; jokes on his cuckoldry could not have functioned for the purpose of enlightening an uneducated public. Furthermore, many of the images that satirize Joseph’s role were created for the personal devotion of the educated elite of the early modern world. Perhaps most importantly, this hypothesized ‘uneducated public’ was probably far more educated on religious matters than the majority of today’s Christians, as Carol Purtle has pointed out.5 As Paul 1 Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 17. 2 Vasvari, ‘Joseph on the Margin,’ 165. 3 Vasvari, ‘Joseph on the Margin,’ 168. 4 Alberti, ‘Divine Cuckolds,’ 161. 5 Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, xv.

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Binski aptly notes with respect to humor and play in medieval marginalia, ‘In the hands of modern critics…moral interpretations and imperatives…have been pushed forward as if they provided natural functional or justificatory rationales…but care should be taken in assuming that such things always served pastoral ends.’6 While Alberti rightly acknowledges the presence of a potential function for humor in a religious image, she notes that ‘a derogatory allusion to the satirical tradition of the willing cuckold […] would certainly not have been appropriate for a saint.’7 Yet many representations of the saint evoke contemporary derogatory secular and ‘profane’ prints, paintings, and tales, often focusing on cuckoldry, while pant-less Josephs and diaper-drying Josephs suggest a link to popular preoccupations with gender relationships that take shape in ‘Battle for the Pants’ imagery. Josephs that clutch and ogle golden treasures poke fun at the Christian caricature of the ‘miserly Jew’ while simultaneously evoking the importance of personal profit for the nuclear family, echoed by St. Bernardino of Siena’s sermons on the importance of Joseph’s role as financial head of his family – a phenomenon discussed in the following chapter.8 Because of our distance from medieval and Renaissance humor, it can be exceedingly difficult to imagine a devotee from the early modern period laughing at and venerating a saint at once. But humor in its most outrageous forms was central to the religious and civic life of this period. Even the crudest forms of humor were readily employed by the most educated and wealthy citizens of late medieval and Renaissance Europe, as well as by the clergy, and continued to thrive in the humanist centers of the north, such as Nuremberg, as well as in the south, emerging through the early humanism of Bologna. The erotic and bawdy not only abound in late medieval art and comic tales written in the vernacular and in good Latin, but also took center stage in the exuberance of religious civic celebrations. The facetiae of the Brabantine landjuweel were filled with familiar erotic puns like the sexual entreatment of male market-goers to unbutton their ‘purses.’ The bawdy was popular among even the most wealthy and educated classes, who participated as the writers, performers, and members of the rhetorical competition’s audience.9 In his study of the social significance of Shrovetide and car��nival, what Sebastian Franck described as those drey unsinnige tag (‘three mad days’) immediately before Lent, and their associated hilarities for the late medieval German city, Eckehard Simon employs accounts written by town authorities who tried to keep the revelry in bounds, as well as chroniclers, playwrights, and satirists.10 Such 6 Binski, Gothic Wonder, 285. 7 Alberti, ‘Divine Cuckolds,’ 157. 8 Joseph is caricatured for his Jewishness and ‘unenlightened’ state, as a figure symbolic of the Old Law, and as one whom, at Christ’s birth, has yet to recognize the child as Savior. Simultaneously, he is venerated as the first convert to the new, Christian, religion during the Nativity. This dual significance continues to be celebrated in the seventeenth century as well; see Perlove and Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith, 173–178. 9 Honig, Painting and the Market, 60. 10 Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 194.

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town-wide celebrations began in the thirteenth century and continued to increase in ‘madness’ until the Reformation, with town authorities intensively involved in promoting and sustaining them, insisting each year that the various guilds and performers participate, lest they be fined. The town government likewise financed the stage plays, dances, tournaments, and games – each a particular social expression of the city’s prosperity. Yet they also apparently could not control the widespread obscenities of revelers; the Nuremberg constabulary was ordered to prevent the public from employing ‘bawdy words and indecent gestures,’11 while many cities, includ��ing Nuremberg, insisted that only the upper classes could wear masks to conceal their identity.12 Sebastian Franck’s Weltbuch – published in 1534 and based on the theologian Johannes Boemus’s De omnium gentium ritibus, which describes carnival behavior at Mainz – reveals the centrality of the bawdy and erotic in carnival’s ritual games and practices. Franck attests that people frequently ‘ran through the streets naked, completely bare, without any shame.’13 Revelers were also wont to carry around a likeness of their genitalia, while in 1492 in Nördlingen, Hanns Geyr of Kemnaten and Michel Geissler of Augsburg costumed themselves, one cross-dressing as a woman, and proceeded through the city streets performing ‘unchaste acts in front of the people.’14 Outside of carnival, this was considered a very severe offense. In 1348, the Nuremberg council exiled Ulrich the pursemaker for five years for exposing his ‘tool’ (geschirr) to some ladies.15 Apparently just as common were the practices of cross-dressing, dress��ing as old people, or wearing clothes backwards or upside down. An ordinance of the Goslar council in 1450 insisted that ‘no man is to dance in a woman’s dress and no woman in a man’s outfit.’16 In 1482, the Franciscans of Ulm apparently also ran about the streets in women’s clothing during Shrovetide. Like exposing oneself in public, cross-dressing was considered a severe infraction outside of carnival, particularly for women. Throughout all of these activities and rituals, and their underlying strand of social inversion, obscene behavior – in various forms including lewd behavior and gluttonous eating and drinking – was at the forefront of Shrovetide. But despite the Bakhtinian desire to link carnival revelry to the folk, exclusive of the town authorities, Church and council played an integral role, reminding the guilds each year of their respective 11 ‘unczymliche wort und unordeliche geperde’; Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Rep. 60a: Verlässe des Inneren Rates (Ratsverlässe), no. 113, fol. 12v; Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 196. 12 Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 196. 13 ‘etlich lauffend nackend on alle scham gar entplösst durch die statt’; Franck, Weltbuoch, fol. 131v; Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 198. 14 Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 200; Moser, ‘Zur Geschichte der Maske in Bayern,’ 114. 15 Schultheiss, Die Acht-, Verbots- und Fehdebücher Nürnbergs, 86; Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 201. 16 Hölscher, ‘Goslarsche Ratsverordnungen aus dem 15. Jahrhundert,’ 66; Simon, ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,’ 207–208.

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roles in the upcoming carnival days, thus supporting a not-so-separate framework for societal inversion and release. Religious plays, inclusive of lewd behavior, occupied central stage, while these and other performances conveyed relevant political and moral messages to their audience.17 Lübeck’s wealthy merchant class occupied the center of carnival dancing in the streets, their abundance attesting the city’s past and future prosperity. Hilarious, obscene, and bawdy behavior during carnival was thus part of the city’s continuous religious and civic functioning and prosperity. Bawdy jokes were the norm in late medieval and Renaissance humor, transcending class distinctions and our anachronistic boundaries between profane and sacred. Just as Joseph’s impotent hardware and cuckoldry could be made funny by an artist familiar with the satirical arts, so could the secular iconography of the Love Garden infiltrate fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flemish Andachtsbilder of the Virgin and Child, as Reindert Falkenburg has shown. Falkenburg interprets the appearance c. 1500 in devotional painting of the table or surface laden with fruit, an iconographic element common to secular, courtly images of the Garden of Love, as ‘a consequence of the traditional interplay between depictions of profane and religious gardens, as a result of the association of the hortus conclusus in the Song of Songs with a Garden of Love.’18 Rupert of Deutz (before 1070–1129) and St. Bernard of Clairvaux in his influ�� ential sermons on the Song of Songs interpreted Christ and the Virgin, personified as Ecclesia, allegorically as the Song of Songs’ Bride and Bridegroom, who savor their union and consumption of each other’s sweetness in the hortus conclusus. Therefore: By analogy with the secular Garden of Love iconography the table laid with fruit associates fruit consumption with the sweet play of lovers and underlines the reference to the enjoyment, the ‘tasting’ of bridal love. On the other hand, it serves as a prie-dieu, and focuses the attention of the viewer on prayer and meditation: spiritual activities which to our modern sense of religious decorum have nothing in common with the sensual enjoyment of ‘tasting’ love.19

We are reminded again of the wide gulf between the modern and late medieval understanding of the relationship between what we would consider profane concerns, like sexuality, and the sacred – a good thing to consider in an encounter with a hilariously lewd, yet virtuous, medieval depiction of St. Joseph. The infusion of humor from satirical prints, panels, plays, and stories into depictions of St. Joseph, and vice versa, also accords with the strong medieval trend of jokes on the margins of devotional manuscripts and cathedrals discussed in Chapter Two. Instead of looking toward education as an explanation of humor’s function in early 17 Tydeman, The Theatre in the Middle Ages, 120–140; Honig, Painting and the Market, 60–68. 18 Hand, Joos Van Cleve, fig. 51. 19 Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion, 15.

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modern Josephine imagery, or shying away from acknowledging the influence of contemporary satire, looking to this preexisting tradition of holy laughter in the margins helps us to understand the possible function of humor within religious imagery, and how it transcended sacred and secular, lay and clerical concerns. Although the centrality of humor and satire within a Catholic altarpiece, for example, is a concept alien to post-Reformation Catholic devotion, there existed a variety of reasons for its presence. I have already suggested that humor and comedy provided a pathway for identification with the foster-father of Jesus and husband of Mary. Christian belief was inextricably attached to notions of the earthly, common and humble.20 More importantly, laughter could form an important part of ven�� eration; within the framework of the ‘World Upside Down’ Joseph’s inversion into the ridiculous was contained within the safe realm of his own religiosity, and in no way undermined the status quo. Laughing at Joseph could become the equivalent of reinstating his important theological role. Satires of Joseph’s old age and marriage arrangement to the point of highlighting his cuckoldry and impotence, for example, pointed to the very qualities that were doctrinally necessary to ensure Mary’s purity and carry out the grand scheme of Salvation. The following sections propose further functions and explanations for the presence of humor in works depicting sacred themes in general. One answer lies in the rise of the humanist artist and patron and the function of humor as a rhetorical device, as well as an embodiment of idealistic social exchanges between artist, patron, recipient, and viewer. This is a phenomenon that explains the presence of humor in works fabricated for members of the nobility, like Philip the Bold’s Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych (c. 1400), and for the newly established courtois-oriented bourgeoisie, flourishing in Nuremberg, Strasbourg, and other centers of humanist and proto-humanist discourse, which truly finds its roots in the Middle Ages. This will be discussed first in this chapter. But the medieval inheritance of classical, and particularly Christian, rhetorical theory reveals perhaps the most obvious and overlooked explanation for the presence of humor in a religious art: the important role of humilitas and irony in the formation of Christian identity, which appears not just in scripture but also in the medieval reception and transmission of classical rhetorical theory, as well as in the rhetoric of the late medieval sermon. This chapter argues that such formative concepts extended to the making of art as well, to produce a kind of imago humilis – an image rendered in a rhetorical style appropriate to its sacred function – that reconciles seemingly irreconcilable incongruities between derision and veneration. Finally, the chapter contextualizes the role of humor and wit in the formation of artistic identity in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

20 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 25–66.

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3.2  Urbanitas, Facetia, and Courtliness in Medieval and Renaissance Europe In early medieval Christianity, humor’s value for the cleric could be negligible, and humor had an ambivalent reception, but the Renaissance’s strong value placed on the witty courtier and clever joke-making was deeply rooted in a medieval tradition that kept alive the ideals of classical antiquity.21 Descriptions of various ways to pro��voke laughter by Quintilian and Cicero indicate that laughter was an important part of general rhetoric. Medieval notions of courtesy, urbanity, and wittiness originated from these texts, as well as from Aristotelian concepts. In the Nicomachean Ethics (340 bc), Aristotle defines wit as a mean between buffoonery and boorishness, and in his Rhetoric (fourth century bc), jest is described as useful for debates.22 In De inventione (On Invention, 84 bc), Cicero writes on the benefits of inserting jokes and tall tales into speeches, particularly for the tired or weary mind’s refreshment. In his commentary on Cicero, Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam (fourth century ad), Marius Victorinus expounds on this passage to some length; this commentary was the primary means by which De inventione was known in the Middle Ages.23 The sophistication of those who lived in the city took shape in ancient Greek ideals of urbanity that developed into Roman urbanitas, ideals of sophistication and aristocratic bearing for which witty play was key. A witty or ironic manner of speaking was considered urbane, summarized in Cicero’s De officiis (On Duties, 44 bc), and jesting (jocus) and wit (facetia) were central components of decorous speech. The desire for urbanitas drove laughter’s function as a rhetorical device. The ideal of the urbane person and rhetorician, and the vir facetus, characterized by sophistication and wittiness, continued in the Middle Ages and Renaissance from antiquity. Urbanitas and facetia are prominent features throughout medieval discourse, long before Petrarch’s attribution of the genre of facetiae to Cicero in the Rerum memorandarum libri of about 1344.24 The ancestors of Roman senatorial nobility first kept the ideals of urbanity alive, and the Roman system of education’s endurance maintained the popularity of texts expounding on such ideals. De officiis was an important school text, and influenced Ambrose’s notion of the Christian statesman; monastic and cathedral libraries kept many copies of both Cicero’s and Ambrose’s De officiis. The origins of medieval courtliness lie in the Latin vocabulary of clerics with access to such texts, particularly those who played a central part in Merovingian, Carolingian, and Ottonian 21 Suchomski, ‘Delectatio’ und ‘utilitas’. 22 Bowen, ‘Ciceronian Wit and Renaissance Rhetoric,’ 411; Zotz, ‘Urbanitas.’ 23 Cicero, De inventione, 1.17.25; Marius Victorinus, Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam, 81–82; Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 139. 24 This runs contrary to Barbara Bowen’s contentions. See Bowen, ‘Ciceronian Wit and Renaissance Rhetoric,’ 411.

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courts. The beginning of an ideal of courtly manners appeared in the mid-eleventh century, during the time of Henry III, in the form of elegentia morum; Old French and Provençal aesthetics of courtliness did not appear until later, but German courtly literature developed quickly to include the terms schoene site and schoene zühte, its predecessor. The characteristic of ‘elegant manners’ made a man ‘admired and sought after at court, [and is the result of] a courtly, ethical education which reconciles its disciples with God and the world.’25 Religion and piety without such notions of urbanity could be considered inadequate; John of Salisbury’s Policraticus particularly complains of Cistercian disinterest in hospitality, a crucial component of courtesy. Urbanitas in relation to speech manifested in the appearance of being welleducated and well-spoken, as well as in the ability to joke in a witty or ironic manner. By the twelfth century, a successfully urbane person would joke through derision, biting wit, or humiliation, or he could ‘put someone on’ – the kind of joking that continues into the sixteenth century and appears in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri, 1550; 1568). In vernacular literature, urbanus took shape in the words curialis, courtois, and hövesch, a vocabulary used to describe courtliness and courtesy that appeared in the mid-eleventh century, originally in the school/court milieu of France; what was once used to disparage clerics who had succumbed to worldliness became synonymous with elegantia morum, central to courtly life and harmonious with proper Christian behavior. Facetus and curialis were, of course, intimately joined in the Latin, and thus were tied to the notion of the ideal courtier in the thirteenth century, and onward into the Renaissance. An ethics of courtliness is thus rooted in European cathedral schools that continued the legacy of classical ideals of urbanitas and facetia. Initially tied to an educated secular clergy, courtliness permeated the chivalric class, first in France. But the German lay nobility’s adaptation of these ideals into their own vernacular was a sort of continuation, as well, of early medieval imperial traditions native to Germany. The reasoning behind the laity’s adoption of courtliness and behind the knighthood’s aspirations to this ideal is much debated. Norbert Elias attributes the adoption to a variety of changing circumstances – the rise of a money economy, a growth in population, a greater independency at court – which trigger a psychological desire to adapt, resulting in a kind of evolution toward what he (problematically) calls ‘civilizing.’26

25 Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, 143. 26 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 397–409; Painter, French Chivalry, 28–64; Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, 56–94.

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In the mid-twelfth century, an anonymous cleric composed a poem that is quite Ciceronian in its language, if only via medieval ethical writings’ inheritance of Ciceronian vocabulary. The poem, now titled Facetus de moribus et vita, as Stephen Jaeger points out, is probably a summary of the moral instruction given to noble families by private tutors. It describes the vir facetus as one who ‘should be eloquent, but also learned and diligent, liberal, well-dressed in a manner proper to his estate, and scrupulous in his table manners.’27 The poet then applies his lesson to a young layman, a cleric, and merchants. As early as the twelfth century, therefore, we have evidence of the moral instruction of citizens outside of the nobility or clergy. Lay literacy, of course, became an important factor for the spread of courtesy, along with the rise of the romance; but ancient ideals of courtesy were cultivated originally by a learned clergy who saw it as their aim to educate and guide the laity, and initially the nobility alone. The romance itself took on a synonymous role with that of the educated cleric; twelfth-century Middle High German romances, for example, arose rarely from a commission by a patron.28 The thirteenth century witnessed the rise of courtesy books, like the German Tischzucht manuals discussed in Chapter One, popularized by a rising bourgeoisie aspiring to behave according to the courtly laws of the nobility, and spurred on by the rapid growth of cities and urban life. The books addressed a variety of topics, ranging from proper manners at table to proper dress, and cultivated a social identity particularly distinct from the peasantry. As the bourgeoisie rose in population, wealth, and power, and as the remnants of the feudal system dissolved, the nobility increasingly turned toward ‘courtly’ behavior as a distinguishing factor, which only increased attention to proper speech, behavior, and dress among both classes alike. This movement for both classes was driven by ‘the increased competition for the favour of the most powerful within the courtly stratum itself, and by the constant pressure from below,’29 meaning the bourgeoisie’s attempts to advance their prestige by aping the customs of those in power: ‘For it is precisely the chief function of the court aristocracy – their function for the mighty central ruler – to distinguish themselves, to maintain themselves as a distinct formation, a social counterweight to the bourgeoisie.’30 This component of Elias’s analysis carries weight, finally ending when profession and wealth become markers of prestige separate from refined social conduct. For the nobility and all those aspiring to courtly behavior, the vir facetus continued as an ideal into the Renaissance, and continued to affect the clergy as well, particularly notions of the ideal bishop. Fluent in witty urbanity, the vir facetus was the ideal courtier, able to make light of his successes in a manner so as not to incite 27 Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, 167. 28 Bumke, Courtly Culture. 29 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 425. 30 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 424.

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jealousy, and able to criticize his ruler legitimately without offending him. This is quite like the ideal courtier of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (Libro del Cortegiano, published 1528), which devotes a substantial section to facezie (2.42–83).31 The ideal ruler, likewise, from the early Middle Ages on, conducts a court marked by laetitia, hilaritas, and amicitia (happiness, joy, and good fellowship).32 Humanitas is a crucial component of the ideal ruler and courtier in the twelfth century – the qualities of an innate joy, a cheerful countenance, and a proclivity to friendly speech and laughter. A readiness to laugh even at oneself is important for this as well. Poking fun at one’s ruler, even criticizing him, could be acceptable so long as it was done with wit and courtesy. Satires of courtly ideals in the margins of manuscripts and other luxury objects commissioned by the nobility might also be understood within the context of this phenomenon. The artist criticizes, for example, the ideal of love service; but in doing so and presenting the image to the aristocratic viewer, he compliments the patron’s urbanity and humanitas, the qualities of the ideal courtier and ruler. The concept of the vir facetus therefore bound patron and artist, a phenomenon that depends on the agency of the artist within the patronage relationship, discussed below. With the rise of a moneyed, urban bourgeois class adamant to adopt the cultural ideals of the aristocracy, which included the acquisition of luxury objects like art, this relationship could move beyond the exclusive realm of the nobility. Contemporary literature on rhetorical theory itself moved facetudo beyond the orator, as some classical authors had done. Giovanni Pontano’s De Sermone relies on Cicero and Quintilian, but his discussion of facetudo as a virtue follows Aristotle. Like Quintilian, Pontano modifies his Ciceronian theory of wit and humor in rhetoric to address not only the orator, but also any educated man who can be taught the use of facetia to promote relaxatio.33 The central theme of De Sermone – a work very much in the tradition of Lucian, Boccaccio, and Poggio Bracciolini – is the character of facetudo, which is described as a social virtue. It includes Renaissance facetiae to support Pontano’s new theory of wit. The book is derived from an environment of facetudo and urbanitas, the Accademia Antoniana of Naples in the mid-1400s; Pontano describes his friends as homines urbani atque faceti. His stories revolve around the lower classes, but also the court of Alfonso I, King of Naples and Sicily and a ruler who appreciates wit and laughter, much like the ideal medieval ruler dating back to the Merovingian kings, who continued the tradition of the laughing prince of imperial Rome. Alfonso, rather than Cosimo de’ Medici, another ruler praised for his wit, became the most celebrated of the Renaissance laughing prince category, appearing in a wide range of works including Adrian Barlandus’s Iocorum 31 Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy; Luck, ‘Vir facetus.’ 32 This runs against Barbara Bowen’s statement that ‘The Middle Ages seem to have lost sight of this tradition of the humorous ruler’ and that the Renaissance alone resurrected the Roman joke. Bowen, ‘Roman Jokes and the Renaissance Prince,’ 138. 33 Luck, ‘Vir facetus’; Pontano, De Sermone 1, 1.17; 6, 1.15; 149, 1.5; 156, 1.12; Walser, Die Theorie des Witzes, 61.

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veterum ac recentium duae centuriae (Louvain, 1524), Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano (1528), Erasmus’s Apophthegmata (1538, at the end of Book VIII, 706–709), and the Tübingen edition of Heinrich Bebel’s Facetiae (1506), which also includes jokes and sayings by Poggio, St. Bernard, Bernardino of Siena, and the Emperors Sigismund, Rudolph, Frederick, and Albert. The real and ideal Renaissance prince, from the fourteenth through the early seventeenth century, had a sense of humor, willing to take jokes at his own expense, and similar men marked by urbanitas liked to read and write about their rulers as witty and ready to laugh.34 Macrobius and Petrarch included collections of jokes that imparted the wit of the ideal ruler, while Poggio’s Facetiae in Latin (written around 1438 and published in the 1470s) and the Motti e facezie del Piovano Arlotto (published first before 1478) provide short, witty anecdotes for a general audience. The ideal cardinal, as well, is crafted in Ciceronian ideals as a prince of the Church in works like De cardinalatu, written by Paolo Cortesi and published in 1610 – for urbanitas and festivitas are beneficial in their dispersion of hate, anger, and sadness. The courtier, of course, takes on Ciceronian ideals as well, as in Castiglione’s work.35 Erasmus’s Apophthegmata, published first in 1531 and widely read, discusses humor as festivitas, essential to civilized life.36 The vir facetus took center stage as well in rhetorical competitions of the Burgundian duchy, such as the aforementioned Brabantine landjuweel, in which wit encompassed bawdy jokes of the kind that appear in Joseph’s imagery, described in Chapter Two. In 1496, 28 chambers of rhetoric from Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, and the Walloon lands met in the marketplace of Antwerp for such a competition. The surprising thing is the centrality of the bawdy in jokes made by the wealthiest and most educated classes who took part in the competition, urban and aristocratic, aspiring to the qualities of the vir facetus. Andrew Brown and Graeme Small have shown just how intertwined courtly and civic life actually was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, contrary to the strict separation described by Johan Huizinga in his The Autumn of the Middle Ages.37 The ideals of the vir facetus translated into preaching as well, particularly for the mendicant orders during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. According to a rhetorical concept of humor, its presence is particularly useful for provoking attentiveness and engagement. The Forma Praedicandi of 1322 by Robert of Basevorn documents a new rhetoric of preaching, and includes humor as one of the 22 ornaments of a good sermon. ‘Opportune humor,’ particularly, according to Cicero, ‘occurs when

34 35 36 37

Bowen, ‘Roman Jokes and the Renaissance Prince,’ 143–148; Luck, ‘Vir facetus.’ Bowen, ‘Roman Jokes and the Renaissance Prince,’ 139–45. Bowen, ‘Ciceronian Wit and Renaissance Rhetoric,’ 418. Brown and Small, Court and Civic Society.

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we add something jocular which will give pleasure when the audience is bored. This must be used especially when they begin to sleep.’38

3.3  Dissimulatio, Christian Irony, and the Imago Humilis The classical rhetorical theory of ridiculum and laughter, available in the Latin discourse on rhetoric and in treatises on poetics, was a tradition kept alive in the Middle Ages – first in the sermons of the early Christian fathers like Augustine (c. 400),39 and second in the courts and schools of monasteries and cathedrals – until the ideals of facetia became widespread through romances, and ultimately permeated the nobility and bourgeoisie alike.40 Such concepts provide another explanation for humor’s presence in a sacred image of Joseph, as well as in other sacred works. The Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric: For Herennius), composed in 80 bc by an unknown author and attributed to Cicero until Poggio Bracciolini’s discovery of a complete copy in St. Gall in 1416, was a widely used text that offered the concepts of urbanitas and irony, as well as discussions on the uses and theory of laughter.41 Other sources transmitted through the Middle Ages on how to use laughter included Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (Institutes of Oratory, c. ad 95) and Cicero’s De oratore (On the Orator, 55 bc) and De inventione (84 bc). In De oratore, incongruity forms a part of dissimulatio, and can occur in the contrasts between expectation and reality or of inner and outer appearance.42 The concept of dissimulatio, or dissimulatio urbana, which appears in a variety of literary forms from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, is particularly useful for understanding inconsistencies between ridicule and reverence in religious humor. The reason that categories of humor, the comic, satire, and the ridiculous seem to fall apart when applied to understanding Joseph’s religious humor is that many categories and uses of humor today do not fully conform to the thinking of the late medieval and early Renaissance artist and audience. Rather than conforming to nineteenth-, twentieth-, or twenty-first-century definitions of humor and satire (discussed in the Introduction and in Chapter Two), Josephine humor is closer to that of Wolfram’s Parzival, a Middle High German romance dated to the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Both seem to negate modern humor theories; Parzival, for example, refutes Jean Paul’s nineteenth-century theory of humor as a reflection of humanity’s 38 Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 355. 39 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 31. 40 Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 421; Steinmetz, ‘Komik in mittelalterlicher Literatur,’ 262; Suchomski, ‘Delectatio’ und ‘Utilitas’. 41 Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 421; Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. 42 Superiority drives laughter induced by character flaws or outside deformities. Cicero, De Oratore II, 237 and 239; Sutton and Rackham, trans., 1: 374–375.

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place in creation. This is an attitude of self-awareness in which folly makes sense – a reconciliation of one’s place within a world of folly and a simultaneous adoption of a superior point of view. This privileged understanding never occurs in the text. Ambiguity is rampant. Only inconsistencies arise that open up the text to the audience’s scrutiny. Like the visual parodies in the margins of devotional books, Parzival’s narrator mocks almost every character through debasing laughter, making fun of the very heroes that the text simultaneously supports and celebrates.43 Not only the ridic��ulous, but also the ironic is showcased through a ‘clash of profane facts and courtly pretensions.’44 In the text, Stefan Seeber writes, ‘the ridiculous, the ironic, and the comic together with the laughter they provoke are not self-sufficient […] they point to a deeper meaning, they unsettle the listener or reader, and they act as a catalyst that instigates a cognitive process […] convey[ing] the meaning of the text.’45 The audience is charged with the making of sense; humor and laughter bind them to Parzival’s words and demand further thinking through the narrator’s inconsistencies. Joseph’s derision and function as an exemplar seem to operate in an analogous way. The paradox created between ridicule and reverence is not irreconcilable; the definition of irony as two valid meanings existing equally and in contradiction does not apply here. It is a kind of paradox that is rooted in the many varieties of ancient Greek irony, and might be closest to Socratic irony. Socrates is the ‘first notable example of an admirable eiron […] despite Socrates’ ironic assertions of ignorance, and thus inferiority, he is yet in his own view superior to other people in that he knows he does not know, and they do not possess this knowledge.’46 His simulated ignorance allows his superiority to appear more effectively than overt displays of knowledge. In De officiis (popular in the clerical and scholastic milieu of the Middle Ages) Cicero makes Socrates into the epitome of wittiness, linking wit and irony in speech closely to urbanity. Cicero is particularly fond of jesting that is ingenuum et facetum. Joseph’s derision may be understood to function as a kind of inversion of an ironic paradoxical encomium; rather than blaming through praise, derision is used ultimately to call attention to Joseph’s most important and worthy characteristics, resulting ultimately in a kind of veneration through laughter.47 Plato’s comparison of Socrates to an ugly, hollow statue of Silenus that hides golden statues of the gods inside is a revealing analogy in comparison with the seemingly derided Josephs of religious humor.48 The dissimulatio of Quintilian’s De oratore encourages this kind of Socratic 43 Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 425; Green, ‘On Recognizing Medieval Irony.’ See also Classen, ‘Irony in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature.’ 44 Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 425. 45 Seeber, ‘Medieval Humour?,’ 427. 46 Pavlovskis-Petit, ‘Irony and Satire,’ 512–513. 47 Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools is one example of a paradoxical encomium, and Reindert Falkenburg discusses the tradition of the paradoxical encomium in relation to Erasmus and Pieter Aertsen. Falkenburg, ‘Pieter Aertsen, Rhyparographer.’ 48 Plato, Symposium, 47.

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irony, inviting the speaker to employ a pretend ignorance that lures the audience into feeling superior.49 Albrecht Dürer was engaging with these concepts, as Jürgen Müller demonstrates in his article on the irony of the artist’s boorish figures of the peasantry and bagpipe-playing fools, whose ‘beauty is veiled by a kind of Socratean mask.’50 But this kind of irony existed earlier, in the fifteenth century as well, in the figures of the Wild Man and peasant, emblems of a proto-nationalistic northern robustness, fecundity, vigor and exuberance. Although ridiculed for his proximity to the ground and to animals, wealthy burghers in the rhetorical competitions of the Brabantine landjuweel celebrated the earthy peasant as the most honorable and valuable figure, specifically for his nourishing function.51 Dissimulatio probably informed many comical depictions of Joseph – the artist’s scheme attributes boorishness, cuckoldry, and foolishness to the saint; but upon closer reflection, and looking beneath the surface, the substitute father of Jesus radiates pure gold, much like Plato’s hollow statue of Silenus. Erich Auerbach’s description of Rabelais’s work also highlights important characteristics of ironic play that are not dissimilar to the inconsistencies offered up by Parzival, the visual parodies in the margins of medieval art, and the paradoxes of Josephine humor in art. Rabelais’s entire effort, he writes, is focused on playing and the multiplicity of things and their many potential aspects: ‘tempting the reader out of his contemporary and definite way of regarding things, by showing him phenomena in utter confusion […] tempting him out into the great ocean of the world in which he can swim freely, though it be at his own peril.’52 The irony of presenting a sacred image infused with baseness and humor is also deeply rooted in the Christian tradition and its adaptation of Ciceronian and Quintilian classical rhetoric to serve Christian purposes, upheld particularly by the late medieval mendicant orders. In his work on Christian Latin prose, Erich Auerbach calls our attention to the ironic character of the sermo humilis, a genre that continued through the Middle Ages and afterward, appropriate in classical rhetoric to familiar conversation rather than formal debate. Auerbach shows us that the adaptation of classical rhetorical theory to Christian use did not produce a new theory, but rather an intermingling of previously distinct subject matters and styles. Cicero’s threefold classification of style appropriate to subject matter, from ‘low’ to ‘lofty’, was repurposed to fit a new Christian function. For Cicero, ‘lofty’ was reserved for topics concerning the welfare of men’s lives, for example; but for Augustine and the early Church Fathers, Christian life always concerned the well-being of men, both worldly and eternal: ‘in the Christian context humble, everyday things, money matters or a 49 Müller, ‘Ironie, Lüge, Simulation, Dissimulation.’ 50 Müller, ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Peasant Engravings,’ 4; Müller, Das Paradox als Bildform. 51 See Chapter Two. 52 Auerbach, Mimesis, 242.

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cup of cold water, lose their baseness and become compatible with the lofty style; and conversely […] the highest mysteries of the faith may be set forth in the simple words of the lowly style.’53 The values of Christianity therefore contradicted the tradition of classical rhetoric, but did not undermine it. In ancient comedy, daily life events were treated in the low style, and sometimes in the intermediate. Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian rejected the concept of treating common subjects in the sublime style, and vice versa, although occasionally the crossover could occur for a specific effect. In ancient rhetorical theory, humilis determined the low style, the sermo humilis, with its connotations of inferiority. But in Christian literature and thought, it took an important turn that vanquished its pejorative meaning. The humility of Jesus’s Incarnation, of a life lived among the poor, ‘derives its full force from the contrast with Christ’s divine nature: man and God, lowly and sublime, humilis et sublimis.’54 Augustine’s sermons contrasted Christ’s humilitas with the superbia of the Platonists’ hatred for the body, and disdained the worldliness and wisdom of people who considered the Gospel lowly. He described the apostles as ‘humiliter nati (lowborn), inhonorati (unesteemed), illiterate (un-lettered), or imperitissimi et abiectissimi (most ignorant and of the lowest condition).’55 The Bible itself he described as a sermo humilis, characterized by a ‘lowly’ style simultaneously possessive of profound sublimity, a kind of dialectic that influenced Christian views throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. The lowly style of the scripture meant that anyone could appreciate it, but at the same time, it encompassed sublime meaning: ‘Simple, vulgar, and crassly realistic words are employed, the syntax is often colloquial and inelegant; but the sublimity of the subject matter shines through the lowliness, and there is hidden meaning at every turn.’56 The rhetorical theory of the Roman Empire in no way declined because of humilitas in Christian rhetoric; the classical education of the Church Fathers continued to be appreciated and applied as the foundation for clerical and monastic education in the Middle Ages. Rather, sublimity infused the rhetoric used for teaching, philosophy, and the law – whether to condemn, praise, or persuade – shaping the discourse with an unprecedented emotion and direct appeal, simultaneously rhetorical and colloquial. Dante’s Divine Comedy, Auerbach writes, is the epitome of Christian sublimity, written in a style both plain and sweet, not lofty like the verse of Virgil. Humilitas could appear through vulgarisms and realism in Augustine and Jerome as well; both authors used satirical passages in their sermons. These Auerbach considers hallmarks of the Christian sermo humilis, if only because they appear in situations

53 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 37. 54 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 41. 55 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 43. 56 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 52.

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concerning ‘serious or profound matters’ and are transformed by them. Satire and realism were joined to the sermon’s desire to make human contact and to express intimate human bonds.57 Auerbach seems to excuse his discussion of satire and vulgarity in early Christian sermons by placing them within an earnest context. But we need only note that play, laughter, and fun arise from situations of earnestness to understand humor’s natural residence in a Christian sermon. And indeed, the very antithesis of the contrast, the irony produced therein, is not so different from the irony, metaphors, puns, and obscurities of verbal play used by Augustine in his sermones, which he more typically classifies as elements of the ‘obscure’ or ‘difficult’ mode than the ‘plain’ one.58 Humor was a favored technique of the late medieval preaching orders in their sermons; humor, satire, and exempla bound the sermons of the Servites, Dominicans, and Franciscans, although the Franciscans were the strongest proponents of the sermo humilis. One of the most famous Franciscan preachers, Anthony of Padua (1195–1231), followed St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226) in using the sermo humilis when speaking to the laity, rather than the sermo modernus, which focused on scriptural explication by means of scholastic theology. Prominent Franciscans including the English Roger Bacon (c. 1219/20–c. 1292) criticized this modern method, instead advocating for a return to ancient forms of preaching more focused on engaging and persuading the audience.59 Humilitas provides an important context for the function of humor in a sacred scene. The lowliness of the bawdiest humor – in rhetorical theory, the ‘low’ style – is ultimately tied to a sublime Christian message dating back to Augustine. The sublimity of a sermon in paint, for example, derived not from a desire for an elevated form, but rather for an elevated subject – and a subject like the Nativity or Adoration of Christ celebrated its lowliness and humility most overtly, connecting on an unprecedentedly accessible level, yet at the same time containing the irrefutable and deep message of Christian salvation history. The inelegance of a Christian sermon by comparison with ancient rhetoric, marked by baseness, colloquialisms, and even satire, did not preclude the hidden meaning and sublime subject from shining forth, as Auerbach writes, and this rhetorical form of sermonizing continued through the late Middle Ages. The same might be said for the Christian image: the humilitas of humor and satire in sacred art served the purpose not only of highlighting the sublimity of the Christian message through the use of irony. It also spoke in uniquely Christian terms, deriving from a rhetorical tradition rooted in classical antiquity but informed by Christian history. The purpose in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance had shifted from making the message accessible to the uneducated. But the image’s humilitas 57 Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public, 53–57. 58 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 64. 59 Bolzoni, The Web of Images, 124–125; Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence, 93–171.

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still functioned as a sort of invitation, a subtle persuasion, through direct aesthetic appeal. To equate religious humor in art with diversion, as scholars including Karl Wentersdorf have done, is, as Binski writes, ‘to remove such images from the sphere of the aesthetic (i.e., geared to producing a certain experience or sensation), and is instead to conscript them automatically to moral or political commentary.’60 But humor and satire in sacred art served important aesthetic and rhetorical purposes. As Mary Carruthers explains it, rhetorically, through persuasive means (including sensory access) the work leads its audience to belief founded on fides, or ‘reasoned trust,’ the result of which is action of some kind, such as a legal decision, religious belief, or, I would argue, veneration. Within the context of the empathic image and its facilitation of public and private devotion, this rhetorical approach makes sense. If, as Carruthers writes, ‘it is to rhetoric and not theology that one should go first’ to understand the medieval arts, humor’s role in this experience was far more important than previously thought.61

3.4 The Art of Rhetorical Humor and the Artist as vir facetus: Early Humanism and Social Exchange Josephine humor, aside from being an aid to veneration, also arose from the cultural context of facetia and the association of wit with ethical and urbane ideals. Certainly many of the patrons, lay and clerical, who could afford such images would have been familiar with such concepts of urbanitas and a rhetoric of humor, handed down from antiquity through monastic and cathedral schools and the courts of western Europe. As the original teachers of the nobility, clerics were potentially the most familiar of all. The nobility and urban patricians were certainly well educated in classical rhetorical theory, of which humor comprised an important part. The notion of the vir facetus appeared in adaptations of such classical texts as well. The wealthy mercantile classes and urban bourgeoisie probably had a strong interest in engaging and emulating such concepts too, considering the role of courtesy books in their lives. Scholars of Renaissance Europe herald humanism’s arrival in the north around the year 1500, particularly in southern Germany and Switzerland, and at this point the work of men like Pontano had brought classical treatises to widespread renown. But even earlier in the north, there existed a desire to enjoy classical texts and their contemporary counterparts, with patrons, artists, and intellectuals alike in search of classical manuscripts, artifacts, and, as Brigitte Buettner adds, rituals and customs. The late fourteenth century of northern Europe witnessed an early humanist movement to rival that of Italy, and a particular interest in all things Roman. In 1408, Jean, 60 Binski, Gothic Wonder, 285. 61 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 18.

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the Duke of Berry, received a collection of Terence’s comedies from his treasurer, Martin Gouge, with miniatures inspired by ancient Roman ruins and descriptions of such sites. Inspired by ancient sources, Boccaccio’s Decameron, translated into different vernaculars, and his Des cleres et nobles femmes were both presented to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on New Year’s Day in 1403.62 Wit is redolent, of course, in Boccaccio’s Decameron, particularly in relation to popular preoccupations with inverted gender relationships, like the satirical genres of the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ and the ‘Unequal Couple’ – themes that infiltrated religious and aristocratic commissions by Philip the Bold and the patron of the Strasbourg Doubt of Joseph. Joseph’s loss of his pants and derogatory role as diaper-washer appear, as well, in Hieronymus Bosch’s Prado Adoration of the Magi, the iconography of which is attributed to ‘the humanist artist’s new claim to artistic freedom.’63 But this artistic freedom was per��haps not so new by 1500, as more recent scholarship suggests. A humanist rhetoric of humor, informed by the continuation of Ciceronian ideals throughout the Middle Ages, as well as ideals of courtliness and urbanitas informed by such a tradition, may have influenced commissions like the Frankfurt Städel’s Little Garden of Paradise (Fig. 2.17), dated to c. 1410–1420 and by the same master as the Strasbourg Doubt of Joseph. Not much has been written on this diminutive panel. Despite its probable function as a tool for private devotion, humor and play are prevalent, and sometimes irreverent, throughout this tiny panel. St. George’s dragon lies prostrate and belly-up, perhaps even sunbathing, while St. Michael’s chained-up, annoyed ape/devil glares boldly at his master, the bored courtier, who chats lackadaisically with a third saint (presumably Sebastian) who nonchalantly wraps his arms around a tree. The artist blends the humor and charm of more secularized gardens depicting the romping nobility with a devotional scene of Mary and Christ in the hortus conclusus, a kind of fusion that exists in countless scenes of St. Joseph during this period. In no other work are humor and devotion so obviously compatible, so harmoniously intertwined – that is, to our eye. The reduction of fearsome creatures and saintly attributes to comic levels, in size or in caricature, is a phenomenon that seems to have been widespread, but we often ignore it because its function within a sacred image is unclear. But, like the ornaments of a sermon, the transformation of St. George’s dragon into a miniaturized lizard (Fig. 3.1), as in Master E.S.’s print (and in many free-standing German devotional sculptures), or even a pet on a leash, as in Paolo Uccello’s painting of the subject (1470; National Gallery, London),64 could attract one’s attention to a central point of the art��work, the facilitation, humanization, and perhaps even pleasure of devotion. George’s vanquishing of the dragon (and other saints’ conquests of their ridiculous foes) to 62 Buettner, ‘Past Presents.’ See Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, 1: 19–65, for the Duc de Berry’s taste for the antique. 63 Moxey, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the “World Upside Down”,’ 124. 64 Thanks to Paul Barolsky for pointing this one out to me.

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Fig. 3.1. Master E.S., St. George, from the series The Apostles, c. 1450–1467. Engraving, 15.5 x 11.3 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1922, Accession Number 22.83.9, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

the point of its becoming ridiculous emphasizes and celebrates the triumph of good over evil. In privileging wittiness, however, the artist could also pay compliment to the viewer’s and patron’s visual sophistication (urbanity). Facetia is used to promote attention to the scene as a whole, and to devotion, but also to encourage relaxatio. These ideals may not have directly affected all crafters of images that fuse humor with a sacred theme, but they would have unquestionably infiltrated the humanist circles, hierarchical exchanges, and patron–client–recipient relationships of their cities.

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In the case of a St. George or St. Michael, a detraction of power from the demon probably also poked fun at the valiancy of the holy warrior, a notion that could be considered sacrilegious. But we have seen this concept before, in the knights fleeing snails of medieval play on the margins. It is now simply brought to the center. Like Joseph’s humor, humor here does not detract from the status quo; it, too, is safely contained within the framework of the object’s actual use for prayer. But the rhetoric of wit and relaxatio becomes a part of this experience. Furthermore, the irony of such depictions is linked to the ironic roots of Christian thought in the sermo humilis and the intertwining of humor with a sublime message. Quintilian’s concept of dissimulatio is also useful here. In employing this concept in his Peasant Couple Dancing of 1514, Albrecht Dürer, writes Jürgen Müller, is the inventor of ‘a new iconographic mode of art: the inverse citation.’ His peasant dancers subvert the dignity of the Laocoön group, their model, ‘in the context of an insinuated ignorance of antique culture.’65 In choosing a Germanic subject matter, the boorish peasant couple, Dürer applies a new formula to the practice of aemulatio, a new way to compete within the vein of artistic progress. The inverse citation offers an ironic nod to the Italo-antique tradition, and the critic ‘who assumes that the crudeness and simplicity of the subject equates to crude execution reveals his own ignorance.’66 A similar trick might appear in earlier fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art, in the form of the humorous adaptation of the so-called Apollo Sauroktonos, or Apollo Lizard-Killer. A series of Roman gems, coins, and small- and large-scale statues are all thought to derive from a mid-fourth-century bc bronze version by Praxiteles, described by Pliny in his Natural History, in which the god uses an arrow to vanquish a lizard. An epigram by the Roman poet Martial attributes wittiness to the subject, so it is often considered an ironic evocation of Apollo’s battle with the serpent Python at Delphi.67 But Martial does not mention the god Apollo, but rather a ‘treacherous boy’ whom he tells to ‘spare the lizard’ that desires to die by his hand. More recently, Jenifer Neils has called into question the attribution of many surviving statues traditionally thought to be copies of the Sauroktonos, as well as the notion that the great god Apollo as lizard-slayer would refer to the battle at Delphi. She suggests that many of the extant statues more likely depict a young, effeminate boy in a sensuous pose, with the lizard as a pun on the penis and masturbation. Other, earlier explanations accept the Apollo attribution but neutralize the humor, for example, by suggesting that Apollo is purifying the air or awakening the lizard. In the Renaissance, when such statues were recovered or rediscovered, access to Pliny and Martial could have led an audience to interpret the statue either way. But the sexual meaning of the 65 Müller, ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Peasant Engravings,’ 5. 66 Müller, ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Peasant Engravings,’ 4. 67 Pliny, Natural History xxxiv, 70; Martial, Apophoreta xiv, 172.

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lizard was unquestionably known by the late sixteenth century, as demonstrated by Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard (c. 1594–1595; Fondazione Roberto Longhi).68 In the Renaissance, the statue type’s potential for humor, whether god, sensuous boy, or both, coupled with access to Martial particularly, would not have been lost to an audience familiar with irony and humor in literature, sermons, and art. The ridiculously diminutive foes of Raphael’s earlier St. George and the Dragon (c. 1506, Fig. 3.2) and his Little St. Michael (c. 1504–1505; Musée du Louvre, Paris), as well as its pendant St. George and the Dragon (c. 1504; Musée du Louvre, Paris), perhaps suggest a familiarity with the Apollo Sauroktonos type (a possibility; although the provenance of many copies is unknown, the Louvre version resided in the Borghese collection for quite some time). Raphael’s early saints at least bespeak a knowledge and appreciation of the same sort of visual irony that appeared in earlier northern European depictions of saints, like those of the Little Garden of Paradise or the many St. Georges of late medieval devotional sculpture that vanquish monsters that are frequently the size of house pets. The concept of a rhetoric of humor and dissimulatio infiltrated Raphael’s environs directly as well. We know, for example, that the Little St. Michael was probably painted under the patronage of Giovanna Feltria della Rovere, the sister of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, within the context of a courtly environment that privileged the qualities of wit and good humor in both prince and subject. In this same environment, the earlier St. George and the Dragon may have been painted for King Henry VII’s emissary and commissioned by the Duke.69 Baldesar Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano, begun in 1508, documents these ideals in a compilation of fictional conversations on the subject of the proper courtier; although the book became an immediate bestseller, there is hardly any thought contained within that is entirely original or uninfluenced by medieval courtesy books and rhetorical treatises. Castiglione’s ideal courtier is unquestionably the vir facetus, able to criticize his ruler without offering offense, to poke fun at an ideal without undermining it – a concept that Castiglione’s good friend, Raphael himself, executes perfectly in rendering his Saint George and St. Michael. The Satan of Raphael’s later St. Michael Vanquishing Satan (1518; Musée du Louvre, Paris), a much more robust, humanized character, makes clear the fact that the artist’s earlier dragon and demon are not diminutive simply for compositional or stylistic purposes. The reduction of St. George’s fearsome dragon to a sunbathing lizard in the Little Garden of Paradise, as well as other fifteenth-century versions that miniaturize the dragon, can provide more of a context for the use of ironic inversions in the sixteenth century in northern and southern Europe. The ironic ‘inverse citation’ of the northern humanist artist – a phenomenon that probably appeared as well in Hans Holbein the Younger’s dancing peasants of the Basel Haus zum Tanz (mentioned in Chapter Two) 68 Neils, ‘The Apollo Sauroktonos Redefined.’ 69 Jones and Penny, Raphael, 6–8.

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Fig. 3.2. Raphael, St. George and the Dragon, c. 1506. Oil on panel, 28 x 21.5 cm. Andrew W. Mellon Collection, inv. 1937.1.26, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

– can perhaps be attributed to more than a sudden fascination with Italian antique culture. Renaissance manifestations of the Wild Man can be described as an ironic inversion on this culture in some sense, and as embodiments of dissimulatio, which was an influential concept in the north much earlier than the sixteenth century. Like the satyr of the south, the Wild Man could signify ancient Teutonic strength, fecundity, vigor, and a nature unsullied by contact with the tainted civilized world. The Wild Man’s uncivilized, untamed exuberance, in an ironic twist, could become admirable qualities, particularly as a foil to the money-driven, ‘civilized’ world of papal control. Linked to a Germanic proto-nationalism, a distinct northern identity yet simultaneously an object of derision, much like the peasant, the Wild Man’s ‘otherness’ became increasingly less static in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly in the years leading into the Reformation. First as an inversion of the ideal courtier, later as a foil

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to papal greed, but always a figure without decorum and with a laughable affinity to animals, the Wild Man embodied a spectrum of ideals and concerns. Like Joseph and the figure of the peasant, the Wild Man’s characterizations were riddled with irony, for his virtues originated from the same aspects for which he was also derided. In northern Europe, not only the patrons but also late medieval artists – whether working for a courtly, urban bourgeois, or ecclesiastical recipient – could be familiar with rhetorical uses of humor. In Rhetoric beyond Words, Lucy Freeman Sandler describes what she calls: the artist-as-rhetor, that is, as producer/creator/inventor of an effect on the user of the book. Artists may have been attuned to rhetorical techniques, having, for instance, heard sermons, attended mass and participated in great Church festivals, just as they were attuned to theology, having learned the catechism and the rosary.70

While she discusses illuminators in this context, the thought may be quite easily extended to the painter of panels or the sculptor, for example. In the January miniature of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Fig. 2.13), Pol de Limbourg turned the figure of Aquarius into a beautiful boy rather than the traditional woman, a witty play on the scene’s inclusion below of a parade of fashionable, phallic courtiers, and specifically the Duke’s handsome Ganymede-like cup-bearer. Michael Camille aptly notes that while the February miniature displays the genitalia of the Duke’s peasant subjects, the January page’s courtiers’ corkscrew-like ‘emblems of youthful virile sexuality […] in a more allusive way […] play upon the power of the penis […] Here I disagree with Odile Blanc and Danielle Régnier-Bohler who have argued […] that the medieval male body was not eroticized as an object during the Middle Ages.’71 Over the course of the calendar cycle, the tiny pups on the January minia��ture’s white tablecloth grow in size, another example of the Limbourgs’ wit, while sprinkled throughout the scene are hidden portraits of the three brothers. Camille attributes such delights to the Limbourgs’ independence and agency in crafting such images, seeking to please the Duke on more than one level. But such inclusions, like the young, phallic courtiers’ presence among Jean’s objects of collection at the New Year’s feast, probably extended beyond a playful appeal to the sensuous and into the realm of rhetorical humor and its implied exchange within the realm of courtoisie. As a valet de chambre, Pol de Limbourg was part of a prestigious group of courtiers who took care of the Duke’s person. He and his brothers were particularly fond of playing jokes on their master.72

70 Sandler, ‘Rhetorical Strategies in the Pictorial Imagery of Fourteenth-Century Manuscripts,’ 99. 71 Camille, ‘The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry,’ 177. 72 Camille, ‘The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry,’ 181.

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These witty exchanges between courtiers and ruler are unquestionably part of the courtly interplay of facetiae, but this relationship probably extended beyond social interplay to the making and exchange of art. Wit was by no means limited to the Limbourgs’ artistic production; in the margins of the Duke’s earlier Grandes Heures, painted in 1409, appears an image invented by Jean Pucelle in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux. A beautiful blonde boy is fellated by a Saracen whose ‘“rod” is only at halfmast.’73 He rings three bells; as Camille points out, trois, or the number three, was slang for male genitals. The inclusion of wit in the Duke’s books of hours may be understood as a tacit compliment to the qualities of Jean as the ideal ruler, ready to laugh, even at his own court and desires – a nod to the qualities of the vir facetus. By extension, artists like the Limbourgs were included in this relationship as the witty, ideal courtiers, and elevated in their station – for even the monetary exchanges of patronage were included in a courtly system of reciprocity tied to notions of gift exchange. In treating even sale transactions as gifts, late medieval court society could, as Buettner writes, ‘counteract the values attendant on the growth of a cash economy by stressing social functions over economic aims.’74 As non-elites grew in power, the handling of money became more and more tied to notions of indecorousness to be avoided by those of ‘proper’ social status. Thirteenth-century courtesy books like Thomas von Zerclaere’s Welsche Gast highlight the sharp distinction to be made between monetary transactions and courtly behavior, contrasting hidden exchanges of cash with chivalric gifts in the open.75 With respect to art and its exchange, late medieval courtly values, more than material worth, prized ingenuity and wit, as Buettner writes with respect to early fifteenth-century France: ‘Ingenuity was what transformed nature into artifice and converted what was familiar into something new, into something estrange, one of the four categories that Christine de Pisan uses to determine the merit of a gift.’76 The quality of estrangeté connoted not only an object’s ‘visual and conceptual dexterity,’ but also its ability to flatter the wit of the recipient;77 this quality was crucial to an exceptional gift in the fifteenth-century courts of France. Central to the étrennes of New Year’s gift exchanges at court were the qualities of exclusivity and refinement. Buettner points out that the production and exchange of artistic étrennes even continued into the sixteenth century, manifesting in Arcimboldo’s allegorical portraits of Emperor Maximilian II, what Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann calls ‘serious jokes.’78

73 74 75 76 77 78

Camille, ‘The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry,’ 181. Buettner, ‘Past Presents,’ 619. Buettner, ‘Past Presents,’ 619; von Zerclaere, Der Welsche Gast, lines 15, 239–262. Buettner, ‘Past Presents,’ 604–605. Buettner, ‘Past Presents,’ 606. Kaufmann, ‘Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes.’

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It is within this context that we might understand the wit of chivalric warrior saints vanquishing miniaturized house pets, like in the Little Garden of Paradise and other examples sprinkled throughout Europe, as well as Raphael’s cabinet paintings. Raphael’s early St. George may have been painted for Guidobaldo, in connection with his becoming a Knight of the Garter. The biblical knights may have been commissioned in connection with the mother of Guidobaldo’s heir, Giovanna della Rovere, her father and brother having been honored by the English Order of the Garter, and husband and son by the French Ordre de Saint Michel. In either case, they were commissioned within the courtly context of Urbino and may be understood to reflect its values: an obsession with chivalry, grace, and wit. Raphael’s paintings are certainly characterized by conceptual and visual dexterity, qualities crucial to courtly estrangeté; but they are also marked by irony, an acknowledgement of the wit of the recipient, who, as the ideal courtier, must also be an urbane vir facetus. A second pair of paintings commissioned for the court by Raphael, known as the Vision of a Knight and the Three Graces, address the same sort of subject: the virtues and aspirations of the young knight and courtier, a topic discussed extensively in Castiglione’s dialogues.79 Among such ideals is the quality of wit; the courtier should ‘know how to refresh and charm the minds of his listeners, and move them to merriment and laughter with his agreeable pleasantries and witticisms, in such a way that, without ever being tedious or boring, he is always a source of pleasure.’80 Raphael, working within a courtly context that esteemed artists like poets, in which a man might advance through his art’s ability to flatter the recipient, is embodied in the exchanges of viri faceti. He is described as a successful performer in the rhetorical art of wit. Cast as an ideal courtier by his friend Castiglione, Raphael’s ingenuity and wit are unquestionably part of his elevated status.81 It is easy to imag��ine rhetorical theories of humor influencing such an artist marked by the concept of ‘genius.’ But such ideals influenced art-making a century earlier, in turn inspired by Cicero and Quintilian. Cicero’s praise of Socrates and jesting that is ingenuum et facetum finds expression in late medieval discussions of art and artists as well. In De oratore, facetiae are not just ornaments, but part of the persuasion and pleasure of inventio. Quintilian, as well, praises ingenuum, the quality of those who have the natural gift of wit – but wit and humor can be taught and developed too by ars, or technique. For Pontano, much relies on the art of speaking and the ‘virtue,’ or gift, of the speaker; as Georg Luck writes, the first ‘leads to rhetorical precepts, the second to a moral system of conduct.’82 Pontano’s concept of facetudo defines the vir facetus as ‘a true artist, not 79 Jones and Penny, Raphael, 5–8; Shearman, ‘Raphael at the Court of Urbino.’ 80 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 151. 81 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 181. 82 Luck, ‘Vir Facetus,’ 115.

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only an “artist of life”, but an artist par excellence.’83 According to Pontano, as well as Quintilian, delectatio is the ultimate purpose of witty speech. The quality of facetudo is central to comitas (courtesy), for the jokes of the vir facetus help his friends to relax, an idea that stems from Aristotle’s three virtues in social life: veritas, comitas atque urbanitas, and amicitia. It is therefore not only an aesthetic quality, but a moral one as well, a social idea. Art, writes Pontano, can make ‘the vulgar acceptable and pleasing.’84 We see such ideals of the ‘true artist,’ who is able to incite delectatio through Ciceronian ingenuum and sophistication, in the late medieval and early Renaissance artist. In northern art, particularly in portraiture, the humanist ideal of the naturalistic image was not necessarily considered the best way to display artistic talent. Rather, the concepts of engin and artifice appear to be central to late medieval notions of creativity, talent, and versatility. In an anonymous French translation of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus, famous mythical and historical women are described and depicted as prototypes for the ideal courtly artist; Thamyris, Irene, and Marcia are all praised for their artifice, while Irene and Marcia are noted for their remarkable engin. Jean Froissart describes the source of ingenuity in his epic Méliador (1384), in which a knight explains that his talent comes from his ‘engin and the disposition to make images (pourtraire).’85 The French words are translations of the Latin nouns, artificium and ingenium, which were understood in late medieval France to signify manual abilities acquired through training and representational ability through mental skill respectively. We thus see direct parallels to the ars and ingenuum of Cicero’s and Quintilian’s rhetorical theory, and a concrete use of such ideals in late medieval discussions of image-making. In Machaut’s and Froissart’s writing, the verb pourtraire is employed to the credit of artists who are able to produce likenesses without the aid of spiritual intervention or magic; their engin is understood to be completely their own. Such a claim in the artistic environs of Paris elevates the artist to a position afforded in earlier French literature only to deities or humans inspired by supernatural intervention, as in a 1288 copy of Floire et Blancheflor in which the god Vulcan is able to produce images that are portraite only through his powers of magic and artifice, or artimage. The coupling of the word engin with the words art or force in twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century texts further reveals its meaning as the mental component to artistic skill, supported by external dexterity, or artifice. Memory, the ability to retain ‘impressed images’ on the mind through vision in the fourteenth century (according to Aristotelian optical theory, accessible to readers of Machaut and Froissart through vernacular works like Brunetto Latini’s late thirteenth-century Livre dou trèsor), was a 83 Luck, ‘Vir Facetus,’ 118. 84 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. II, 7, 1108; Luck, ‘Vir Facetus,’ 117–118. 85 Perkinson, ‘Engin and artifice,’ 55.

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crucial part of excellent engin, as well as the ability to manipulate these impressions through imagination, the quality of having a ‘subtle engin.’86 The lack of sketches and models in the workshops of Thamyris and Irene, for example – depicted in the two copies of Des cleres et nobles femmes for Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy and Jean, Duke of Berry – highlights the artists’ abilities to work from their minds, using their subtle and excellent engin to produce the appearances of Christ and Mary through pourtraiture. These images attest the fact that one’s ability to retain in memory the likeness of a holy person was considered evidence of a virtuous character. Virtue was, of course, key to Renaissance humanism, for it increased in correlation with the acquisition of knowledge. The artist was not only implicated in values of facetia and urbanitas through the exchanges of patronage. With an understanding of the agency of the artist, even in late medieval northern Europe, we see that in flattering the wit of his patron, the artist, too, could aspire to the virtues of the vir facetus. Literary sources like Guillaume Machaut’s Livre dou Voir Dit (1363–1365) fostered a direct relationship between fictionalized imagery and creative processes and actual artistic conditions in the courtly center of Paris. Such texts could influence the reality of social conditions for artists; they carried the ability to articulate the expectations of courtly audiences with respect to a burgeoning art market in which the unique characteristics of the artist were valued. According to Stephen Perkinson, such created expectations provided an environment in which artists could showcase their ingenuity, memory, and manual skill. Through showcasing their engin and artifice, artists sought to fashion themselves as equivalents to the famed image-makers promoted in literature, as in Des cleres et nobles femmes. Through engaging with the language of such texts, artists structured and supported their own conditions of image-production, tailored to a well-primed patron.87 The language of artistic creativity and skill in vernacular literature was unquestionably derived from rhetorical concepts that directly mirror engin and artifice, for example. While innate talent is crucial to the humanist ideal, style is of utmost importance for the humanist speaker and writer. As Leonardo Bruni writes in 1405, ‘Indeed one may fairly ask what advantage it is to possess profound and varied learning if one cannot convey it in language worthy of the subject. Where, however, this double capacity exists – breadth of learning and grace of style [is found].’88 Bruni, Erasmus, and Vives all point to the ultimate goal of the humanistic path: virtue and the love of God, a goal mirrored by descriptions of the ideal artist’s memory for sacred images.89

86 87 88 89

Perkinson, ‘Engin and artifice,’ 58. Perkinson, ‘Engin and artifice,’ 51–67. Bruni, ‘De Studiis et Literis,’ 132. Bell, ‘Humanism and the Problem of a Studious Woman,’ 175.

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The origin of the ‘genius’ and an ‘autonomous,’ emancipated artistic identity is linked to the rise in valuation of the aforementioned qualities in aristocratic courts, beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, as Martin Warnke documents. The late Middle Ages introduced the artist’s incorporation into the court circle and its rigid systems of hierarchical exchange.90 But Warnke’s strict dichotomy between the artist’s life and behavior at court and in the city is perhaps incorrect. As Larry Silver and Kim E. Butler point out in their articles on Dürer and Raphael respectively, the court was not always financially supportive, so work in the city could be crucial for an artist.91 The guild system is often linked in scholarship to conservative artistic practices, suggesting that artistic wit and ingenuity are less likely to appear in works produced in the realm of the city. But this also might not be entirely true, for the urban patron was interested as well in the ideals of urbanitas and courtliness that emanated from aristocratic circles, as the popularity of courtesy books attests. The production, patronage, and exchange of art were at the forefront of an aristocratic system of practice that infused bourgeois society. The desire for estrangeté could have easily permeated beyond court circles and into clerical circles as well, the original preservers of the classical rhetoric of humor and wit. What motivations existed for an artist’s adoption of the attributes of the ideal courtier? The early court artist could be in a precarious position. Evelyn Welch argues that, unlike jesters or court musicians, court artists were not required to be in permanent residence, and therefore could spend extended periods of time away from the ruler’s person, losing in attention and favor. This, she suggests, resulted in the development of performative roles in an effort to secure a place in the court hierarchy.92 Implicit in this is the artist’s adoption of courtly behavior, placing himself within the social exchanges of courtiers. Within the context of social exchange, humor in art could serve an important purpose during the rise of humanist ideals. Rhetorical theory originally directed toward witty speech allows us to better understand the techniques of the witty artist, a figure less bound by the constraints of scholarly advisor and patron than former scholarship suggested, and rooted more in medieval culture than many scholars of Renaissance art suggest. As Sherry C.M. Lindquist and Stephen Perkinson write in their foreword to Gesta’s 2002 special edition on artistic identity, the predominant narratives of western art history mark the ‘medieval artisan, anonymous and self-effacing’ as the foil to ‘the Renaissance artist, self-consciously aware of his gifts and seeking fame. The early modern era, according to these narratives, saw the birth of now familiar notions of creative agency and artistic identity.’93 Recent scholarship on Renaissance workshop practices and

90 Warnke, The Court Artist. 91 Silver, ‘Civic Courtships’; Butler, ‘Raphael and the Pursuit of Sacred Eloquence.’ 92 Welch, ‘Painting as Performance in the Italian Renaissance Court.’ 93 Lindquist and Perkinson, ‘Artistic Identity in the Late Middle Ages,’ 1.

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artist–patron exchanges reveals more continuity from the Middle Ages than previously thought.94 Still, the use of the medieval artisan as foil prevails. But the late medieval artist/artisan/author could be quite self-conscious in constructing and elevating his art and his social identity. Late medieval and Renaissance artists, Lindquist writes, actively sought to construct their identities using many different strategies, including ‘self-portraiture, signatures, guild membership, distinctive styles, special claims to memory skills, literary works along the lines of Cennini and Vasari, participation in art markets, specialized workshop practices, as well as social interaction with and emulation of higher social classes.’95 This last strategy pro��vides strong support for the artist’s engagement with facetia in his art. And as late medieval discussions of artistic practice attest, the artist was probably often conscientious as well (directly or indirectly) of rhetorical theory. Similarly, rhetorical theory elucidates the role of humor and wit in religious art. Cicero’s De oratore divides between cavillatio – the presence of humor throughout a speech – and dicacitas, short jokes and puns. There exists a further division between joking in verbo, based on words, and joking in re, based on subject matter. As Barbara Bowen points out, many Renaissance writers like Castiglione conflate the divisions in their own discussions of wit.96 If by the late Middle Ages the language of rhetorical theory had perme��ated even discussions of art-making (as Perkinson reveals), it is no far stretch to see humor and satire in art as components of facetia, of urbanitas, and of the exchanges of courtoisie that were central to social interaction among the upper echelons – that, within the context of courtesy books and a desire to achieve social clout (not merely monetary), infused urban society as well. Relationships between humor in art and rhetorical categorizations of humor in speech are easy to see. The Master of the Little Garden of Paradise’s Strasbourg Doubt of Joseph mirrors cavillatio in approach, with little visual jokes sprinkled throughout the domestic scene. Such visual jokes and puns are based on words (in verbo) – the dialectic of meanings between dagger and pouch, for example – yet the joking also extends beyond to subject matter (in re), playing on Joseph’s cuckoldry by God and his useless, passive tools. The diminutive or grimacing dragons and demons of devotional sculpture and painting are more akin to dicacitas, as are the satirical prints of artists like Israhel van Meckenem. But humor in sacred art is not limited to witty visual puns. Humor could arise within the most earnest and sacred of scenes, like those of the Passion narrative, and this seems to have occurred not infrequently. Humor, we know, can arise from a situation of extreme sacrality and earnestness, but why does it? What is the drive 94 Campbell, Artists at Court; Barker, Webb, and Woods, The Changing Status of the Artist; Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art; Farago, Reframing the Renaissance; Cole, The Renaissance Artist at Work; Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist; Kempers, Painting, Power, and Patronage. 95 Lindquist, ‘The Will of a Princely Patron,’ 55. 96 Bowen, ‘Ciceronian Wit and Renaissance Rhetoric,’ 410.

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Fig. 3.3. Hans von Geismar, detail of the Circumcision, altarpiece from the Marktkirche St. Jacobi, Einbeck, c. 1500. Inv. HS 945, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover. Photo by the author.

behind an artist’s inclusion of toothy, grinning spectators at a scene of the Circumcision (Fig. 3.3), aside from a desire to undercut Jewish practices or highlight Christian conceptions of evil? Such scenes do not merely portray Christian doctrine; they also poke fun, having been crafted with the vocabulary and syntax of secular satirical scenes of peasants, fools, and other ‘others.’ Humor, in this case, is not derogatory alone. It may carry a deeper rhetorical function, like the humorous ornaments of a sermon, intended to catch the beholder’s attention and draw him indirectly toward discovering deeper meanings. Like the dissimulatio of a sermon or a Middle High German romance, humor in late medieval and early Renaissance art could have functioned as a persuasive tool, appearing in a cultural context deeply influenced by the echoes and revivals of classical rhetorical theory. The rhetorical tools of humor and wit in religious art appeared in Italy as well, potentially, for example, in Raphael’s early cabinet paintings, but these are perhaps not a product of the traditional humanist ‘artist-as-genius’ paradigm. Early Italian depictions of St. Joseph reveal a potential link to the humor of his northern perception as well. Pilgrimages were constantly undertaken from northern Europe to Rome, connecting the northern spiritual and imperial center of Aachen to its Italian counterpart; but the extent of the connection between the two in the late Middle Ages has never been

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studied, due in part to the traditional partitioning of north and south in historical and art historical scholarship. The legend of the Hosen as Jesus’s swaddling clothes may have been a part of Josephine devotion in Bologna, attested by Andrea da Fiesole’s marble relief of the Nativity (Fig. 1.3) in which Joseph holds a cloth intended for the fresh�ly bathed baby. We know that the cradle plays – which celebrated Joseph’s loss of his pants to swaddle the child, as well as his doddering and drunkenness – were performed as far south as northern Italy; both the Hessische and Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiele, from Hessen and south Tyrol respectively, share a common fourteenth-century predecessor. Perhaps the emergence of early humanism, as well as early Josephine devotion, both in Bologna, allowed for a temporary introduction of facetudo into Joseph’s sacred art. Although comical facets of Joseph’s tale are highlighted in many of the saint’s depictions, particularly in northern Italy, the trend seems to have vanished by about 1400.97 The Sienese Bartolo di Fredi’s work, however, presents a humorous portrayal of Joseph that mirrors many of his depictions in the north, discussed in the following chapter. The fact that Siena was an important stop on the pilgrimage road to Rome explains this connection, as well as the presence of humor in some Italian images of the saint.

3.5 Conclusion The centrality of humor within a sacred scene – not just its mere presence, but its functions – does not easily accord with many of today’s notions of sacred and sacrilege; this is perhaps the reason why it has yet to truly be acknowledged or explored, despite the excellent existing scholarship on humor’s functions in the margins of earlier medieval art. But there exist many explanations for the appearance of this phenomenon in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. The notion that humor might exist in religious art solely to appeal to or to educate an uneducated laity is not only inadequate, but also ignores an extensive Christian tradition privileging irony and rooted in rhetorical theory. As Chapters One and Two explained, humor and comedy could render the divine accessible, and were therefore functional, much like the devotional literature of the late Middle Ages, in encouraging the devout to immerse themselves within the Holy Family’s imagined everyday life. Such veneration was not so much focused on the unattainable, but on accessibility, and tied to notions of the earthly, common, and humble. The tradition of early Christian irony and the sermo humilis, continued, for example, in late medieval sermons, provides another important context for understanding what we might call the imago humilis: an image that conveyed deeply important Christian truths through what Cicero classified as the ‘low’ style, adopted in the Gospels and in sermons peppered with the ornaments of humor, to convey a sublime truth unembellished by lofty prose. 97 Ladis, ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’

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The lowliness of bawdy humor (according to classical rhetorical theory) in an image of St. Joseph might have been tied to a sublime Christian message conveyed through the principle of dissimulatio, or dissimulatio urbana, informed by classical works like Cicero’s De oratore. In the sermon and the image, the sublimity of Christian doctrine arose from the incongruity that occurs in contrasts between expectation and reality. Cicero’s Socrates simulates ignorance, and in doing so, he reveals his superiority much more effectively than if he had overtly proclaimed the truth in the first place. Similarly, in an inversion of a paradoxical encomium, the derision of a saint could ultimately call attention to their most worthy characteristics. Irony and wit in sacred art focused the beholder’s attention on the ultimate, sublime Christian message, using humilitas as part of a subtle rhetorical persuasion. Ultimately, jokes and play were no strangers to medieval philosophy or religion; in his Summa theologiae (1265–1274), Thomas Aquinas employs Cicero and Aristotle to defend the utility of jokes, particularly for their ability to ward off boredom and to foster collective well-being.98 But Joseph’s humor, and especially the wit and irony of other saintly images, aside from functioning as an aid in veneration, arose as well within the cultural context of facetia and urbanitas. Preserved through the Middle Ages, the notion of the vir facetus ultimately bound patron and artist, particularly as the fabricator of images became more and more incorporated into court society and its rigid system of hierarchical exchange, both through desire and necessity. Implicit in the ideal artist’s role was the skill to flatter the wit of the patron, to pay compliment to his urbanitas and humanitas. In return, for the successful fulfillment of this role through innate talent and ingenuity, the artist could become the ideal courtier and vir facetus in his own right – an ideal recounted by the courtly literature of the High Renaissance, but appearing a century earlier as well in the performative gift culture of French courts. The artist’s own agency in constructing this ideal appears long before the birth of the artistic ‘genius’ as a concept. The rise of the humanist artist and patron was inextricably tied to the function of humor and wit as a rhetorical device in late medieval art, and with the continued influence of Quintilian, Cicero, and Aristotle in the schools and courts of the Middle Ages. Through the rise of courtesy books and their popularity among the bourgeoisie, such classically rooted ideals permeated urban society as well. There is no reason at all why these ideals could not have influenced the cleric as well, whether patron, artist, or viewer, for the clergy themselves introduced them to the medieval secular nobility. There exist, therefore, a wide range of reasons explaining not only the presence, but also the function, of humor, satire, wit, and irony in sacred art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Through irony and humor, sacred images could persuade and lead the beholder toward these truths and toward veneration. The reaction of a smile or a laugh toward the image refocused on the image’s key message, rather than 98 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, Q. 168; Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 78.

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detracting from it. By acknowledging humor’s centrality in such images, rather than sanitizing or marginalizing it, we are able to understand such a function. But humor was not solely an aid for veneration; it could serve to bind artist, patron, recipient, and viewer in an important social and economic exchange, for these two aspects of the relationship were not mutually exclusive in a society – both aristocratic and bourgeois – that privileged courtly values and social prestige above monetary wealth.

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Campbell, Stephen J., ed. Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1550. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2004. Carruthers, Mary. The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by George Bull. London: Penguin, 1967. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De inventione; De optimo genere oratorum. Edited and translated by Harry Mortimer Hubbell. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2006. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Oratore. Translated by E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 348. 2 vols. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1979. Classen, Albrecht. ‘Irony in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature: Nibelungenlied, Mauritius von Craûn, Johannes von Tepl’s Ackermann. The Encounter of the Menschlich-Allzumenschlich in a Medieval Context.’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology 113, no. 2 (2014): 184–205. Cole, Bruce. The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian. New York: Westview Press, 1990. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. ‘Pieter Aertsen, Rhyparographer.’ In Rhetoric-Rhétoriquers-Rederijkers, edited by Jelle Koopmans, Mark Meadow, and Marijke Spies, 197–215. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlandish Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995. Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. The Fruit of Devotion: Mysticism and the Imagery of Love in Flemish Paintings of the Virgin and Child, 1450–1550. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1994. Farago, Claire, ed. Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450–1650. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Franck, Sebastian. Weltbuoch: Speigel und Bildtniss des gantzen Erdtbodens von Sebastiano Franco Wördensi in vier Bücher. Tübingen, 1534. Green, Dennis H. ‘On Recognizing Medieval Irony.’ In The Uses of Criticism, edited by Albert Peter Foulkes, 11–55. Literaturwissenschaftliche Texte: Theorie und Kritik 3. Bern: Herbert Lang, 1976. Hand, John Oliver. Joos van Cleve: The Complete Paintings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Honig, Elizabeth Alice. Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Hölscher, Uvo. ‘Goslarsche Ratsverordnungen aus dem 15. Jahrhundert.’ Zeitschrift des Harz-Vereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 42 (1909): 52–99. Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. 1924; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Jacobs, Lynn F. Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces: Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Jones, Roger and Nicholas Penny. Raphael. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. ‘Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: “Mysterious but Long Meaning”.’ In The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Hecksher, edited by Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, 59–86. New York: Italica Press, 1990. Kempers, Bram. Painting, Power, and Patronage: The Rise of the Professional Artist in the Italian Renaissance. Translated by Beverley Jackson. London: Penguin, 1992. Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Ladis, Andrew. ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’ Art Bulletin 68, no. 4 (1986): 581–596. Leary, T.J. Martial Book IV: The Apophoreta. London: Duckworth, 1996. Lesnick, Daniel R. Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Lindquist, Sherry C.M. ‘“The Will of a Princely Patron” and Artists at the Burgundian Court.’ In Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1550, edited by Stephen J. Campbell, 46–56. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Lindquist, Sherry C.M. and Stephen Perkinson. ‘Artistic Identity in the Late Middle Ages: Foreword.’ Gesta 41, no. 1 (2002): 1–2.

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Luck, Georg. ‘Vir facetus: A Renaissance Ideal,’ Studies in Philology 55 (1958): 107–121. Marius Victorinus. Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam. Edited by Antonella Ippolito. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries. 2 vols. New York: George Braziller, 1974. Moser, Hans. ‘Zur Geschichte der Maske in Bayern.’ In Masken in Mitteleuropa: Volkskundliche Beiträge zur europäische Maskenforschung, edited by Leopold Schmidt, 93–141. Vienna: Verein für Volkskunde, 1955. Moxey, Keith P.F. ‘Hieronymus Bosch and the “World Upside Down”: The Case of The Garden of Earthly Delights.’ In Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations, edited by Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, 104–140. Hanover, nh: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Murphy, James Jerome. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Müller, Jürgen. ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Peasant Engravings: A Different Laocöon, or the Birth of Aesthetic Subversion in the Spirit of the Reformation.’ Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 3, no. 1 (2011). DOI: 10.5092/ jhna.2011.3.1.2. http://www.jhna.org/index.php/past-issues/vol-3-1/133-albrecht-duerers-peasant. Müller, Jürgen. Das Paradox als Bildform: Studien zur Ikonologie Pieter Bruegels d. Ä. Munich: Fink Verlag, 1999. Müller, Wolfgang G. ‘Ironie, Lüge, Simulation, Dissimulation und verwandte rhetorische Termini.’ In Zur Terminologie der Literaturwissenschaft: Akten des IX. Germanistischen Symposions der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft Würzbug 1986, edited by Christian Wagenknecht, 189–208. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1986. Neils, Jenifer. ‘Praxiteles to Caravaggio: The Apollo Sauroktonos Redefined.’ Art Bulletin 99, no. 4 (2017): 10–30. Painter, Sidney. French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideals and Practices in Mediaeval France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957. Pavlovskis-Petit, Zoja. ‘Irony and Satire.’ In A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern, edited by Ruben Quintero, 510–524. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Perkinson, Stephen. ‘Engin and Artifice: Describing Creative Agency at the Court of France, ca. 1400.’ Gesta 41, no. 1 (2002): 51–67. Perlove, Shelley, and Larry Silver. Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Plato. Symposium. Translated by Seth Bernadette. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham. 10 vols. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1946–1986. Pontano, Giovanio. Ionannis Iovani Pontani de Sermone libri sex. Edited by Sergio Lupi. Lugano: Thesauri Mundi, 1954. Purtle, Carol J. The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. ‘Rhetorical Strategies in the Pictorial Imagery of Fourteenth-Century Manuscripts: The Case of the Bohun Psalter.’ In Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, edited by Mary Carruthers, 96–123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Schultheiss, Werner, ed. Die Acht-, Verbots- und Fehdebücher Nürnbergs von 1285–1400. Nuremberg: Nuremberg City Council, 1960. Shearman, John. ‘Raphael at the Court of Urbino.’ Burlington Magazine (Feb., 1970): 72–78. Simon, Eckehard. ‘Carnival Obscenities in German Towns.’ Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages, edited by Jan M. Ziolkowski, 193–213. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Silver, Lawrence A. ‘Civic Courtships: Albrecht Dürer, the Saxon Duke, and the Emperor.’ In Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1550, edited by Stephen J. Campbell, 149–162. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2004. Seeber, Stefan. ‘Medieval Humour? Wolfram’s Parzival and the Concept of the Comic in Middle High German Romances.’ Modern Language Review 109, no. 2 (2014): 417–430. Steinmetz, Ralph-Henning. ‘Komik in mittelalterlicher Literatur: Überlegungen zu einem methodischen Problem am Beispiel des Helmbrecht.’ Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 49 (1999): 255–273. Suchomski, Joachim. ‘Delectatio’ und ‘Utilitas’: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher komischer Literatur. Bern and Munich: Francke, 1975.

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Tydeman, William. The Theatre in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Vasvari, Louise O. ‘Joseph on the Margin: The Mérode Tryptic and Medieval Spectacle.’ Mediaevalia 18 (1995): 164–189. von Zerclaere, Thomasin. Der Welsche Gast. Edited by Friedrich Wilhelm von Kries. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1984. Wackernagel, Martin. The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market. Translated by Alison Luchs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Walser, Ernst. Die Theorie des Witzes und der Novelle nach dem de sermone des Jovianus Pontanus: Ein gesellschaftliches Ideal vom Ende des XV. Jahrhunderts. Strasbourg: Trübner, 1908. Warnke, Martin. The Court Artist: On the Ancestry of the Modern Artist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Welch, Evelyn. ‘Painting as Performance in the Italian Renaissance Court.’ In Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1550, ed. Stephen J. Campbell, 19–32. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2004. Zotz, Thomas. ‘“Urbanitas”: Zur Bedeutung und Function einer antiken Wertvorstellung innerhalb der öfischen Kultur des hohen Mittelalters.’ In ‘Curialitas’: Sudien zu Grundfragen der höfisch-ritterlichen Kultur, edited by Josef Fleckenstein, 392–451. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1990.

4. The Miserly Saint and the Multivalent Image: Sanctity, Satire, and Subversion Abstract Chapter Four discusses scenes of the Adoration of the Magi that uphold ideals of urban nuclear paternity, yet simultaneously subvert these same ideals for their slippage into avarice, a problem of particular social relevance in emerging money economies. Rather than categorizing these depictions as either purely derogatory or sober in message, as prior scholarship has done, the chapter explores how fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury altarpieces, panels, and prints could produce seemingly conflicting messages at once, satirizing Joseph’s greed, yet celebrating his important theological and societal role as treasurer. This allows for a reconsideration of the nature of early modern satire; the power of Joseph’s satire lies in its ability to subvert institutional ideals, even while supporting that same institution’s doctrinal messages. Key Words: Saint Joseph, Adoration of the Magi, satire, early modern family, money economy

4.1 The Early Modern paterfamilias and the Profit Economy Among fifteenth-century theologians, Saint Joseph became closely associated with the humble poor and working classes in a positive sense, supported by the ideals of the Franciscans and the Brethren of the Common Life, and reflected in the theological writings of Jean Gerson and Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, who relied upon the earlier devotion to the saint by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). In his Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bernard emphasized Joseph’s humility as complementary to that of his wife, which was the reason for her honor as mother of the Redeemer. The notion of humility as the remedy for man’s pride through the Savior’s human birth, as well as theological fascination with the sacrality of the poor and humble, is correlated with an increase in depictions of Joseph as a working man or as counterpart to the shepherds in scenes of the Adoration of the Shepherds, like the famous Portinari Altarpiece (1475–1476; Uffizi, Florence). But a St. Joseph of extraordinary relevance to contemporary social concerns likewise grew from the rising centrality of the nuclear family and responsible paterfamilias in the increasingly urbanized market economy of the late fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-century town, with its growing lay middle class with economic power Williams, Anne L., Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789462983748_ch04

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and political clout, and the resultant waning of clerical power. While the centrality of wit and humor in early Renaissance art may be attributed in part to the nature of the artist’s path to success in aristocratic and bourgeois circles, driven by courtly ideals of social exchange still rooted in a foregone feudal gift economy, the gift economy itself was rapidly declining and being replaced by a new, morally complex system reliant on personal profit.1 Jean Gerson modeled St. Joseph as the epitome of responsibility as head of his household, and thus appealed to him, as well as his Holy Family, as a model for lay families in their daily dealings with the social and economic pressures of life. According to the Bible, Joseph himself, directed by his dreams, led the flight of the Holy Family from the danger of Herod; and afterward, Joseph’s diligence as a carpenter allowed him to successfully provide for the mother and child. Gerson also insisted that instead of a doddering old man, Joseph was a strong, handsome man of about 36 when he married Mary, who was about thirteen or fourteen. He viewed Jesus and Mary as subject to Joseph, who adopted a God-given role analogous to the head of the Church. The role extended to heaven as well, according to Pierre d’Ailly, as one of Joseph’s twelve privileges.2 At the Council of Constance, Gerson implored the Church Fathers to officially establish the feast of St. Joseph, and to invoke him in prayers for the reunification of the Church after the Western Schism.3 According to Sheila Schwartz, based upon the writings of the theologians Christian of Stavelot (mid-ninth century) and Paschasius Radbertus (785–865), depictions of Joseph placing the Magi’s gold into the family chest can be understood to refer to his privileged role as ‘treasurer’ of the family, and thus of the royal Davidic line of Christ.4 In his sermons on St. Joseph, St. Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) emphasized the saint’s role as the wise manager of his family’s fortunes, and thus as a model of deportment for real fathers. Nevertheless, satires of Joseph as ‘miserly keeper of the goods’ appear to be prevalent in fifteenth-century art as well.5 Chapters One, Two, and Three addressed depictions of Joseph that present the saint as comically befuddled provider and loyal, chaste husband, proposing several explanations as to how exemplarity and baseness in Joseph’s imagery might not be as inherently polarized as previously thought. Joseph’s ‘treasurer’ imagery likewise reinforces important familial values in line with Bernardine thought; yet, as this chapter shows, it was probably also, in many cases, intentionally satirical. Recent research on economic and theological ideas circulating through early modern Europe, as well as their effects on morality, art, and literature, reveals that the emergence of the money economy 1 Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, 3–41. 2 Patrignani, A Manual of Practical Devotion to the Glorious Patriarch St. Joseph, 44. 3 McGuire, ‘St. Joseph in Bernard of Clairvaux and Jean Gerson.’ 4 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 74; Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 2: XI.39 and XI.37. 5 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 227, 2: XI.38.

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beginning in twelfth-century Europe engendered a transformation in ideals of masculinity and parenting, particularly concerning the relationship of the head of the family to money.6 The prevalence of the nuclear family in newly urbanized cities – indeed its importance for the financial stability of the new economy – became linked to individual responsibility, particularly for the paterfamilias, as loyal father, teacher, provider, and treasurer. The strain of images discussed in this chapter depict Joseph as simultaneously a responsible treasurer and obsessive keeper of the Magi’s gifts. These intertwine with contemporary sermons on the importance of the lay father as family accountant, while simultaneously speaking to anxieties regarding personal profit in the shadow of an earlier medieval worldview of attention to goods as the source of corruption. Joseph’s ties to the Old Law and earlier medieval images highlighting his ‘Jewishness’ are not forgotten by these artists, and the saint’s iconography as keeper of the treasure is sometimes clearly tied to depictions of Avarice, a personification closely linked with the infamous Judas Iscariot and medieval Christian conceptions of the ‘miserly Jew.’ Yet these ties do not render Joseph into an evil foil; his audiences and artists were likely not so unilateral in their assignments of meaning. Late medieval artists, their patrons, and their viewers were concerned with spiritual edification; but in a period of socio-economic change, older semiotics of clear-cut antagonism towards personal profit could no longer function. Therefore, what we may perceive as ambiguity in the imagery of St. Joseph is perhaps more akin to a spectrum of arrayed ideals and concerns regarding the function of the lay paterfamilias, as well as the clerical elite, in the late medieval urban money economy. If we interpret Joseph as a functional role model, placing him within the context of the multiplicity of actual concerns of the devout, we are able to perceive his iconography not as a product of theological symbolism alone. Rather, Joseph both constructs and reflects prevailing tensions and anxieties in a time of flux, not just for the clergy, as scholars like Sheila Schwartz have suggested, but for the laity as well, both socially and economically.7 This chapter concludes that such images, and particularly the more public art form of the altarpiece, often operated along more nuanced, engaged lines, not merely presenting right or wrong behavior, but a spectrum of concerns to be internalized. Such works challenge prior interpretations of Renaissance satire as expressing a ‘commitment to positive values contrary to the negative values it mocks,’ for negativity, positivity, and culpability overlap across a thin line.8 While upholding ideals espoused in contemporary sermons, Joseph’s multivalent imagery simultaneously subverts these same ideals for their slippage into avarice, a problem of particular social relevance to pre-Reformation lay and clerical practices based on the exchange of money. 6 Vitullo and Wolfthal, ‘Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.’ For analyses of the monetary economy’s effects on Christian ethics and morality, see Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life and Kaye, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century. 7 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar.’ 8 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 72.

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4.2 Treasurer or Miser? Erwin Panofsky describes Joseph in the Adoration scene of Meister Francke’s St. Thomas Altarpiece of 1424 (Fig. 4.1), executed for a Hamburg merchants’ guild, as ‘an amia�ble caricature of the Philistine’s thrift and caution [… he] confiscates the precious gifts for which, he thinks, the Infant Jesus would have little use and which would be safer in the family’s traveling chest.’9 Ruth Mellinkoff supports this view, adding, ‘The depre��cation is, I suggest, intensified because of Joseph’s placement on the stool, in a dorsal position – scarcely an image to be venerated.’10 Joseph’s portrayal as ‘miserly keeper of the goods’ is apparently widespread in art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,

Fig. 4.1. Master Francke, Adoration of the Magi, St. Thomas (Englandfahrer) Altarpiece, 1424. Tempera on oak, 91.8 x 84.3 cm. Inv. HK-493, Hamburger Kunsthalle. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

9 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 1: 70. 10 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 227.

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as in Master E.S.’s engraving of the mid-fifteenth century (Fig. 4.2) and in an epitaph painting for the Nuremberg patrician Clara Imhoff (Fig. 4.3) in which Joseph is shown in the background, reaching into the family chest. In an Adoration of the Magi from the Preetz Altarpiece (Fig. 4.4), a work by a pupil of Meister Francke dated to c. 1435, Joseph is much smaller in size than the rest of his cohort, placed again with his back

Fig. 4.2. Master E.S., Adoration of the Magi, c. 1460–1465. Engraving. Rosenwald Collection, inv. 1949.5.482, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

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Fig. 4.3. Master of the Tucher Altarpice, Epitaph Painting for Clara Imhoff: Nativity, c. 1438. Painting on coniferous wood, 112 x 82 cm. Inv. no. Gm 2238, loan from the Church of St. Sebald, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. © Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Photo: Jürgen Musolf ).

to the viewer while he packs away the treasure into his chest. Echoing this motif, an Adoration of the Magi from the central Rhineland (c. 1440; Fig. 4.5) depicts a relative�ly small, marginalized Joseph pointing to the treasure and hovering near the chest, while a carved altarpiece of c. 1460 from Erfurt presents a Joseph who pokes his hand into a gilded box of gold coins (Fig. 4.6). This was clearly once a popular subject, and although somewhat deprecatory, Joseph’s representation is not necessarily ‘scarcely an image to be venerated.’ As these were functional representations of a beloved saint, they should perhaps be understood as rather more nuanced, according Joseph the roles of both risible miser and responsible caretaker at once.

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Fig. 4.4. Pupil of Meister Francke, Adoration of the Magi, Preetz Altarpiece, c. 1435, Preetz Abbey, SchleswigHolstein. Inv. CC-BY-SA, Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen. Photo courtesy of the Nationalmuseet.

In contrast to the assertions of Panofsky and Mellinkoff, Sheila Schwartz argues that Joseph’s role as ‘keeper of the Child’s treasure’ in such scenes is indicative of his importance, and therefore also without humor.11 In accordance with the theologians Christian of Stavelot and Paschasius Radbertus, the offering of gold to the infant Jesus in scenes of the Adoration of the Magi should be interpreted as a reminder of 11 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 74.

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Fig. 4.5. Unknown artist, Adoration of the Magi, from the central Rhineland, c. 1440. Paint on coniferous wood panel, 111 x 191 cm. Schlossmuseum Braunfels. Photo courtesy of the Museum Schnütgen, Cologne and the Schlossmuseum.

Fig. 4.6. Unknown artist, Altarpiece with the Coronation of the Virgin, detail: Adoration of the Magi, from Erfurt, c. 1460. Carved and polychromed limewood, 175 x 155 cm. Inv. Pl.O.149, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 4.7. Personification of the Vice of Avarice, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Amiens, west façade, central portal, 1220–1236. Photo © Stuart Whatling.

the child’s royal lineage. As the keeper of this gold in Meister Francke’s Adoration scene, Joseph is therefore the guardian of the Davidic line (and ultimately Jesus), and the devoted helpmate of Mary.12 While this line of theology stood behind late medieval preaching on the admirable quality of St. Joseph as responsible financial manager of his family’s wealth, which buttressed his importance as a model for the late medieval paterfamilias, those who created, saw, or owned images that depicted the saint as preoccupied with material goods were familiar as well with an extensive visual history that strongly associated worldly wealth with moral depravity.13 What we know of this visual evidence suggests that what Michael Camille wrote is true: ‘There were two basic pictorial conventions for showing a person’s ownership of things in the Middle Ages. The first had negative connotations and shows a figure who places things in a chest, hiding them, as it were, from public view as personal possessions.’14 The vice of Avarice is typically shown in this way, and rather ubiquitously on ecclesiastical entrances, as on the entrance portals of the cathedrals of both Chartres and Amiens (Fig. 4.7). The treasure chest of Avarice appears centuries later in Hans Holbein’s The Rich Man from his Dance of Death (Fig. 4.8). The second basic pictorial convention ‘is used to suggest items for display in a public rather than a private context and presents them hanging on a rail,’ as in the Manesse Codex (c. 1324–1340; Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg).15 12 Mercier, ‘Saint Joseph dans les commentaires bibliques et les homéliares du IXe siècle.’ 13 Newhauser, The Early History of Greed. 14 Camille, The Medieval Art of Love, 52. 15 Camille, The Medieval Art of Love, 53.

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Fig. 4.8. Hans Holbein, The Rich Man, from Dance of Death, c. 1526, published 1538. Woodcut, 6.5 x 4.9 cm. Rogers Fund, 1919, Accession Number 19.57.27, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The image of Avarice storing her goods in an open chest was, we can assume, wellknown, particularly because of her prominent position on the entrance portals of Gothic cathedrals. The vice’s affinity with Joseph’s imagery as keeper of the goods is undeniable, yet we should not assume that because of this, Joseph was intended to be portrayed in a solely derogatory fashion. But neither was this imagery understood to be completely praiseworthy in its strong connotations of worldliness. Rather, like so many other examples, the materialistic, ‘burgher’ Joseph was probably intended to poke fun at the saint’s well-known affinity for the earthly cares of the Holy Family. Images like the Adoration scene from the Blankenberch Retable of c. 1430–1440 (Plate 9), like the treasure chest imagery, provide examples of charmingly humorous characterizations of the saint as keeper of the treasure and perplexed head of the household. In such works, Joseph is again the smallest adult present (by far) and barred from the rest of the Adoration figures by some sort of barrier. He receives the Magus’s precious gift, holds the treasure, or glances toward it with a longing look of desire or incredulity.16 Not only is Joseph marginalized through his small size and 16 Images in which Joseph holds the treasure himself are not unlike depictions of Avarice proudly holding treasure in German prints as well. Kunzle, The Early Comic Strip.

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Fig. 4.9. Adoration of the Magi, left wing of an altarpiece, c. 1420. Sankt Maria zur Wiese, Soest. Photo by the author.

partition from the main scene, but he is also sometimes depicted as darker in complexion than the three holy figures from Europe (sometimes excluding Balthasar and Caspar, from Africa and Asia respectively) – a significant touch that derives from artistic examples deriding the lower classes, discussed in Chapter Two. These characterizations can be seen in the Adoration scenes from the Blankenberch Retable, an altarpiece dating to c. 1420 in Sankt Maria zur Wiese, Soest (Fig. 4.9), a south Nether�landish triptych of c. 1410–1420 (Fig. 4.10), and the aforementioned Adoration from the Rhineland Schloss Braunfels (Fig. 4.5). Bewildered or desirous Josephs seem to

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Fig. 4.10. Triptych with the Adoration of the Magi, from western Germany, c. 1410–1420. Painting on oak, 58 x 51 cm (central panel). Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, inv. WRM 354. Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, Wolfgang Meier, rba_d035884.

have continued to increase in popularity from the fourteenth through the early fifteenth centuries. An Adoration by the Master of the Holy Kinship the Elder (c. 1420; Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne) and a high altarpiece from Strasbourg each portray a Joseph overwhelmed by the lavish gifts (Fig. 4.11). The ogling gets comically worse in commissions from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as in two Cologne Adorations – one from c. 1480/90 by the Meister der Verherrlichung Mariens (Fig. 4.12) and a second from c. 1515–1520 by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (Fig. 4.13). The increased production of scenes of the Adoration of the Magi by Antwerp artists during the early sixteenth century likewise propagated the ‘ogling Joseph’ motif, discussed further below. The ‘deviancy’ of such Josephs is illuminated particularly by contemporary devotional manuals. For example, in the widely popular Meditationes Vitae Christi (c. 1300 or 1346–1364), Mary insists on giving away the Magi’s precious gifts to the poor, while in his fifteenth-century Summa Moralis (printed 1477), the Florentine Antoninus places particular emphasis on Joseph’s poverty, arguing that Joseph himself gave the Magi’s gifts away.17 But Joseph’s fascination with the Magi’s gold in many works is more redolent of greed than of charity. If such images were not intended to poke fun at Joseph’s preoccupation with worldly wealth, then the saint’s attentions would probably be directed elsewhere. 17 Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ; Christiansen, Kanter, and Strehlke, Painting in Renaissance Siena, 209.

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Fig. 4.11. Adoration of the Magi, detail of panel from former high altarpiece of the Carthusian monastery in Strasbourg, c. 1460–1470. Polychromed walnut, 58.5 x 69.5 x 17 cm. Inv. MOND 170, Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg. Photo courtesy of the Musées de Strasbourg, M. Bertola.

Late medieval images of wealth and preoccupation with worldly goods were most frequently tied to contemporary anti-Semitism, and especially to the evils associated with misery and lending money at interest. Jews, in particular, were often represented as the embodiment of corruption because of their professional associations with money. In the medieval period, Jewish families tended to gravitate towards professions like commerce, medicine, and law because of their exclusion from the guilds of skilled laborers. Owning land was made quite difficult by the Christian hegemony, with the death of the Jewish owner often resulting in the property being taken from his heirs. Jewish involvement in moneylending began after the year 1000, with the economy’s expansion necessitating capital, provided by loans. Christians, of course, could not lend with interest, and although Jews were also prohibited from taking interest from each other, lending with interest to those outside of the faith was allowed.18 Christian envy towards such financial profit also arose from Jewish exemp�� tion from tithing to the Church. In time, the Church became increasingly intolerant

18 Claman, Jewish Images in the Christian Church, 120.

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Fig. 4.12. Meister der Verherrlichung Mariens, Adoration of the Magi, Cologne, c. 1480/90. Oil on oak. Bequest of Prof. Dr. Irene Ludwig, 2011, inv. GK 1621, Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen. Photo by the author.

of the practice of lending money at interest and equated it with the mortal sin of avarice, while civil rights were gradually taken away from Jewish populations.19 In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, usury, the practice of lending money at interest, was thought to constitute a socially disruptive ‘sin against nature’ primarily because it allowed the unnatural growth of money through interest. The writings of Dante Alighieri, Peter the Chanter (late twelfth century), Robert of Courçon (d. 1219), and Thomas of Chobham (d. 1230s) describe usury as a practice so morally depraved that it was considered to be a ‘sin against nature’ worse than lusty transgressions, both of same and opposite sex; Peter, Robert, and Thomas all link prostitution with ­usury.20 Since the ninth century, the Jewish religion had been traditionally represented by the 19 Claman, Jewish Images in the Christian Church, 121; Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community. 20 Peter the Chanter, Summa, par. 147, II, 351; Robert of Courçon, Summa, XX, 10–11; Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, 509; see Le Goff, ‘The Usurer and Purgatory,’ 35; Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life, 50; Derbes and Sandona, The Usurer’s Heart, 59, 67–68; In his Inferno, Dante allocates those who committed male-male lust to the seventh circle of the violent, almost at the bottom of hell. See Dante, Inferno cantos 14–16, in The Portable Dante, 73–89. However, these men are also grouped with others who committed violence

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Fig. 4.13. Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder, Adoration of the Magi, Cologne, c. 1515–1520. Painting on oak. WallrafRichartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, inv WRM 245. Photo by the author.

female figure of Synagoga in Crucifixion scenes.21 Medieval Christian depictions of Jews and Jewishness developed to include not just the conquered Synagoga, but the damned Jewish community demarcated by their Phrygian cap-like hats and yellow rings, as well as hooked noses in some cases.22 The Christian idea of the Jewish usurer and miser was also frequently associated with the biblical traitor Judas Iscariot. Links between Judas and the Jews appear in the Gospel of John, in which the author portrays Judas as the disciples’ corrupt treasurer. The image of Judas as the evil holder of the moneybags is tied to the devil in the Gospels of Luke (22:3) and John (6:70; 13:2 and 27), and synagogue and devil are fused in the Book of Revelation (2:9 and 3:9). European Passion Plays portrayed Judas as a Jew and a moneylender and linked him to the devil, while medieval depictions of Judas often bore the same physiognomic traits that stereotypes of ‘the Jew’ could also have in Christian art, such as the elongated nose.23

‘against nature,’ including usurers, particularly Enrico Scrovegni’s father, Reginaldo. Notably, Dante groups sodomites who have made atonement in Purgatory with the other ‘unnatural’ sins of lust, at the level just beneath redemption and salvation. See Dante, Purgatorio canto 26 in The Portable Dante, 321–326. 21 Rowe, ‘Synagoga Tumbles’; Rowe, ‘Idealization and Subjection at Strasbourg Cathedral’; Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City; Petzold, Romanesque Art, 156; Cohen, The Uta Codex, 57. 22 Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, plate 13. 23 Todeschini, ‘The Incivility of Judas.’

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Regardless of dress and physiognomy, the most common attribute of caricatures of ‘the Jew’ in literature and art was his occupation with money and earthly goods, particularly in early modern prints, which had a wide following among the burgher classes. In one German single-leaf woodblock print, the inscription ‘The Jew calculates night and day how to cheat the Christians’ underlies an image of a Jewish household accepting pledges and calculating the holdings acquired, presumably from charging excessive interest.24 A woodcut from the 1491 poem Jüdischer Wucher, published in Nuremberg by Hans Folz, presents a similar scene of a Jewish pawnbroker too busy counting his money to engage fully with the task of receiving further pledges.25 Like other derided figures, including the peasantry, the Jew was also frequently affiliated with farm animals, specifically the pig; a relief on a southern buttress from Regensburg Cathedral depicts an allegory of gluttony in which a large sow suckles two young Jews like piglets.26 The humor of Joseph’s ‘avaricious’ depictions probably also arose from this tradition of derision and caricature. But the saint’s Jewishness was likewise important as a typological statement of his ties to the Old Law, biblically fulfilled by the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the New Law. The most obvious way to cast Joseph as a Jew was to depict him with a Jew’s hat.27 Although frequently pointed, the style of hat also varied, sometimes becoming more turban- or hood-like, sometimes more rounded with a narrow brim.28 But the inclusion of a Jew’s hat in an image of Joseph probably did not render it exclusively derogatory, and neither did the exclusion of a halo.29 The iconography of the vice of avarice was, however, widely affiliated with evil, and the ‘avaricious Jew’ was a popular figure for Christian contempt. Yet one should not assume that Joseph’s greedy behavior in the aforementioned images consigned him to pure derision among contemporary audiences. As a Christian saint of high popularity in the late Middle Ages, such images could not have been exclusively negative, and were probably never entirely derogatory. Depictions of the saint ogling the Magi’s precious gifts or storing them away in the family’s chest still connoted a preoccupation with worldly wealth that had long been attached to the symbolism

24 Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, 312, n. 7. 25 Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, 310, n. 5. 26 Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, 333, n. 6. 27 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 2: III.89. 28 Mellinkoff’s collection of images of typical Jews’ hats are culled from various visual examples of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries. Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 62. 29 Mellinkoff suggests that adding a halo to Joseph’s Jew’s hat might have been necessary to establish a difference from the evil typically associated with Jewishness. But this implies that late medieval audiences were incapable of understanding the nuances of their religious imagery, a thought that scholars like Carol Purtle have helped to disprove. Jewish hats without halos appear in late medieval images of holy figures including Deposition and Circumcision scenes, as in the Holkham Bible of c. 1325–1330. In Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of c. 1505, the Madonna with Joseph and Five Angels, no one is given a halo. Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1: 80, 2: III.94, 2: III.96.

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of avarice; but the iconography was safely distanced enough from that of the condemned, who often clutch their purses as they are led by demons to the torments of Hell.30 It seems probable that late medieval images of Joseph could present a spectrum of ideals and concerns regarding the function of the paterfamilias in the late medieval urban money economy. We can perceive this kind of spectrum as well in late medieval Jewish imagery, in which a clear-cut ‘iconography of rejection’ prevalent in earlier medieval depictions of Jewishness sometimes seems to disappear entirely.31 In the Passion sequence of the thirteenth-century west choir screen of Naumburg Cathedral, for example, the bearded Chief Priest’s lack of a mustache is the only remaining identifier of his Jewishness, while Judas is depicted as tall and attractive, much like the other apostles, and lacks his typical moneybag. This cycle displays what Jacqueline Jung describes as a ‘refusal to cast the Jews consistently and unambiguously as malevolent “others”,’ in which the Jewish characters of the Passion act according to Saxon ideals of behavior and legality.32 This strategy, she argues, critiques not just the Jewry but also the main audience of the choir screen reliefs, the Christian laity: ‘Rather than acting as demonizing devices aimed at channeling fear and hostility onto a collective religious “other”, the depictions of Jews at Naumburg were designed so as to compel beholders to turn scrutiny back upon the self.’33 This choice, she believes, is surprising and singular, positing that the choir’s patron chose to de-emphasize the antagonism of the Jewish characters because his church’s construction and defense of the territory relied upon the local Jewry’s resources. Her hypothesis that such similarities between Christian and Jewish characters ‘make plain that the line between good and bad social behavior was understood to be a fine one’ highlights the potency of the artist’s choices and the screen’s message in moving beyond simple anti-Judaism: ‘culpability rests on the deeds and motivations of individual agents acting within a highly structured world.’34 But such late medieval ambiguities between Christian and Jew are perhaps not so singular, particularly in the centuries leading into the Reformation. Debra Strickland notes that from the twelfth century on, artists produced simultaneously negative, positive, and neutral images of Jewishness, ‘a reminder that official Christian attitudes toward Jews were very complex and often ambiguous or even mutually exclusive, and changed according to shifting contemporary social and political 30 See, for example, the miniature of ‘the Jews in hell’ from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, c. 1185, Paris, BN, fol. 255r. Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, plate 13. See also the damned of The Last Judgment of the Arena Chapel, west wall; Derbes and Sandona, The Usurer’s Heart; Ladis, ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’ 31 Hassig, ‘The Iconography of Rejection’; Jung, ‘The Passion, the Jews, and the Crisis of the Individual,’ 145–178. 32 Jung, ‘The Passion, the Jews, and the Crisis of the Individual,’ 148. 33 Jung, ‘The Passion, the Jews, and the Crisis of the Individual,’ 149. 34 Jung, ‘The Passion, the Jews, and the Crisis of the Individual,’ 165.

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circumstances.’35 Joseph’s hoarding of the goods in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century examples may be understood to poke fun at miserly practices, likely associated with the socially constructed Christian ideological quality of Jewishness. But while such an ideology was still rooted in a past that decried the moral evils of concerning oneself with personal profit, within the context of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when people were also adjusting to the new moralities of the growing urban market economies, the acquisition of wealth was no longer so obviously tainted. Elizabeth Honig demonstrates that in burgeoning mercantile centers like Antwerp: One of the greatest challenges to the early modern mentality was coming to terms with the unruly growth of a market economy—with the beginnings of capitalist social and economic organization, with the reconciliation of new market-generated values and older social and moral values, and with the function of the commodity as object of desire and problematic container of value.36

Antwerp was one of the leading cities of trade and production during the early sixteenth century, while an early form of capitalism flourished as the economy’s dominant structure of organization.37 For ‘people whose ways of thinking had been shaped by centuries of medieval social economy, the new phenomena were […] mysterious and even threatening, clashing with deeply held moral standards.’38 The mer��chant, for example, only fit into traditional medieval ideas of economic and social responsibility (which were closely linked) if his interests focused on mutual aid and brotherly love, excluding personal acquisition. Personal profit against the well-being of one’s ‘brothers,’ a medieval concept of family that included one’s fellow Christians, was a grave sin under the medieval social order, forbidden by the Bible (Deut. 23:19– 20). But by the seventeenth century, the idea of the modern family unit had been codified, and those outside of it – one’s neighbors, one’s friends – were more akin to ‘strangers,’ against whom personal profit was more acceptable.39 With the changing social and economic order of early modern towns and the concomitant birth of the nuclear family, devotional interest in the immediate and extended family of Christ, particularly in the Netherlands and Germany during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, also increased.40 The Church’s established

35 Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews, 97. 36 Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, ix. 37 Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 77. 38 Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, 6. 39 Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, 6–8; Nelson, The Idea of Usury. 40 John Hand associates the growing interest in Jesus’s family with ‘the popularity of the cult and veneration of Saint Anne, the growing debate over the doctrine of the immaculate conception of her daughter, the Virgin Mary, and a shift in the status of Joseph.’ Hand, Joos van Cleve, 49. See also Herlihy, ‘The Making of the Medieval Family,’ 116–130.

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hierarchy ranking celibacy above marriage also came under attack by those who were angered by the moral lapses of monks and nuns, who hypocritically believed themselves superior to the married laity while having children of their own. This fifteenth- and sixteenth-century phenomenon foreshadowed the Reformation and its ideology of the superiority of the family unit over celibate life, as the traditional monastic orders tried unsuccessfully to tighten their ranks and reaffirm their obedience to their Rule.41 Pamela Sheingorn associates this change with the widespread appearance of altarpieces and stained-glass windows depicting the Holy Kinship, particularly in parish churches. In many altarpieces, the Holy Kinship is divided into smaller scenes representing nuclear units, as works that ‘were certainly meant to champion marriage and the family and to implicitly challenge the superiority of celibacy and the convent.’42 Citing the work of Lawrence Stone, who describes the late medieval decline of more extensive networks of kinship and clientage that dominated the feudal era and their replacement with the nuclear family unit in the early modern period, Sheingorn rightly accords the popularity of images of the nuclear families of Jesus’s line to their reflection of contemporary family values in which authority belonged exclusively to the lay father.43 St. Joseph’s inclusion in fifteenthand sixteenth-century scenes of the child’s immediate family also speaks to the lay father’s suddenly enormous importance as financial provider for his family, particularly in an urban environment. Wickram’s Der Jungen Knaben Spiegel of 1555 and a series of books that he also published in the 1550s focus particularly on the new importance of the father’s role as provider, reflecting a new attention to the nuclear family and its internal relationships. The ideal father, according to Wickram, teaches his children to never be idle and to work ‘according to their God-given talents. The daughters learn from their mother to spin, sew, embroider, knit, and weave […] The boys are sent to school to receive a thorough education’ so that they in turn can provide for their own wives and daughters.44

41 Ozment, When Fathers Ruled. 42 Sheingorn, ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship,’ 287. 43 While it is true that ‘theological attention to Joseph in the course of the fifteenth century resulted in a new understanding of him as both husband of Mary and protector of her virginity,’ this important role had been present in the minds of the devout as early as c. 1200, and certainly was of interest to the many pilgrims who had seen or heard of Joseph’s holy stockings after their appearance at Aachen during the early thirteenth century. While Joseph’s status continued to increase in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly as the nuclear form of family with its fatherly head became predominant, images of the Anna Selbdritt depicting Anne, Mary, and Jesus, which so often highlighted Anne’s role as teacher of the Virgin, remained highly popular in art. Although Joseph and Anne served similar functions, with Anne’s exemplary role as teacher in many devotional images reflecting the real lives of the late medieval ladies who taught their own daughters to read, it was the male exemplar of fatherhood who was brought down to a human level of relatability instead. Sheingorn, ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship,’ 287–296; Sheingorn, ‘The Wise Mother.’ For more on St. Anne, see Ashley and Sheingorn, Interpreting Cultural Symbols. 44 Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture, 209–210; Sheingorn, ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship,’ 294.

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Joseph’s appearance in art as a father preoccupied with work and worldly goods, whether performing his trade as carpenter or stockpiling his family’s wealth, probably had something to do with his role as a proponent of these new ideals, even if he sometimes directly mirrored the behavior of avarice or the ‘avaricious Jew.’ The urban father of the early modern money economy had a different role with respect to earning money than did his ancestors of the earlier feudal age. Although the basic characteristics of a feudal state and ruling class still existed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, feudal restrictions on the production of commodities were essentially nonexistent. Coupled with low rents, this set the stage for later developments toward a capitalist economy. Enormous wealth came to a growing bourgeois class, particularly monopoly merchant companies like the Merchants of the Staple and Merchant Adventurers.45 Individual fiscal responsibility – the accumulation of material wealth – became not just morally acceptable, but also admirable for the early modern head of the household. The circulation of economic and theological ideas via sermons, humanist writers, and merchants resulted in a new ideal of masculinity rooted in monetary exchange; art and literature reflects not only these new ideals, but also the anxieties generated by man’s shifting relationship to money, rooted in the contradiction between the pervasive importance of acquiring wealth and continuing Christian ideals of charity and poverty.46 Franciscan and Dominican theologians certainly cri��tiqued the multiplication of money ‘against nature,’ but thirteenth-century writers like Thomas Aquinas and Peter John Olivi praised the use of money for supporting one’s family, the poor, and the good of the community, suggesting ways for merchants to adopt a properly ‘poor’ use of money – which included proper measurement and pricing and providing goods to one’s community that were otherwise unattainable. Monetary gain from these actions was considered good so long as it supported the well-being of one’s family and Christian community. Inspired by the only other theologian who had written a treatise on scholastic economics, another Franciscan, Peter John Olivi, Bernardino pioneered theological discussions of the value of the entrepreneur, the merchant, trade, and private property in popular sermons in Siena and Florence. In the nascent capitalist economy of Siena itself, mercantilism reigned supreme; one’s economic condition, above all, determined social and political status, and, for Bernardino, Joseph became an ideal model for the new nuclear paterfamilias, as loyal father, provider, and treasurer. Bernardino’s ideas were inspired, however, by

45 Hilton et al., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, 26. 46 Vitullo and Wolfthal, ‘Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.’ For analyses of the monetary economy’s effects on Christian ethics and morality, see Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life; Kaye, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century; Debby, Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers, 157–195; Bowsky, Finance of the Commune of Siena; Bowsky, ‘The Medieval Commune and Internal Violence’; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families, 124–125.

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the Servite Fra Nicolo Pieri, who preached sermons in Joseph’s honor in early trecento Siena.47 Fifteenth-century merchants like Giovanni Morelli and humanists like Leon Battista Alberti and Poggio Bracciolini emphasized the importance of teaching one’s sons a profession, as well as the wise use of one’s money and possessions. Bracciolini’s De avaritia even goes so far as to consider avarice as a virtue, arguing that without the desire for excess, the magnificence of the city and the arts would be lost. German, Flemish, and French authors mirror these lines of thinking about money, rooted in Aristotelian economic thought; and, as Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal demonstrate, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Netherlandish portraits of merchants and businessmen support the new ideals of labor and business, while subtly detracting attention from their ‘unnatural’ profits. Concepts of charity and ‘fertility’ through proper uses of money allowed for a positive view of profit. But money that was used improperly, particularly through usury or hoarding, was deeply condemned, with those who store money away considered animalistic brutes – supported by satirical German prints which caricature the rich man as a fool and a Jew through his long nose and ass’s ears. In an illustration of greed in Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (1494; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz), the fool is identified by his collection of coins and the large chest immediately behind him, as in Hans Holbein’s print (Fig. 4.8) in which the miser is shown with a stereotypical Jewish nose and with two large chests.48 It is within this context that the satire of Joseph’s money hoard��ing and preoccupation with worldly goods becomes clear, even while such depicted activities carried undertones of ideal masculinity – for while hoarding was considered worthy of satire, those who lost all their money were satirized as well. In Brant’s poem ‘Of Greed’ the hoarding of money is criticized most, but sharing money with foolish friends and frivolous spending are worthy of ridicule as well.49 The rise in popularity of prints and paintings that satirize and ridicule beggars, gamblers, drunks, and other indigents also reveals these shifting values. Beggars and the poor were no longer primarily a means to salvation for those who performed charitable acts toward them. In the twelfth century this worldview was prominently announced 47 Bernardino laid out this position in a Christmas Eve sermon in Siena. Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari. For the Sienese sermon, see Battiston, ‘Le Patronage de Saint Joseph en Italie,’ 51. See also Battiston, ‘Deux sermons du fr. Nicolo Pieri de Sienne sur saint Joseph.’ Like Bernardino, Fra Roberto Caracciolo da Lecce also preached a Christmas Eve sermon on Saint Joseph in Padua. See also Herlihy, ‘The Making of the Medieval Family.’ For the growth of the urban economy in Tuscany, see Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence, 1–34. 48 Brant, The Ship of Fools, 66–67; Amman and Sachs, The Book of Trades, 119; Hults, The Print in the Western World, 113–114; Vitullo and Wolfthal, ‘Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,’ 167–171. John Hand points out that Gossaert’s, Holbein’s, and Heemskerck’s portraits of merchants downplay their involvement in negative, usurious practices by depicting only a select number of coins. Hand and Wolf, Early Netherlandish Painting, 103–107; Murray, ‘The Devil’s Evangelists’; Langholm, Wealth and Money in the Aristotelian Tradition; Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari; Morelli, Ricordi; Bracciolini, De avaritia, 77. 49 Vitullo and Wolfthal, ‘Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,’ 169.

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on the portals of pilgrimage churches like Saint-Lazare in Autun, whose western entrance boasts a depiction of the morally instructive legend of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:20). While Lazarus, who was destitute and sore-ridden in his earthly life, rests in the bosom of Abraham for eternity, Dives suffers the torments of Hell for his miserly ways. In contrast, by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, books like the Liber vagatorum described various categories of deceitful beggars,50 while prints like Bartel Beham’s Twelve Vagrants of c. 1524–1525 provided a visual counterpart, depicting such fallen ‘types’ as the gambler with his cards and dice.51 Larry Silver ascribes the rise of such derogatory imagery to the ‘widespread municipal problems from wandering beggars [… that] were the result of a gradual shift in care for the poor and needy away from the auspices of the Church and into the hands of private civic organizations.’52 But the underlying social change that produced such a problem was the shift of wealth from the countryside (the stage for relative economic stability among the peasantry during the feudal era) to the urban centers, where the rising ‘middle’ classes of merchants and artisans could profit from early precursors to capitalistic exchange.53 In Chapter 21 of the Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality of 1520, Martin Luther’s writing suggests that the figure of the poor indigent had come to embody the wickedness of the time, particularly through the mendicant orders’ association with his lifestyle: No one living among Christians ought to go begging […] No outside beggars should be allowed in, whatever they call themselves, whether pilgrims, friars, or mendicant orders. In any case, they are compelled today to provide for the same number of vagabonds and wicked rogues under the name of the mendicant orders […] In my view, nowhere else is there so much wickedness and deception as in mendicancy […] Besides this, there are the common beggars and those who beg alms in the name of a patron saint, and then the professional pilgrims.54

Images addressing contemporary social concerns and the virtues and vices, like those of Hieronymus Bosch, warn especially against the distribution of alms to the undeserving and ill-intentioned, including the professional ‘pilgrim’ and beggar. Dirk Bax notes the extent to which such indigents were held in disdain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: Bosch frequently illustrates the case of an indigent who has become destitute or remains so through his own fault: through extravagance and wastefulness, licentiousness, addiction to drink and gluttony, stupidity, folly. Extravagance for a 50 Hampe, Die fahrende Leute, 66. 51 Silver, ‘Of Beggars,’ 256; Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, II: 249. 52 Silver, ‘Of Beggars,’ 257. 53 Paas, ‘Family Labour Strategies in Early Modern Swabia,’ 151. 54 Dillenberger, Martin Luther, 460; Silver, ‘Of Beggars,’ 255.

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beggar or poor minstrel is not the wastefulness of which the rich are guilty, but the lack of thrift found among the poor that is, the squandering of meager earnings or savings on wanton feasting.55

Contrasting with this line of thought is the earlier association of worldly wealth with the need for spiritual redemption, evident in high medieval poetry like Der arme Heinrich by Hartmann von Aue, written in the late twelfth century, in which Lord Heinrich’s extensive material wealth is contrasted with spiritual richness: unser bluome der muoz vallen sô er aller greenest waenet sîn. an hern Heinrîche wart wol schîn: der in dem hoehsten werde lebet ûf dirre erde, der ist der smaehste vor gote. er viel von sînem gebote ab sîner besten werdekeit in ein smaehlîchez leit: in ergreif diu miselsuht.56 Our flower must fall Just when it seems in finest green. In poor Lord Heinrich this was seen: Who highest stands in worth and show And station on this earth below Oft bears God’s scorn, and feels His hand. Lord Heinrich fell at His command— Fell from his high, illustrious place Into a state of dire disgrace: He fell a prey to leprosy.

Although most fifteenth- and sixteenth-century preaching concerning money was negative, those who squandered it fell prey to the most disgrace on the part of the satire of urban rhetoricians or scholars including Erasmus and Thomas More.57 Paint��ings and prints by Bosch, Lucas van Leyden, and Pieter Brueghel the Elder vilified the poor and unproductive bands of wanderers, vagrants, and false pilgrims as sinful parasites, and such images were popular purchases among the burgher class as foils to 55 Bax, Hieronymus Bosch, chapter 6. 56 Hartmann von Aue, Der arme Heinrich, lines 110–119, in Walshe, A Middle High German Reader, 58–61. 57 Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes, 60.

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their success. In fifteenth-century poems and songs for the laity on the seven deadly sins, such as Michel Beheim’s ‘Little Book of the Seven Deadly Sins,’ it is not avarice that is cast as the worst of the sins, but pride and lust.58 The ‘middle-class’ money economy of urban centers did not entirely suppress older fears about the morality of profit, however. Usury was still considered a mortal sin in late medieval canon law. Bosch’s invented pictorial genres attest the fact that the morality of monetary concerns was at the forefront of urban life. The artist, for example, transformed the Ars moriendi series to a full-scale subject, extracting Avarice into its own independent image.59 Paul Vandenbroeck has assigned the old man in Bosch’s Death of the Miser (c. 1500; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) the occupation of usurer because his treasures include ‘the trappings of nobility held in pawn for actual noblemen.’60 The ‘rich miser’ figures prominently as one of the ‘ten asses’ of a poem of c. 1522, Vanden. X. Esels, which is a catalogue of ten men who, because of their folly, are deemed worthy of wearing ass’s ears. The author of this satire with a moral purpose was likely its publisher, an Antwerp printer named Jan van Doesborch, who was a colleague of Quentin Massys in the city’s Guild of St. Luke.61 While misers were regularly ridiculed or shamed in art and writing, Quentin Massys’s Moneychanger and His Wife (1514; Musée du Louvre, Paris) reveals another side to the issue of money. The painting is frequently thought to depict a banker or moneylender as an embodiment of the evils of materialism. James Snyder writes that it ‘serves as a criticism of the changing values in a society devoted to commerce and finance. Traditional religious values are here discarded or ignored […] Religious ritual and the routine of prayer have been replaced by the monotonous rites of the business world.’62 Some have viewed the wife as representative of the spiritual path in contrast to her husband’s activities, or as the contemplative balance to the active life. Vitullo and Wolfthal call attention to the mitigating role of the wife in such portraits – including those of Massys, Maerten van Heemskerck, and Joos van Cleve – as the ‘fruitful’ counterbalance to any implications of ‘unnatural’ reproduction in the masculine portrayal of business.63 The original inscription on Massys’s Moneychanger portrait, ‘You shall have just balances and just weights’ (Leviticus 19:35), may have to do with his ‘careful balancing of coins with weights in the scales [… which] shows that he performs neither a frivolous nor an overtly avaricious activity.’64 As Larry Sil��ver writes, ‘These two figures must thus be seen against what we detect as a fuller 58 McDonald, ‘Michel Beheim’s “Little Book of the Seven Deadly Sins”.’ 59 Silver, Hieronymus Bosch, 243. 60 Vandenbroeck, Jheronimus Bosch, 104–107; Morganstern, ‘The Pawns in Bosch’s Death and the Miser’; Silver, Hieronymus Bosch, 240–242. The figure of the miser also appears in Hans Holbein’s The Dance of Death series cut as woodblocks in Basel c. 1525 and published in Lyons in 1538. 61 Silver, The Paintings of Quinten Massys, 22. 62 Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 442. 63 Vitullo and Wolfthal, ‘Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,’ 179–185. 64 Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes, 74.

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spectrum of conduct, ranging from gossip in the street, visible out the door, to contemplative meditation in a private chamber, visible in the foreground mirror.’65 The artist Marinus van Reymerswaele and his followers produced a series of images after this painting which appear more overtly satirical because of the tax collectors’ or bankers’ grotesquely caricatured faces or archaic costumes, as in The Banker and His Wife (1538; Museo Nazionale, Palazzo del Bargello, Florence).66 While the numerous copies of these works could be bought more cheaply, the original patrons of such scenes by Massys or Marinus probably ranked equal to or above those depicted in financial prosperity.67 While Massys’s Moneychanger and His Wife probably conveyed fiscal responsibility, ‘copies’ and variations sold at the lower end of the market could convey a more avaricious bent for a different sort of audience. As James Murray writes, ‘There is a remarkable shift in tone from the first painting to the second [Massys’s lost The Banker and His Client, copied by Marinus]; where the first represents moral choice and ambiguity, where good is still a possibility, the second is “aggressively ugly”, satirical and condemnatory.’68 It is possible, however, that Massys’s and Marinus’s paintings could convey a multiplicity of seemingly conflicting meanings in a single image. While the evils of money continued to be an issue of major concern, and financial sustainability had become a positive attribute of the responsible head of the urban household, issues of morality were probably never so black and white. This is evident, I believe, in the variations in interpretation of such works, much like the dichotomy of interpretations that riddles scholarship of St. Joseph’s iconography in art, which is thought to be either derogatory or entirely sober in message, but not both. Such a shift from the earlier medieval view of wealth as the property of the morally corrupt miser alone was obviously not a clean one. Theological, mercantile, and humanist thought of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries reveals a worldview marked by confusion with respect to the morality of personal profit, not unlike today. The so-called ‘genre subjects’ that emerge from this period were revolutionary for the history of secular arts in that they engaged the new money economy and urban problems associated with early modern life. These subjects also enlighten our understanding of their contemporary religious counterparts. St. Joseph, who had become the primary model for the early modern paterfamilias, may have also embodied this moral tension in images depicting his preoccupation with worldly goods, even as his cult continued to grow across western Europe. While tied to the iconography of the vice

65 Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes, 74. 66 Keith Moxey addresses the social role of such moral criticisms. Moxey, ‘The Criticism of Avarice in Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting.’ 67 Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes, 79–80. 68 Murray, ‘The Devil’s Evangelists,’ 53.

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of avarice, such images could still bespeak the saint’s important role as head of his nuclear household. The burgeoning early sixteenth-century art market and export trade in Antwerp specifically produced an unusually high number of paintings of the Adoration of the Magi in which Joseph figures prominently and actively. High local interest in these scenes has been associated with the nature of the city at this time, which, as a bustling, colorful commercial trade center, often compared itself to Bethlehem, the Gospels’ meeting place of the three Magi from Asia, Africa, and Europe.69 Quite frequent��ly in these scenes Joseph is shown in a state of humorous astonishment, ogling the Magi’s gifts in a manner that might have appeared somewhat avaricious, but not as a deadly sin in the cultural context of a society in which personal financial success was becoming virtuous.70 This motif was by no means original, as variations on the theme appear in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century images of the Adoration of the Magi, but its popularity in early sixteenth-century Antwerp was probably symptomatic of the city’s changing values. Dan Ewing notes the importance of the ‘cargo-carrying motif’ in these numerous Adorations produced for sale in the marketplace; the Magi carry cargo like the merchants of Antwerp who came from the four corners of the globe.71 Noteworthy too is the large number of merchants from Antwerp who were named after the three kings, often the sons of merchants themselves. The Antwerp artists’ renditions of St. Joseph, which capture the complexity of his position as his status grew along with interest in Christ’s family, is clarified within this context. As in other Antwerp Adoration scenes, the Joseph of Joos van Cleve’s Adoration scenes, such as his Little Adoration of the Magi (c. 1517–1518; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), often gazes dumbfounded toward the elaborate gold gifts held by the Magi in the foreground.72 69 Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 436. 70 Hand, Joos van Cleve, fig. 59. 71 Ewing, ‘Art, Market, and Market Effect in Antwerp’; Hand, Joos van Cleve, 46–47. 72 Hand, Joos van Cleve, 47, fig. 37. The composition’s playfulness is likewise evident in its borrowing from Italian compositions; the two Antwerp burghers in the background mimic in gesture and color the classical figures of Aristotle and Plato in Raphael’s famous School of Athens fresco in the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura. Joos van Cleve’s Holy Family with Saint Anne in Brussels is likewise apparently Italianate, perhaps via the influence of Quentin Massys, in its use of a loggia-like background and a triangular composition in its arrangement of figures. But most striking for our purpose is its awareness of Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesque heads, unquestionably available through copies in Antwerp, as well as its use of an Italianate pure profile, perhaps transmitted via Massys and works like his Portrait of an Old Man of 1513 (1517; Museé JacquemartAndré, Paris), a work based on Leonardo. John Hand rightly notes that Joachim’s ‘grin, coupled with the folds of flesh under the chin and beaked nose, combine to create a face that borders on caricature.’ Along with Joachim’s bared teeth, which was still a motif linked with boorishness or derision in the sixteenth century, these physiognomic traits were used exclusively for humorous or derisive purposes, appearing frequently in caricatures of Jews, as in compositions of the Mocking of Christ, like Bosch’s Carrying of the Cross (c. 1515; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ghent), or in scenes of the Circumcision. See Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, plate 14. But the humor of the old saint’s presentation, also in this case, would not have detracted from the scene’s function as a non-narrative devotional scene. Hand, Joos van Cleve, 52, fig. 49.

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Fig. 4.14. Joos van Cleve, Holy Family, c. 1512–1513. Oil on wood, 42.5 x 31.8 cm. The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1927, Accession Number 32.100.57, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

While many non-narrative devotional scenes (a popular compositional type at the turn of the sixteenth century) focus on a setting of fruit and flowers arrayed before the Virgin and Child, Joseph joins the pair in others in an unprecedented manner.73 He is present as the head of his family, but in a uniquely prophetic role that draws upon his ties to the Old Law. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s version of Joos van Cleve’s Holy Family (Fig. 4.14), he wears a Jewish head-covering and removes his spectacles, often symbols of moral shortsightedness, to gaze upon his wife and foster-child while holding a roll of text on which is written the beginning of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). In the London National Gallery’s Holy Family (c. 1525), he wears another hat related to the flatter, brimmed Jews’ hats and holds a book from which he reads, with spectacles donned.74 As the representative of the Old Law, of time before Christ, it makes sense that the spectacles would be present as a marker of Joseph’s 73 Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion. 74 Hand, Joos van Cleve, fig. 54.

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Fig. 4.15. Gherardo Starnina, Adoration of the Magi, from Florence, first quarter of the fifteenth century. Tempera on wood, 30.5 x 57.5 cm. Inv. 149, Escallier Bequest, 1857, Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai. Photo © Musée de la Chartreuse (Photo: Hugo Maertens).

incomplete enlightenment. But this does not negate John Hand’s assertion that he is characterized as ‘a man of learning, a reader of texts.’75 Joseph was simultaneous��ly an ideal of early modern urban fatherhood, as the educated, literate head of the household. The more derisive images of Joseph as family ‘treasurer,’ miserously packing away the Magi’s treasures into the family’s chest or ogling the precious gifts with a hint of worldly greed, were apparently some of the most popular in early modern Europe, however. The paintings, sculpture, and prints with variations of these motifs that survive originate from as far north as Antwerp to as far south as Siena, a city that, like Antwerp, was a central hub of trade between northern and southern Europe as a pilgrimage stop on the Via Francigena to the tomb of St. Peter in Rome. The Sienese artist Bartolo di Fredi (c. 1330–1410) produced an elaborate altarpiece with a central scene of the Adoration of the Magi taking place outside the walls of Siena in which humor is also present (Plate 10). Although a halo shines behind Joseph’s head, the saint is demarcated not only by his darker complexion, but also by the way in which he clings with rapaciousness to the Magus’s gift, holding it away from the crowd and simultaneously glaring in concern at their proximity and unruly state, not unlike the Meister der Verherrlichung Mariens’s St. Joseph in his Cologne Adoration of the Magi of c. 1480–1490 (Fig. 4.12). The Florentine artist Gherardo Starnina’s Florence Adoration of the Magi (Fig. 4.15) similarly depicts a Joseph preoccupied with examining the gift of gold coins. Close attention to Giotto’s Adoration of the Magi in the Metropolitan Museum of 75 Hand, Joos van Cleve, 53.

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Fig. 4.16. Giotto di Bondone, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1320, 45.1 x 43.8 cm. John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1911, Accession Number 11.126.1, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo © Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art (Fig. 4.16) reveals that Joseph’s line of sight extends neither toward the Christ child nor to Melchior, from whom he just received the precious gift of myrrh, but to the gold still held by Caspar. Giotto indeed is known for his witty, harassed Josephs in the Paduan Scrovegni Chapel’s Marriage of the Virgin and Flight into Egypt.76 Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Joseph in the London Adoration of the Magi (1564; National Gallery) is perhaps not only concerned with Mary’s purity, as some have argued, but also with the fabulous golden ship in his direct line of sight, held by Balthasar. An earlier iteration of this scene appears as part of Bartholomäus 76 Ladis, ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’

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Bruyn the Elder’s Adoration of the Magi from Cologne, dated to c. 1515–1520 (Fig. 4.13).

4.3 Satire, Subversion, and the Multivalent Image Within the context of forms of satire less rooted in the pointed, cohesive messages of modernity, the ability of late medieval and Renaissance depictions of Joseph to convey multiple, seemingly conflicting messages at once – satirizing the saint’s greed yet celebrating his important theological and societal role as treasurer – makes more sense. This might be extended to portrayals of moneychangers, bankers, mintmasters, and merchants. Renaissance satire has been described as ‘highly engagé, ideological, and even idealistic, arising from a firm commitment to positive values contrary to the negative values it mocks [… highlighting] not character types or social mores, but ideologies, institutions, and practices antithetical to those of the humanist avant-garde.’77 During the Renaissance and Reformation, Edwin Duval writes, ‘a new generation of writers learned the lost art of irony—the falsely naïve and subtly mocking questions of Plato’s Socrates and of Lucian’s Menippus, the parodic antics and insolent quips of the ancient philosopher Diogenes, and the paradoxical sayings and sly evasions of Jesus,’ as well as some new ironical techniques that included the paradoxical encomium and the discrediting representative.78 Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, for example, written in 1509 and printed in 1511, employs the allegorical figure of Folly, who, through praising herself and claiming certain practices as her own, indirectly condemns them. But late medieval forms of satire continued to flourish into the late sixteenth century, encompassing morality plays with allegorical figures, carnival plays, farces, and sotties, or fools’ plays. Even within Renaissance texts, often tied to notions of early modernity, incongruities apparent in earlier medieval literature continue: the necessity for the audience to draw their own conclusions and alternate between seemingly conflicting ideas is apparent, for example, in Rabelais’s Gargantua (1534). Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532) are works that fuse new humanist satirical techniques with medieval satire into a genre that is ‘generically hybrid and stylistically mixed, combining the incompatible registers and genres of high and low culture in fantastical comic fictions and freewheeling, antinormative, even subversive criticism.’79 Attacking monasticism with unprecedented vigor, monks are idle practitioners of the contemplative life, with a particular love of wine and women and a glad ignorance of humanistic learning and classical languages. Gargantua’s founding 77 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 72. 78 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 71. 79 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 72.

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of the new monastic order Thelema, being Greek for ‘as you like it,’ is a satirical inversion of the Benedictine Rule, where freedom reigns, paradoxically resulting in harmony and love according to Christian ideals. Monasticism is thus Christianity’s antithesis, a return to the Old Law – a viewpoint in line with Erasmus, who defined Christianity as a liberation from Judaism through St. Paul’s principles of love and freedom. Yet even within the Abbey of Seuilly, which houses the wretched monks in Chapter 27 of Gargantua, can one find virtues that counteract monastic evils. Friar John, though a lover of drink and women, is a particularly ambiguous character, for his usefulness in making crossbow strings and traps during prayers and his heroically single-handed defeat of Picrochole’s soldiers suggests that humanism is perhaps not the only redeeming factor in Rabelais’s world.80 In some sense this is a commonality between Gargantua and the irony of Parzival. This ambiguous figure deviates from the work’s seemingly clear-cut stance, involving the audience’s own engagement and interpretation. Despite being a post-Reformation text, the themes are unquestionably medieval. As early as c. 1180, Nigel Wireker, a Benedictine monk of the priory of Christchurch, Canterbury, wrote a Speculum stultorum (Mirror for Fools) that ironically celebrates the avarice of the papacy and curia, abbots and priors, and secular princes alike, setting the stage for vernacular texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that did the same with English and French personifications of money, Dan Denier and Sir Penny. Composed as an allegorical beast epic, Burnel the ass searches for a longer tail to match his ears, becoming an allegory for the power-hungry cleric.81 As Chapter Two addresses, the medieval clergy were among the first to criticize the ecclesiastical elite for selling divine forgiveness and penance for money. The earliest written criticisms of such practices within the development of a commercial economy were written in Latin by clerics for clerics, including the cento’s portrayal of a pope who proclaims the doctrine of avarice to his cardinals. When satirists started using the vernacular to denigrate papal policy, the audience became much wider than the usual elite audience familiar with good Latin. Words became ‘instruments of persuasion.’82 Vernacular estates satire first appeared in the last quarter of the twelfth century, and included the clergy in an all-encompassing mockery of knights, burghers, peasants, and women. In 1213, after crusade offering boxes were set up by the Pope, Walter von der Vogelweide wrote: Ah, how like a Christian laughs the Pope at last, as he tells his Italians, ‘I’ve finally got them finessed.’ He never should have thought what he says there to their graces. 80 Duval, ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire,’ 76–77. 81 Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire,’ 59–60. 82 Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire,’ 62.

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He says, ‘I’ve got two Germans under one crown, let them wreck their nation and burn it up and bring it down – in the meantime we fill up the cases. I’ve driven them like cows to my collection box – all their stuff is mine, their German silver rides in my Italian chest. Eat chicken, priests, drink wine, and let the lay Germans get skinny and fast.’83

The satirization of Joseph as the money-grubbing embodiment of the Old Law might have been extended as well, in the minds of some contemporaries, to a satire of avaricious ecclesiastical elites. As Sheila Schwartz demonstrates, Joseph was often a figure of identification for priests as the leaders of their congregations; and, according to Peter John Olivi, Joseph’s status as the head of his family rendered him analogous to the head of the Church, the Pope himself.84 It is probable that altarpieces, particular��ly, functioned as multivalent images, offering the possibility of multiple meanings for laity and clergy alike, speaking to lay fathers and spiritual fathers at once. The incongruities of early satire, appearing in a variety of works from Parzival to Gargantua, contextualize this multiplicity for us, rendering the complexities of early modern imagery explicit. Incongruous satire allows Joseph’s derision to occur in a form that does not detract from the saint’s exemplary role as caretaker and provider for Christ and Mary. Rather, Joseph’s satire might be understood as a kind of unsettling, a problematizing, like the marginalia of medieval works, that calls attention to important issues but does not undermine the central doctrinal message. Most importantly, the multivalent image should be understood as something much more than a presentation of a set of morals. Rather, the audience is implicit in the making of meaning present therein. More than a mere call to reject sin by presenting straightforwardly sinful behavior, many examples of pre-Reformation imagery – like Massys’s Moneychanger and His Wife and Bosch’s Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins – might be understood as highly engaging, meditative images, inviting their audiences to reexamine the nuances of morality and how to best approach a broad spectrum of life’s challenges.85 Henry Luttikhuizen’s recent interpretation of the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins suggests that rather than solely admonishing sinful behavior through its straightforward presentation, the work ‘may have also encouraged observers to reexamine their hearts and may have even revealed how

83 Goldin, German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages, 107; Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire,’ 62. 84 Peter John Olivi, Postilla super Matthaeum, chapter 1, question 1, 12: Emmen, ‘Pierre de Jean Olivi,’ 260–261; Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar,’ 152. 85 Gelfand, ‘Social Status and Sin.’

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love and mercy can potentially trump moralistic codes of behavior without negating them.’86 Joseph’s satirical imagery often operated along these more nuanced, engaged lines, not merely presenting right and wrong behavior, but a spectrum of concerns to be internalized and reconsidered on a personal level. In returning to the St. Thomas Altarpiece (Fig. 4.1), a commission for St. Thomas’s Chapel in the Hamburg Domin�ican church of St. John, the humor of the miserly Joseph fits quite well; Meister Francke’s identity as a Dominican friar further amplifies our understanding of satire’s function in the altarpiece.87 Humor was a favored technique in the sermons of the preaching orders, who relied particularly on the tradition of the sermo humilis, discussed in Chapter Three. The Dominicans, especially, attracted audiences of merchants and bankers singularly focused on securing their economic positions; one can imagine Francke’s miserly Joseph as model and cautionary figure in its original Dominican context. The same may be said for Bartolo di Fredi’s altarpiece (Plate 10), a commission for the church of San Domenico in Siena, which retained a similar audience.88 Operating as a kind of imago humilis, the potency of Francke’s Adoration scene relied on its rhetoric, which resulted not from a desire for an elevated form, but for an elevated subject; in adopting satire, the Adoration could celebrate its humility overtly. As a result, the biblical scene could connect on an unprecedentedly accessible level, while simultaneously containing profound messages of Christian salvation history. The reaction of a smile or a laugh toward the image could refocus the viewer toward the image’s key message, rather than detract from it. By acknowledging humor’s important role in such image, rather than sanitizing or marginalizing it, we are able to understand how it amplified the altarpiece’s sacred function in the context of Christian devotion. Humor of this type was not restricted to the Dominican context; humor, satire, and exempla bound the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sermons of the Servites, Dominicans, and Franciscans.89 Joseph’s imagery diverges somewhat from concrete definitions of Renaissance satire as expressing a ‘firm commitment to positive values contrary to the negative values it mocks,’ for negativity, positivity, and culpability overlap across a thin line – much 86 Luttikhuizen, ‘Through Boschian Eyes,’ 281. 87 Lippien, ‘Meister Francke.’ 88 Relatively little is known about the cult of Joseph in trecento Siena, except that the Servite Fra Nicolo Pieri of Siena (Fra Niccolò di Pietro Barlettaio) preached sermons in the saint’s honor early in that century. As the Ordo Servorum Mariae (Protectors of Mary), the Servites had adopted a feast of Saint Joseph in 1324, with the Franciscans to follow in 1399. Joseph’s prominence in the frescoes of Siena Cathedral’s cripta – indeed, the reverence that the painters accorded to the saint in that cycle – suggests that the saint may have risen to importance as early as 1270 in that city, when the crypt was constructed, probably as a kind of lower chapel. Battiston, ‘Deux sermons du fr. Nicolo Pieri de Sienne sur saint Joseph’; Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art, 6–7; Kessler, ‘Joseph in Siena.’ 89 The Franciscans employed the sermo humilis most of all, as did Bernardino da Siena, to particular theatrical effect. Bolzoni, The Web of Images, 124–125; Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence, 93–171.

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as they did in the meanings conveyed by the Naumburg choir screen, in which Jews and Christians alike are implicated in issues of morality. Within the context of early fifteenth-century Hamburg, an altarpiece could function as a rather complex work. While upholding new ideals of fiscal responsibility preached in cities like Hamburg or Siena, the ‘treasurer’ Saint Joseph simultaneously subverts these same ideals by caricaturing the saint as a miser, calling attention to their slippage into avarice. This was a problem of particular social relevance to pre-Reformation church practices based on the exchange of money. At the root of this complex phenomenon lies the question of whether subversion can work in tandem with veneration. Based on the incongruities of satire in medieval early modern word and image – texts, marginalia in books and stone, and portrayals of moneychangers, bankers, and merchants – it seems that this was very possible.

4.4 Conclusion Although Joseph was indeed frequently presented as ‘an amiable caricature of the Philistine’s thrift and caution,’ a caricature that appealed to artists from Hamburg to Siena, satire’s presence did not render such images exclusively derogatory, as Panofsky and Mellinkoff claim. Despite the mockery therein, the works discussed in this chapter were not exempt from liturgical or devotional use. But this mockery also did not preclude Joseph’s privileged role as ‘treasurer’ of the family, and thus of the royal Davidic line of Christ, from shining forth.90 It is unnecessary to cleanse Joseph of his humor in order to account for his theological function. Humor was a rhetorical tool entirely appropriate for the late medieval Christian image, as Chapter Three demonstrates. Furthermore, the fact that Joseph was often a figure of identification for priests as the leaders of their congregations, and analogous to the Pope as well, does not preclude the appeal of humor to clerical viewers as well, particularly taking into account the tradition of the sermo humilis.91 Religious humor did not speak to a lay audience alone, particularly with respect to monetary concerns; the medieval clergy were among the first to criticize the ecclesiastical elite for their avarice. The presence of satire and theological concerns within such images can be attributed to many possible reasons, particularly a growing humanist interest in witty portrayals of popular biblical scenes. But the most powerful part of the multivalent image and its humor might lie in its ability to subvert institutional and economic ideals, even while supporting them – and all the while upholding that same institution’s most sublime doctrinal messages. 90 Schwartz, ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt,’ 74; Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 2: XI.39 and XI.37. 91 Schwartz, ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar.’

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Whether carrying resonances of the avaricious Jew or cleric, the satirical Saint Joseph was never totally undermined by such messages, for the multivalent image operates on more than one level at once, subverting the same practices that it celebrates – pointing toward Joseph’s theological symbolism as the treasurer of Christ while playing upon this role’s undercurrent of anxieties regarding the morality of profit. Joseph’s imagery as keeper of the goods was unquestionably functional, particularly within the context of sermons and theological writings on his role as the head of his family, yet many scenes that highlight these roles are apparently not completely devoid of mockery as well. This seeming paradox attests to the presence of conflicting worldviews regarding the growing money economy at the end of the Middle Ages, and arose as a symptom of the saint’s embodiment of a multiplicity of roles for laity and clergy alike, as the most popular and venerated model for fathers, priests, and popes. Joseph’s imagery might be understood as something akin to a mirror for the period’s ongoing social changes. In centers of trade like Antwerp and Siena, the increased importance of personal financial solidity for late medieval families stood in contrast to a fading earlier worldview of wealth as the equivalent to moral depravity. The ‘miserly’ Joseph became popular during the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries as a humorous play on the saint’s lack of enlightenment regarding the most valuable thing present in his life – his foster son – and the iconographic type, of course, played off of his Jewishness and ties to the Old Law as well. But the ‘imperfect’ facets of Joseph’s character as a father and husband – his chastity, his old age, his cuckoldry in caring for the Son of God, and his fascination with worldly wealth – arose from his virtues, biblically and as a model paterfamilias.

Works Cited Amman, Jost and Hans Sachs. The Book of Trades (Ständebuch). New York: Dover, 1973. Ashley, Kathleen and Pamela Sheingorn, eds. Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Battiston, Angelo, C.S.J. ‘Deux sermons du fr. Nicolo Pieri de Sienne sur saint Joseph.’ Cahiers de Joséphologie 7, no. 1 (1959): 79–102. Battiston, Angelo, C.S.J. ‘Le Patronage de Saint Joseph en Italie.’ Actes du Congrès d’études tenu à l’Oratoire Saint-Joseph, Montréal, 1er 9 août 1955 (Montreal, 1956): 30–60. Bax, Dirk. Hieronymus Bosch: His Picture-Writing Deciphered. 1949. Reprint, Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1979. Bernardino da Siena. Le prediche volgari. 2 vols. Edited by Ciro Cannarozzi. Pistoia: Alberto Pacinotti, 1934. Bolzoni, Lina. The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to St. Bernardino da Siena. Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2004. Bowsky, William M. Finance of the Commune of Siena 1287–1355. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Bowsky, William M. ‘The Medieval Commune and Internal Violence: Police Power and Public Safety in Siena 1287–1355.’ American Historical Review 78 (1967): 1–17. Bracciolini, Poggio. De avaritia. Edited by Giuseppe Germano. Livorno: Belforte, 1994.

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Brant, Sebastian. The Ship of Fools. Translated and edited by Edwin Zeydel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1944. Camille, Michael. The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire. New York: Abrams, 1998. Chrisman, Miriam Usher. Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480–1599. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Christiansen, Keith, Laurence Kanter, and Carl Strehlke. Painting in Renaissance Siena: 1420–1500. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988. Claman, Henry N. Jewish Images in the Christian Church: Art as the Mirror of the Jewish-Christian Conflict, 200–1250 C.E. Macon, ga: Mercer University Press, 2000. Cohen, Adam S. The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Dante. The Portable Dante: The Divine Comedy. Complete. Edited by Paolo Milano, translated by Laurence Binyon. New York: Viking Press, 1957. Debby, Nirit Ben-Aryeh. Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444). Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Derbes, Anne and Mark Sandona. The Usurer’s Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the Arena Chapel in Padua. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Dillenberger, John, ed. Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. Garden City, ny: Anchor, 1961. Duval, Edwin M. ‘Rabelais and French Renaissance Satire.’ In A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern, edited by Ruben Quintero, 70–85. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Emmen, P.A. ‘Pierre de Jean Olivi, o.f.m. Sa doctrine et son influence.’ Cahiers de Josephologie XV (1966): 209–270. Ewing, Dan. ‘Art, Market, and Market Effect in Antwerp.’ Paper presented at the Smith College symposium entitled ‘Antwerp, Artwork, and Audiences,’ Northampton, ma, November 1994. Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. The Fruit of Devotion: Mysticism and the Imagery of Love in Flemish Paintings of the Virgin and Child, 1450–1550. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1994. Gelfand, Laura D. ‘Social Status and Sin: Reading Bosch’s Prado Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things Painting.’ In The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, edited by Richard Newhauser, 229–256. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Goldin, Frederick. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History. Garden City, ny: Anchor, 1973. Hampe, Theodor. Die fahrende Leute in der deutschen Vergangenheit. Leipzig: Diederichs, 1902. Hand, John Oliver. Joos van Cleve: The Complete Paintings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolf. Early Netherlandish Painting. Washington, dc: National Gallery of Art, 1986. Hassig, Debra. ‘The Iconography of Rejection: Jews and Other Monstrous Races.’ In Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, edited by Colum Hourihane, 25–46. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Herlihy, David. ‘The Making of the Medieval Family: Symmetry, Structure, Sentiment.’ Journal of Family History 8 (1983): 116–130. Herlihy, David and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Hilton, Rodney et al. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. London: NLB, 1976. Hollstein, F.W. [Friedrich Wilhelm] H. German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1400–1700. 82 vols. Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1954. Honig, Elizabeth Alice. Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Hults, Linda C. The Print in the Western World: An Introductory History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

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Jung, Jacqueline E. ‘The Passion, the Jews, and the Crisis of the Individual on the Naumburg West Choir Screen.’ In Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture, edited by Mitchell B. Merback, 145–178. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Kaye, Joel. Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kendrick, Laura. ‘Medieval Satire.’ In A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern, edited by Ruben Quintero, 52–69. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Kessler, Herbert. ‘Joseph in Siena.’ In St. Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries, edited by Joseph F. Chorpenning, 66–73. Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press, 2011. Kunzle, David. The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Ladis, Andrew. ‘The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel.’ Art Bulletin 68, no. 4 (1986): 581–596. Langholm, Odd Inge. Wealth and Money in the Aristotelian Tradition: A Study in Scholastic Economic Sources. Bergen: Universitetsforlangen, 1983. Le Goff, Jacques. ‘The Usurer and Purgatory.’ In The Dawn of Modern Banking, edited by Fredi Chiappelli, 25–52. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Le Goff, Jacques. Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages. Translated by Patricia Ranum. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Lesnick, Daniel R. Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Lippien, Helmut R. ‘Meister Francke.’ In Goldgrund und Himmelslicht: Die Kunst des Mittelalters in Hamburg, edited by Uwe M. Schneede, 140–153. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1999. Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Luttikhuizen, Henry. ‘Through Boschian Eyes: An Interpretation of the Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins.’ In Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, edited by Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard, 260–281. York: York Medieval Press, 2012. McDonald, William C. ‘Singing Sin: Michel Beheim’s “Little Book of the Seven Deadly Sins.” A German PreReformation Religious Text for the Laity.’ In Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, edited by Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard, 282–303. York: York Medieval Press, 2012. McGuire, Brian Patrick. ‘Becoming a Father and a Husband: St. Joseph in Bernard of Clairvaux and Jean Gerson.’ In Joseph of Nazareth through the Centuries, edited by Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., 49–61. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s Press, 2011. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Others in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Mercier, Gérard. ‘Saint Joseph dans les commentaires bibliques et les homéliares du IXe siècle.’ Cahiers de Joséphologie 19 (1971): 232–253. Morganstern, Anne. ‘The Pawns in Bosch’s Death and the Miser.’ Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 33–41. Morelli, Giovanni di Pagolo. Ricordi. Edited by Vittore Branca. Florence: Le Monnier, 1956. Moxey, Keith P.F. ‘The Criticism of Avarice in Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting.’ In Netherlandish Mannerism: Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum Stockholm, edited by Görel Cavalli-Björkman, 21–34. Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1984. Murray, James M. ‘The Devil’s Evangelists: Moneychangers in Flemish Urban Society.’ In Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal, 53–67. Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2010. Nelson, Benjamin. The Idea of Usury from Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Newhauser, Richard. The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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Ozment, Steven. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1983. Paas, Martha White. ‘Family Labour Strategies in Early Modern Swabia.’ In The European Peasant Family and Society: Historical Studies, edited by Richard L. Rudolph, 146–153. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995. Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. 2 vols. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1953. Parkes, James. The Jew in the Medieval Community. London: Soncino Press, 1938. Patrignani, Anthony-Joseph. A Manual of Practical Devotion to the Glorious Patriarch St. Joseph. 1865. Reprint, Rockford: Tan Books, 1982. Petzold, Andreas. Romanesque Art. New York: Abrams, 1995. Ragusa, Isa and Rosalie B. Green, trans. and ed. Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Rowe, Nina. ‘Idealization and Subjection at the South Façade of Strasbourg Cathedral.’ In Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture, edited by Mitchell Merback, 179–202. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Rowe, Nina. ‘Synagoga Tumbles, a Rider Triumphs: Clerical Viewers and the Fürstenportal of Bamberg Cathedral.’ Gesta 45, no. 1 (2006): 15–42. Rowe, Nina. The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Schreckenberg, Heinz. The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History. New York: Continuum, 1996. Schwartz, Sheila. ‘St. Joseph in Meister Bertram’s Petri-Altar.’ Gesta 24, no. 2 (1985): 147–156. Schwartz, Sheila. ‘The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.’ PhD diss., New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, 1975. Sheingorn, Pamela. ‘Appropriating the Holy Kinship: Gender and Family History.’ In Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household, and Children, edited by Carol Neel, 273–301. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2004. Sheingorn, Pamela. ‘“The Wise Mother”: The Image of St. Anne Teaching the Virgin Mary.’ Gesta 32, no. 1 (1993): 69–80. Silver, Lawrence A. Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Abbeville Press, 2006. Silver, Lawrence A. ‘Of Beggars: Lucas van Leyden and Sebastian Brant.’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 253–257. Silver, Lawrence A. Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Silver, Lawrence A. The Paintings of Quinten Massys with a Catalogue Raissoné. Oxford: Phaidon, 1984. Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. 2nd edition. Edited by Larry Silver and Henry Luttikhuizen. Upper Saddle River, nj: Prentice Hall, 2005. Strickland, Debra Higgs. Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Todeschini, Giacomo. ‘The Incivility of Judas: “Manifest” Usury as a Metaphor for the “Infamy of Fact” (infamia facti).’ In Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal, 33–52. Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2010. Vandenbroeck, Paul. Jheronimus Bosch: Die Verlossing van de wereld. Ghent: Ludion, 2002. Vitullo, Juliann and Diane Wolfthal. ‘Trading Values: Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.’ In Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal, 155–196. Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2010. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Walshe, Maurice O’C. A Middle High German Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Wilson, Carolyn C. St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art: New Directions and Interpretations. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2001.

Conclusion Abstract The conclusion summarizes the book’s contributions through the lens of the Mérode Altarpiece of c. 1428, a devotional triptych replete with theological symbolism and ecclesiastical metaphor. Based on its relationship to a lost work by Robert Campin and another work by a follower, both of which present double entendres simultaneously satirical and doctrinal, the triptych (and what we know of its audience) probably supported devotional play in which wit amplified theological meaning. The conclusion argues that the saint’s importance – and the role of his imagery – must be reconstructed from more than Joseph’s ecclesiastical champions alone. Rather than focusing exclusively on symbolism rooted in theological discourse, images could also privilege humor as a central, reinforcing component of sanctity crucial to the beholder’s experience. Key Words: Saint Joseph, humor, Mérode Altarpiece, Holy Family, play, theology

Perhaps the most famous rendition of St. Joseph, that of the Mérode Altarpiece of c. 1425–1432 from the workshop of Robert Campin (Fig. 2.14), exemplifies early modern lay devotion to the saint and to the Holy Family. It is also a work to which we should return, for many people ask how this refined example could possibly contain humor. The answer is clarified perhaps not so much by what the work contains, but rather by the multivalent meanings produced by a possible fifteenth-century reading of its iconographic content, and how, in turn, such meanings facilitated the devotee’s experience of sanctity. The experience of this work, and many such works, might be best understood as something akin to the rhetorical ductus of late classical and medieval theory, described by Mary Carruthers as ‘an ongoing, dynamic process rather than as an examination of a static or completed object.’ Ductus is ‘the way by which a work leads someone through itself: that quality in a work’s stylistic patterns which engages an audience and then sets a viewer or auditor or performer in motion within its guiding structures and articulating colours.’1 Replete with theological symbolism and ecclesiastical metaphor, the Mérode Altarpiece is unquestionably a highly complex, deeply meaningful work. The mousetraps, one on the table and one on the windowsill, as we learn from Meyer Schapiro, have been invested with Augustinian metaphorical meaning as snares for the devil. The inclusion of Joseph, therefore, serves to highlight his marriage to Mary in the sense of its successfulness as a trick to fool the devil, masking the divinity of Christ’s birth.2 1 2

Carruthers, ‘The Concept of Ductus,’ 190. Schapiro, ‘Muscipula Diaboli’; Minnott, ‘The Theme of the Mérode Altarpiece.’

Williams, Anne L., Satire, Veneration, and St. Joseph in Art, c. 1300–1550, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi 10.5117/9789462983748_concl

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Perhaps there is more here, however, that amplifies these clever interpretations, even to the point of wittiness; as a work used for private devotion, its messages are conveyed in earnest, but this does not preclude the possibility of play. Throughout this study, play and theology have overlapped and intertwined in works used for private and public religious functions. As Chapter Two addressed, the most common analogies with respect to mousetraps, drilling, holes, prominent (or noticeably small) tools, and the coupling of old men with young women had much to do with the humorous sexual themes of French fabliaux (Schapiro himself points out the multiplicity of mouse/vagina/Satan metaphors). As an intimate depiction of the Holy Family and the Virgin as the Madonna of Humility,3 it might not be so difficult to imagine that Campin’s mousetrap could have been intended as a kind of linguistic deflection made visual, or that Joseph’s drilling on a passive piece of wood (a depiction of percier or screwing) carried undertones of a witty pun on the carpentry of sex. Even if such witty linguistic deflections were not intentional, the Ingelbrechts – who commissioned the altarpiece – might still have been able to find some humor in such imagery, in addition to theological symbolism. The Hoogstraten copy of Campin’s lost Life of Joseph, particularly the scene of Joseph’s Doubt (Fig. 2.15), itself hints at the potential for wittiness on the part of the artist at the very least. The possibilities for wit in the Mérode Altarpiece’s drilling Joseph are likewise amplified by its mirror in the risible Joseph of the Master of the Legend of St. Barbara’s Adoration of the Magi (Plate 6), in which a mousetrap is also present (and in which the donkey mimics the saint’s pose). The double entendres of such works – sexual, satirical, and doctrinal – and their appreciation by the viewer are perhaps not so foreign to an audience appreciative of complex, multivalent intellectual play. Like poetry, artistic pleasure comes from the finding of many possible meanings, a form of metaphorical play deeply satisfying not just to urbane societies, monasteries, and universities of medieval Europe, but to Augustine of Hippo as well.4 The doctrinal import of Joseph’s cuckoldry is made manifest in the central scene of the Mérode Altarpiece, which depicts the moment of the Incarnation, with the nude Christ child with a cross on his shoulder floating through the unbroken glass window, symbolic of Mary herself, towards his Virgin mother. According to Aristotelian medieval medical theory, conception occurs the moment the soul, the anima, given by the father, finds its corresponding body in the mother – and that is exactly what is depicted in this moment.5 The freshly extinguished candle on the table mag��nifies the consummation of this marriage.6 In the Mérode Altarpiece specifically, the trapping of the elusive ‘mouse’ is exactly what is missing in Joseph’s panel, while the 3 Hahn, ‘The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych,’ 54. 4 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 62–63. 5 Kemp, ‘Il Concetto dell’Anima.’ 6 Panofsky, ‘Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.’

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central panel depicts the most important consummation of father (God) and mother (Mary) in Christian history.7 This potentially playful reference to the cuckoldry of St. Joseph could have functioned as a witty reiteration of Christian doctrine, suggesting that early modern humor, when present, did not detract from religious significance. But this witty play does not emerge without context or precedent; as noted previously, the marginalia of Jean Pucelle’s famous Annunciation miniature in the Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (Fig. 2.2) similarly plays on the sexual undercurrent of Mary’s impregnation. A reading that acknowledges humor in the presence of the mousetrap, similarly, does not negate the arguments of Meyer Schapiro, Charles Minnott, and Cynthia Hahn, but rather reinforces them, for the mousetrap, and indeed the altarpiece as a whole, could have functioned as a kind of multivalent work, harboring both theological and humorous implications, conveying biblical truths in the ‘low’ or ‘plain’ rhetorical style of the sermo humilis, a tradition binding humor and irony to sermons and humanist works alike.8 As a prominent figure and responsible caretaker/laborer in the Mérode Altarpiece, Joseph does indeed perfect the marriage model of the Holy Family, as Hahn writes. But Joseph himself was also understood to be imperfect, reflected by the Bible, plays, legends, hymns, and art, which tell of his old age, cuckoldry, drinking, and bumbling as he attempted to care for the Son of God despite his incomplete enlightenment. When we consider Joseph’s cult within the context of the ‘lesser’ laity and clergy, we are able to move beyond the all-too-common assumption that in art and in literature, Joseph was portrayed in either of two roles that are ‘mutually exclusive.’9 When we look to evidence beyond the theological writings of authors like Jean Gerson, Pierre d’Ailly, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ambrose, and Augustine, which are unquestionably crucial to the full picture, we begin to see that these roles in late medieval and Renaissance representations often did not contrast; nor was there a clear-cut break in the early fifteenth century towards more exclusively ‘sober’ representations of Joseph because of the saint’s ecclesiastical champions. Joseph’s dually comical and virtuous nature did not exist in separate, distinct manifestations, but rather cohered in single artworks,10 suggesting that the saint’s importance for medieval and early modern peoples can be reconstructed from more than theological discourse alone. Jean Gerson’s insistence that Joseph was a strong, handsome man of about 36 when 7 Since Bernard of Clairvaux, the moment of Christ’s incarnation was also understood as the moment of the Heavenly Bridegroom’s spiritual marriage with Mary’s soul. See Falkenburg, ‘The Household of the Soul.’ 8 Rooted in Meyer Schapiro’s and Charles Minnott’s earlier contributions, Cynthia Hahn argues for a close association between the work’s depicted tools and Ambrose’s Commentary on St. Luke, casting Joseph as a figure of God the Creator, the ‘good artisan of the soul.’ She rightly diverges from these authors in her interpretation of the Mérode Joseph as an important focal point for personal devotion, rather than as a subsidiary figure veiled in symbolic meaning. Hahn, ‘The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych,’ 59. 9 Hahn, ‘The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych,’ 55–56. 10 In this sense I disagree with Pamela Sheingorn, ‘Constructing the Patriarchal,’ 171.

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he married Mary clearly fell flat in the eyes of many artists, and his arguments were relatively contemporary! If humor appealed to the Duke of Burgundy in his personal tabernacle depicting a barefoot St. Joseph knitting his stockings together, or in the retable he commissioned for his oratory chapel in which Joseph is overshadowed by ass’s ears and dries the baby’s diaper, it may have infused the Ingelbrechts’ commission approximately 20 years later.11 Rather than focusing exclusively upon symbolism rooted in the theological, the religious experience of images could also privilege humor as a central, reinforcing component of sanctity, as crucial to an artwork’s rhetorical structuring of the viewer’s experience. Like the marginalia of medieval manuscripts, play and irony could reinstate theological symbolism in Renaissance art. Humor’s relevance to Joseph’s veneration may have functioned much like early Renaissance illusionism in serving to familiarize the saint to the viewer and devotee desiring to experience the divine in human terms, providing a kind of tangible, affective pathway. Visual jokes and satires on Joseph’s cuckoldry and bumbling, and the containment of such ‘inversions’ within the safe realm of the saint’s theological function, introduced socially binding mirth for those doing the laughing. But more importantly, rather than detracting from the saint’s veneration, they served to highlight his most important virtues – his chastity, old age, and care for the Son of God despite his incomplete understanding of the situation – reinstating the most important aspects of his sainthood that the viewer would have known to be truths. This book has argued not just for the acknowledgment of humor’s presence at the center of many religious scenes, but also for its fundamental reconsideration as a tool not confined to ‘low,’ profane, lay culture, but speaking to both laity and clergy in their particular experience of sanctity through art. Joseph’s humor transcended anachronistic categories between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular,’ lay and clerical concerns; the clergy’s and mercantile elite’s participation in bawdy jokes and inversionary behavior disproves the traditional Bakhtinian analysis of humor as a form of rebellion by the low classes against the ‘upper-class’ clergy and town authorities. Laughter at St. Joseph may be understood as a form of veneration itself, in that it reinstated the central tenets of the Christian faith with respect to Joseph’s role in the salvation of mankind. The origins of Josephine humor in the legend of his Hosen suggest the strength of Joseph’s cult as part of popular religious culture as early as the thirteenth century in northern Europe, long before its fifteenth-century confirmation in papal and theological circles. Further explanations for Joseph’s humor – and for humor’s movement from the margins of earlier medieval art to the center of fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-century Catholic narratives (particularly on altarpieces) – lie in the 11 Hahn rightly notes the humor of the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych in a footnote; see Hahn, ‘The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych,’ 55, note 6.

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reception and continuation of classical rhetorical theory. Fostered by the popularity of rhetorical theories of humor and play in the late Middle Ages, the development of a kind of imago humilis conveyed sublime Christian truths through the humble tools of joking and humor, which also provided beneficial and refreshing varietas, a Ciceronian value privileged by medieval understandings of ancient rhetoric.12 Similarly, social ideals rooted in courtly behavior – specifically notions of urbanitas and the vir facetus – bound patron, viewer, and audience in an exchange that privileged the art of wit. Reflection upon a broader tradition of satire, which included the lesser clergy’s contentions against the profligacy of the Church, as well as an understanding of the complexities of thirteenth- through sixteenth-century satire, reveals the nuances of many sacred images – that many should be understood as multivalent: capable, for example, of subverting institutional ideals, even while upholding that same institution’s most important values. This broader spectrum of play, humor, satire, wit, and irony allows us to perceive the full complexity of such works. Rather than detracting from their splendor in our minds, a fuller understanding of the roles of humor and satire enriches them. It amplifies their depth as devotional and liturgical works, celebrating the Christian faith in a rhetoric appropriate to tradition, as well as to the ways in which early modern images structured the individual’s experience of sanctity.

Works Cited Carruthers, Mary. ‘The Concept of Ductus, or Journeying Through a Work of Art.’ In Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, edited by Mary Carruthers, 190–213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Carruthers, Mary. The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. ‘The Household of the Soul: Conformity in the Mérode Triptych.’ In Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies, edited by Maryan Ainsworth, 2–17. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001. Hahn, Cynthia. ‘“Joseph Will Perfect, Mary Enlighten and Jesus Save Thee”: The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Mérode Triptych.’ Art Bulletin 68, no. 1 (1986): 54–66. Kemp, Martin. ‘“Il Concetto dell’Anima” in Leonardo’s Early Skull Studies.’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 115–134. Minnott, Charles Illsley. ‘The Theme of the Mérode Altarpiece.’ Art Bulletin 51, no. 3 (1969): 267–271. Panofsky, Erwin. ‘Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.’ Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 64 (Mar. 1934): 117–127. Schapiro, Meyer. ‘“Muscipula Diaboli,” the Symbolism of the Merode Altarpiece.’ Art Bulletin 27, no. 3 (1945): 182–187. Sheingorn, Pamela. ‘Constructing the Patriarchal Parent: Fragments of the Biography of Joseph the Carpenter.’ In Framing the Family: Narrative and Representation in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited by Rosalynn Voaden and Diane Wolfthal, 161–180. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005.

12 See Marius Victorinus, Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam, 81–82; cited in Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, 139.

Index Aachen 19, 33, 37, 43, 44, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 79, 81, 84, 103, 113, 152, 180 Adoration of the Magi 22, 25, 38, 47, 67, 103, 109, 110, 111, 113, 117, 129, 132, 166, 168, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 212, 214, 215, 216, 226 affect 32, 92, 144, 226; see also emotion; devotion; visuality Alberti, Leon Battista 29, 207 Alfonso I, King of Naples and Sicily 160 altarpieces 17, 20, 21, 24, 25, 32, 37, 44, 47, 50, 51, 53, 54, 61, 64, 66, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 97, 98, 103, 104, 109, 110, 111, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 132, 151, 152, 156, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 197, 198, 205, 214, 218, 219, 220, 225, 226, 227, 228 Altdorfer, Albrecht 127; see also Germania; Wild Man ambiguity 25, 26, 28, 38, 47, 64, 66, 77-78, 84, 97, 116, 163, 164, 189, 202–03, 211, 216–20; see also multivalence Ambrose 155, 227 Andachtsbild 29, 41, 53, 70, 92, 155 Andrea da Fiesole 181 Annunciation 67, 98, 134, 227 anti-Semitism 22, 38, 78, 80, 153, 180, 189, 199–204, 218 Antoninus of Florence 39, 198 Summa moralis 198 Antwerp 19, 61, 92, 93, 144, 161, 198, 204, 210, 212, 214, 221 Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold 21, 38, 44, 51, 57, 59, 60, 84, 110, 121, 142, 156 apocrypha 23, 24, 26, 27, 39, 64, 76–77, 78 Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 23, 76 Aristotle 105, 157, 160, 176, 182 Aristotelian economic theory 207 Aristotelian medical theory 69, 226 Aristotelian optical theory 176 Nicomachean Ethics 157 Rhetoric 157 Augustine of Hippo 30, 52, 162, 164, 165, 166, 226, 227 avarice see money Bakhtin, Mikhail 18, 95, 101, 154, 228 Bartolo di Fredi 181, 214, 219 Battle of the Sexes 105, 168 Battle for the Pants 94, 103–07, 112, 153 diaper-washer 103, 105, 107, 109, 153, 168 henpecked husbands 20, 92, 93, 106, 107, 114 Beham Brothers 111, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129, 208 Bernard of Clairvaux 22, 52, 155, 161, 187, 227 Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary 185 Bernardino of Siena 22, 23, 30, 39, 153, 161, 188, 206 Bertram von Minden, Meister 20, 24, 63–68, 71–81, 83, 117 Boccaccio, Giovanni 139, 140, 160 Ameto 140 De claris mulieribus (des cleres et nobles femmes) 168, 177 Decameron 139, 168 Bologna 27, 43, 153, 181

Bonaventura 30, 52 Pseudo-Bonaventura 23 Boniface IX, Pope 59 Bonne of Luxembourg, Valois Queen of France 58 Bosch, Hieronymus 47, 103–04, 107, 168, 208, 209, 210, 218 bourgeois, bourgeoisie 21, 24, 25, 47, 51, 64, 67, 72, 111, 122, 123, 124, 127, 155, 156, 159, 160, 162, 167, 173, 178, 182, 187, 188, 190, 191, 204–06, 207, 210, 211, 217, 219; see also money Brabant 40, 44, 124, 153, 161, 164 Bracciolini, Poggio 125, 129, 160, 161, 162, 207 De avaritia 207 Facetiae 129, 161 Brant, Sebastian 116, 122, 123 Of Greed 207 Ship of Fools 122, 123, 141, 207 Bridget of Sweden 53, 58–59, 152 Broederlam, Melchior 61, 76, 118, 121 Brueghel the Elder, Pieter 209, 215 Brussels 44 Bruyn the Elder, Bartholomäus 198, 216 Burgundy 26, 51, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 96, 109, 113, 161, 168, 177, 228 Campin, Robert 68, 75, 134, 225–26 workshop of 223–24 Mérode Altarpiece 132, 152, 225–28 caricature see humor Castiglione, Baldesar 160, 161, 171, 175, 179 Libro del Cortegiano 160, 161, 171 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor 54, 56, 63 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 54, 55, 56, 58, 72 Charles V, Valois King of France 55, 56, 63 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 57 Chartres Cathedral 20, 24, 39, 42, 43, 46, 84, 92, 195 Chaucer, Geoffrey 69, 140 Merchant’s Tale 140 Christian of Stavelot 188, 193 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 168, 175, 176, 179, 181, 182, 229 De inventione 157, 162 De officiis 157, 163 De oratore 162, 175, 179, 182 Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam by Marius Victorinus 157 clergy, clerical 18, 19, 21, 26, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 43, 53, 60, 64, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 77, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 104, 117, 129, 142, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 163, 165, 167, 178, 182, 188, 189, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 227, 228, 229 Cologne 44, 47, 51, 52, 60, 94, 125, 198, 214, 216 confraternities 27, 57, 80 Conrad von Soest 25, 77, 80, 92 councils 154 Council of Constance 18, 22, 59, 60, 188 Council of Trent 27, 142 Counter-Reformation 16, 27, 94, 142, 156

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courtesy, courtliness 21, 95, 96, 97, 104, 111, 112, 116, 122, 127, 128, 156–61, 163, 168, 171, 173–79, 182–83, 188, 229 aristocracy, nobility 21, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 63, 67, 70, 95, 96, 97, 104, 112, 114, 122, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 136, 137, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 167, 168, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 182, 188, 210, 228 chivalry 21, 95, 96, 102, 104, 111, 116, 122, 126, 127, 136, 158, 160, 170, 174, 175, 176, 217 courtesy books 38, 67, 68, 80, 112, 116, 117, 122, 158, 159, 167, 171, 174, 178, 179, 182 Meier Helmbrecht by Wernher der Gärtner 38, 68 Facetus 68 Le Ménagier de Paris (Good Wife’s Guide) 80 On Instruction of Novices by Hugh of St. Victor 68 Tischzuchten 67, 70 Welsche Gast by Thomas von Zerclaere 174 feudalism and social exchange 21, 96, 98, 114, 123, 156, 159, 168, 169, 173, 174, 178, 182, 188, 204, 205, 206 urbanitas 21, 151, 157–62, 167–69, 175, 176, 178, 179, 182, 229 laughing prince 159–61, 174, 175, 182 see also wit courtesy books see courtesy, courtliness cross-dressing see festivals Crucifixion 73, 201 crusades 57, 217 cuckoldry 25, 93, 94, 103, 110, 111, 139, 140, 141, 152, 153, 155, 156, 179; see also Joseph of Nazareth Deschamps, Eustache 28, 140 Miroir de Mariage 140 devotion 15–20, 22, 24, 26, 29–33, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 75, 81, 83, 84, 91, 92, 98, 103, 113, 142, 144, 151, 152, 156, 167, 168, 170, 181, 187, 204, 219, 225, 228, 229 devotional art 15–17, 20, 21, 29–30, 37, 41–42, 51–52, 59, 61, 70–71, 92, 96, 136, 144, 151, 155, 163, 168, 169, 171, 179, 213, 220, 225–26, 229 devotional practice, prayer 27, 29–32, 39, 40, 41, 51–54, 63, 92, 98, 144, 151, 152, 155, 170, 188, 210, 219, 220, 227, 228; see also visuality devotional treatises 15, 20, 24, 29–30, 39, 52, 198 Vita Christi/ Life of Christ literature 23, 24, 30–31, 39, 92, 144 Meditationes de Vita Christi 23, 24, 30, 39, 52, 198 piety 27, 38, 39, 40, 58, 64, 66, 83, 84, 127, 128, 158 popular devotion, piety 18, 19, 25, 27, 28, 39, 42, 43, 53, 59, 81, 84, 103, 128, 152, 153, 228; see also popular culture diaper-washer see Battle of the Sexes Dijon 60, 61, 75 Chartreuse de Champmol 60, 61, 63, 76, 84, 110, 121 tabernacle of the ducal oratory for Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 61, 62–63, 110, 228 see also Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych of Philip the Bold; Broederlam, Melchior; Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy donkey see Joseph of Nazareth drama 15, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 32, 37, 38–40, 42, 58, 59, 64, 66, 77–84, 92, 94, 100, 102, 105, 106, 114, 116, 118–22, 123, 128, 139, 140, 141, 143, 153, 154, 155, 181, 201, 216, 227

Brabantine landjuweel 40, 124, 153, 161, 164 Carnival plays/Shrovetide plays/Fastnachtspiele 105, 106, 116, 122, 123, 139, 140, 153, 216 The Angry Wife 105 Vom Heiraten Spil 140 Easter plays 79 Ludus Coventriae cycle 25 Miracle plays 39, 78 Nativity plays 25, 38, 64, 66, 78–84, 100, 106, 114, 119–22, 128 Cradle-rocking plays/Kindelwiegenspiele 20, 25, 37, 38, 78–85 92, 94, 100, 119–22, 143, 181 Hessische Weihnachtsspiel 78–80, 81, 112, 181 Schwäbisches Weihnachtsspiel 78, 100, 119–20 Sterzinger Weihnachtsspiel 78, 82, 120–21, 181 Three Kings plays 79 Erlauer Spiele 79 St. Galler Weihnachtsspiel 79 Passion plays 40, 79, 199 tableau vivants 40 Dürer, Albrecht 123, 137, 164, 170, 178 economy see money edification see humor Elias, Norbert 32, 158, 159 emotion 29, 30, 31, 32, 41, 92, 103, 165; see also affect; devotion; visuality Erasmus of Rotterdam 132, 177, 209, 216 Apophthegmata 161 Praise of Folly 141, 216 fabliaux see jokes facetiae see jokes family 26, 60, 82, 83, 105–06, 122, 127, 153, 187, 188, 189, 195, 203, 204, 205, 206, 211, 221 fatherhood 22, 26, 82–83, 105–06, 187, 188, 189, 195, 205, 206, 211, 214, 218, 221; see also Joseph of Nazareth; money Holy Family 20, 23, 24, 26, 30, 32, 39, 41, 58, 67, 76, 77, 82, 92, 129, 136, 139, 142, 144, 181, 188, 196, 213, 225–28 Holy Kinship 205 marriage 105, 107, 205; see also Battle of the Sexes nuclear family 22, 105, 153, 187, 189, 204–06, 212 festivals, festivity 60, 95, 98, 100–03, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 139–40, 153–54, 173 Carnival and Shrovetide 95, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 116, 122, 123, 124, 126, 139, 140, 141, 143, 153–55, 216; see also drama civic celebrations 102, 153, 155 Brabantine landjuweel 40, 124, 153, 161, 164 cross-dressing 101, 102, 154 Feast of Fools 101 Feast of the Circumcision 101 see also ritual feudalism see courtesy Flight into Egypt 31, 32, 38, 41, 42, 43, 63, 76, 77, 103, 109, 118, 121, 188, 215 Rest on the Flight into Egypt 23–24, 31, 41, 42, 64, 66, 67, 68, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 98, 113, 117, 121, 128 Floris, Frans 92, 144

233

Index

fool, folly 18, 20, 25, 28, 71, 81, 84, 91, 93, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 116, 122, 123, 129, 137, 139–40, 141–42, 163, 164, 180, 207, 208, 210, 216, 217; see also Joseph of Nazareth Franck, Sebastian 116, 125, 153, 154 Weltbuch 154 Francke, Meister 190, 191, 195, 219 George, military saint 168, 170, 171, 175 Germania 125–28; see also Wild Man Aeneas Silvius 127 Conrad Celtis 126 Pomponius Mela 126 Tacitus 125, 126, 127 Gerson, Jean 18, 22, 27, 32, 39, 46, 53, 58, 59, 60, 84, 101, 132, 187, 188, 227 Giotto di Bondone 214–15 Goslar 154 Graf, Urs 141 Gregory XI, Pope 57 Grote, Geert 30 Hamburg 19, 20, 24, 37, 44, 59, 63, 64, 72, 73, 79, 80, 98, 117, 119, 121, 190, 219, 220 Hartmann von Aue 209 Der arme Heinrich 209 henpecked husband see Battle of the Sexes historical bibles 64, 66 Magdeburg Schöppenchronik 60 Weltchronik 64, 66 Holbein the Younger, Hans 125, 171, 195–96, 207 Holy Roman Empire 54, 55, 56, 58, 63 Hoogstraten Tableau (Life of St. Joseph) 109, 134, 226 Housebook Master 107, 127 Hugo van der Goes 50, 68, 187 Huizinga, Johan 28, 33, 38, 98–101, 161 humanism 17, 21, 104, 125–28, 132, 144, 153, 156, 167–71, 176–82, 206, 207, 211, 216, 217, 220, 227; see also Germania; rhetoric; wit humor 15–21, 25–27, 29, 32–33, 37–38, 58–59, 61, 63–64, 66, 71, 78, 81, 83, 84, 91–99, 101–07, 109–19, 123, 128, 129, 132, 136, 137, 139, 142–44, 151–57, 160–73, 175, 178–83, 188, 192–93, 196, 202, 212, 214, 219, 220, 221, 225–29 caricature 92, 144, 153, 168, 190, 202, 207, 211, 220 comedy, comic 15–16, 18, 20, 22–23, 25–26, 28, 37–40, 42, 64, 66–68, 71, 78–81, 83, 84, 93, 95, 98–101, 114, 116, 124, 128–29, 130, 139, 141, 143, 151–53, 156, 162–65, 168, 181, 188, 198, 216, 227 definitions of 143 definitions of 33, 142–43, 160 devotional, sacred 15–16, 91, 151, 162–63, 167, 219 as edification 151–53, 155, 181 parody, mockery 17–18, 83, 91–92, 95–98, 101–03, 105–07, 109, 112, 116, 117, 123, 134, 139–40, 141, 142, 143, 151, 163–64, 189, 216, 217, 218, 219–20 satire 15, 16, 17, 19, 20–21, 22, 25, 32, 33, 91, 92, 93–94, 95, 97–98, 103, 104–09, 113, 114, 116, 122–23, 129, 134, 137, 139, 142–43, 144, 152, 153, 155, 156, 160, 162, 165–66, 167, 168, 179, 180, 182, 188, 189, 207, 209, 210, 211, 216–20, 221, 226, 228, 229 definitions of 17, 142–43, 162, 189, 216, 220

see also irony; jokes; Joseph of Nazareth; laughter; margins; rhetoric; wit hymns 15, 45, 80–81, 227 Von der bort Christi 80 iconography 19, 29, 31, 41, 53, 54, 132–34, 142, 189, 203, 225–28 illusionism 20, 30, 31, 40, 41, 144, 165–66, 176, 228 imago humilis see rhetoric inversion 21, 33, 92, 95–96, 100–02, 104–05, 123, 144, 154–56, 217, 228 clerical 100–02 World Upside Down 21, 91–92, 94–95, 101, 104–05, 156; see also Battle of the Sexes irony 17, 156, 162–64, 166, 170–71, 173, 175, 181–82, 216, 217, 227–29 definitions of 21, 163 humilitas see rhetoric paradoxical encomium 21, 163, 182, 216 Socratic 21, 163–64 see also humor; jokes; rhetoric; satire; wit Israhel van Meckenem 106, 134, 179 ivories 20, 24, 39, 42, 43, 44, 51–54, 57, 61, 62, 81, 84, 92, 127, 137 Jan van Eyck 40, 75 Jean, Duke of Berry 96, 112, 132, 137, 168, 173, 177; see also manuscripts Jeanne d’Evreux, Capetian Queen of France 98, 132, 174, 227; see also manuscripts Jesus 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 92, 94, 98, 103, 113, 119, 120, 128, 129, 132, 136, 140, 143, 152, 155, 156, 164, 165, 166, 168, 170, 177, 181, 188, 190, 193, 195, 202, 204, 205, 212, 213, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 225, 226, 227, 227 Jews, Judaism 22, 38, 74, 78, 80, 114, 153, 180, 189, 199–204, 206, 207, 213, 217, 220, 221; see also antiSemitism John II, Valois King of France 58 John the Baptist 45–46, 62, 63 John the Evangelist 53, 73 jokes 15, 19–21, 28, 33, 40, 91–95, 97–98, 102–19, 128–29, 123, 128–44, 151–53, 155, 157–58, 161, 163, 166, 170, 173–76, 179, 180, 207, 226, 228–29 fabliaux 25, 95, 98, 110, 128–32, 226 Boivin de Provins 130–31 Du Fevre de Creeil 130 La Saineresse 131 facetiae 40, 129, 132, 153, 157, 160–61, 174–75 Motti e facezie del Piovano Arlotto 161 see also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Bracciolini, Poggio; Castiglione, Baldesar; Chaucer, Geoffrey linguistic deflections and double entendres 129–34, 226 Schwankliteratur 110–11, 116–17 Das Rollwagenbüchlin by Jörg Wickram 116–17 Der Ring by Heinrich Wittenwiler 116 sexual jokes, puns 40, 98, 128–42, 152–55, 161, 170, 173, 179, 225–28

234

SATIRE, VENER ATION, AND ST. JOSEPH IN ART, C. 1300–1550

see also humor; irony; Joseph of Nazareth; laughter; rhetoric; wit Joseph of Nazareth barefoot, barelegged 46–47, 58, 79–81, 84, 94, 168, 181, 228 cuckoldry of 15, 21, 25, 67, 91, 94, 98, 103, 109, 110, 129, 134–36, 139, 142, 152–56, 164, 179, 221, 226–28 cult of 15–16, 18–19, 20, 22–30, 32, 37–42, 57, 58–60, 66, 72–78, 81–84, 91–94, 113, 142–44, 163, 181, 188–89, 195, 205, 206, 211, 220–21, 227–28 Davidic lineage 22, 74–75, 77, 80, 113, 188, 195, 220 as domestic caretaker/nutritor domini 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 37–39, 42–66, 71–84, 92–95, 98, 103, 109, 113, 121–22, 143–44, 153, 168, 218, 228 doubt of 25, 134–36, 142, 168, 179, 226 feast of 18, 22–23, 27, 60, 188 the fool, the boor, the drinker 18, 25, 28, 59, 61, 64, 67–68, 71, 78, 81–84, 91, 98, 103, 109–22, 129, 164, 227–28 as model for clergy, Pope 38, 72, 77, 218, 220 as miser, as treasurer 22, 26, 153, 187–198, 202–07, 211–15, 218–20 as paterfamilias 22, 24, 26, 28, 71, 74–77, 82–84, 121–22, 187–89, 192, 195, 203, 205–07, 211–12, 219–221, 227 relics see relics old age, chastity of 18, 20–21, 23, 25, 28, 52, 71, 79, 84, 91, 92, 94, 98, 109, 128, 129, 132–37, 139, 142–44, 156, 188, 227–28 Old Law 22, 153, 189, 202, 213, 217, 218, 221 lay, laity 18, 19, 21, 26, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 53, 64, 71, 72, 82, 95, 97–98, 101, 151, 152, 156, 158, 159, 166, 167, 181, 187, 188, 189, 203, 205, 210, 218, 220, 221, 227, 228 piety, devotion 29, 31, 32, 40, 53, 82–83, 151, 152, 181, 220, 225, 227, 228 see also popular culture laughter 16–18, 20–21, 30, 32, 40, 91–92, 95, 98–103, 128, 142–43, 144, 156–57, 160, 162–63, 166, 175, 228 as veneration 16, 18, 21, 32–33, 84, 91–92, 144, 156, 163, 167, 182, 228 see also humor; jokes; rhetoric; wit Liège 60 Limbourg Brothers 96, 112, 114, 173, 174; see also manuscripts Louis IX, Capetian King of France 55, 57 love gardens 104, 129, 136, 155, 168, 171, 175 hortus conclusus 136, 155, 168 Song of Songs 70, 136, 155 Lucas van Leyden 142, 209 Ludolph of Saxony 23, 24, 39 Luther, Martin 208 Lübeck 72, 155 Mainz 154 Malouel, Jean 61 manner books see courtesy, courtliness manuscripts 24, 39, 42, 44, 51, 53, 54, 56, 64, 95–97, 103, 104, 106, 112, 121, 136–37, 142, 160, 163, 167, 174, 228 Bedford Master 121 Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves 136, 142 Book of Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux 98, 132, 174, 227

Book of Hours of Philip of Burgundy 113 Boucicaut Master 67, 109–10 Freiburg Psalter 20, 24, 42–44, 84 Grandes Chroniques de France of Charles V, Valois King of France 56, 63 Luttrell Psalter 96 Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 96, 112, 132, 137, 173 Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy 57 margins, marginalia 16, 22, 33, 91, 95–97, 101, 102–03, 104, 107, 142, 144, 153, 155, 156, 160, 163, 164, 170, 174, 181, 218, 220, 227, 228 liminality, marginality 70, 96, 101 misericords 94, 103, 105 see also World Upside Down markets see money Massys, Quentin 210, 211, 218 Master E.S. 127, 137, 168, 191 Master of Flémalle see Campin, Robert Master of the Banderoles 137 Master of the Legend of St. Barbara 117, 129, 132, 226 Master of the Little Garden of Paradise 21, 136, 168, 179 marriage see family Memling, Hans 50 memory 65, 66, 176, 177, 179 mendicant orders 40, 64, 161, 164, 166, 206, 207, 208, 209, 219 Dominicans 24, 27, 60, 139, 166, 206, 219 Franciscans 22, 23, 24, 52, 139, 152, 154, 166, 187, 206, 219 Anthony of Padua 166 Francis of Assisi 166 see also Bernardino of Siena; Thomas Aquinas Servites 166, 207, 219 see also rhetoric, sermo humilis money 22, 98, 141, 158, 174, 188–89, 199–221 economy 22, 96, 158, 174, 183, 187–89, 199, 203–11, 217, 219, 221 feudalism see courtesy money economy 22, 98, 158, 174, 187–89, 204–08, 210, 211, 217, 221 scholastic economics 206 and morality 188, 189, 195, 200, 202–12, 217–20 avarice 22, 97, 153, 189, 195–96, 200–203, 206–07, 210–12, 214, 216, 217–18, 220, 221 clerical avarice 22, 97–98, 173, 187, 216–18, 220–21 beggars 115, 207–09 Judas Iscariot 189, 201, 203 preaching 22, 139, 153, 195, 207, 209, 219–21 usury 200, 201, 207, 210 and paternity, family 105–06, 153, 189, 195, 204–07, 221 see also anti-Semitism monks, monasticism 97, 102, 158, 165, 167, 205, 216 Moses 49 multivalence 21–22, 32, 189, 211, 216, 218–21, 225, 226, 227, 229 Multscher, Hans 44, 47 Sterzinger Altar 44, 47, 58 mysticism 23, 30, 45, 53, 73 Nativity scenes 24, 25, 38, 39, 42, 44, 47, 50, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 92, 103, 113, 118, 121, 152, 166, 181; see also drama

Index

naturalism see illusionism Neidhart von Reuental 112, 114, 123 Nuremberg 122, 123, 125, 153, 154, 156, 191, 202 Olivi, Peter John 206, 218 optics see vision Panofsky, Erwin 16, 19, 20, 37, 38, 40, 84, 190, 193, 220; see also iconography Paris 20, 24, 39, 42, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 84, 92, 101, 176, 177 parody see humor Paschasius Radbertus 188, 193 Patinir, Joachim 31 peasants, rustics 20, 67–70, 92–96, 102–03, 107, 111–29, 159, 164, 170, 171, 172, 173, 180, 202, 208, 217; see also Wild Man revolts 72 German Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 123 Jacquerie of 1358 96 periodization 17 Petrarch 157, 161 Rerum memorandarum libri 157 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 21, 26, 38, 44, 51, 58, 60–61, 62, 63, 109, 110, 113, 121, 142, 156, 168, 177 physiognomy 29, 69–70, 92, 117, 201 Pieri, Fra Nicolo 207 Pierre d’Ailly 22, 39, 187, 188, 227 piety see devotion pilgrimage 19, 31, 33, 43, 47, 53, 56, 57, 59, 97, 152, 180, 181, 214 great pilgrimage 46, 55, 57, 81 indulgences 55, 127 jubilee year of Charles IV 55 see also relics play 16, 17, 21, 32, 33, 40, 92, 98–102, 116, 132, 136, 137, 142, 151, 152, 153, 157, 164, 166, 168, 170, 182, 226, 227, 228, 229 Pontano, Giovanni 160, 167, 175–76 De Sermone 160 popular culture 18, 19, 28, 39, 94, 101, 103, 104, 132, 228 ‘low’ vs. ‘high’ art, culture, literature, veneration 16, 18, 19, 25–26, 28, 39, 94–95, 101, 101, 142, 152–54, 216, 228 humor 16, 94–95, 128, 142 popular devotion, piety 18, 19, 25, 27, 28, 39, 42, 43, 53, 59, 81, 84, 103, 129, 152–53, 228 see also devotion; lay, laity Prague 54–57, 58; see also Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor prayer see devotion preaching see sermons preaching orders see mendicant orders Presentation of Christ at the Temple 52 prints 15, 20, 47, 54, 60, 92, 94, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111, 113, 114, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129, 134, 137, 153, 155, 168, 179, 191, 202, 207, 208, 209, 214 profane see sacred vs. profane Pseudo-Dionysius 30, 52 Pucelle, Jean see manuscripts Quintilian 157, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 170, 175, 176, 182 Institutio oratoria 162

235 Rabelais, François 101, 164, 216–17 Gargantua and Pantagruel 216–17, 218 Raphael 171, 175, 178, 180 realism see illusionism Reformation 18, 92–93, 154, 172, 203, 205, 216 relics 43, 45–46, 54–58, 60 Crown of Thorns 55, 56 girdle of Joseph 57 Holy Cross 55 Holy Lance, spear of Longinus 55, 56, 57 Holy Sponge 55 Hosen/stockings of Joseph, the swaddling clothes of Jesus 19–20, 24, 37–39, 42–50, 57–63, 79–81, 84, 94, 103, 110, 113, 142, 152, 168, 181, 228 and images 54, 56–57 loincloth of Christ 45 as propaganda 54–57 Reliquary Cross of the Bohemian Kingdom 56 shroud of John the Baptist 45 tunic of the Virgin Mary 45, 55 vesture of Christ 55 see also pilgrimage revolts see peasants rhetoric 17, 21, 33, 40, 102, 125, 153, 156–57, 160–62, 164–68, 170–71, 173, 175–83, 209, 219, 220, 225, 227–29 artist as rhetorician 168–75, 180, 182, 225; see also wit and veneration 167 dissimulation 17, 21, 162–64, 170–72, 180, 182; see also irony; Cicero’s De officiis; Quintilian’s De oratore; Wolfram’s Parzival ductus 225 Forma praedicandi by Robert of Basevorn 161 imago humilis 21, 156, 181, 216, 229 rhetorical theory 17, 21, 33, 156–57, 160, 162, 164–67, 175–76, 178–82, 223, 229 Rhetorica ad Herennium 162 see also Cicero; Quintilian; Aristotle; Pontano, Giovanni rhetorical style 21, 156, 164–66, 227, 229 sermo humilis 21, 164–66, 170, 181, 219, 220, 227 humilitas 156, 165–66, 182 ritual 54, 83, 98, 100–02, 123, 154, 167, 208 Rogier van der Weyden 47, 50, 75 romances 24, 97, 104, 137, 159, 162, 180 Parzival by Wolfram 162–64, 217, 218 Roman de la Rose 104, 139 see also Neidhart von Reuental; Tannhäuser Rupert of Deutz 153 Sachs, Hans 105, 109, 116, 122, 123, 124, 127, 141 sacred vs. profane 16, 25–26, 33, 40, 91–95, 97, 98, 139, 155–56, 228 sacrilege 18, 25, 91, 142, 152–53, 170, 181 sanctity, saints 16, 21, 23, 29–31, 39, 41, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 136, 143–44, 168, 171, 175, 225, 228–29 humanization of, identification with 20, 23, 29, 30, 32, 40–42, 53, 66–67, 78, 81–84, 113, 143–44, 155, 156, 168, 171, 187, 219, 228 Schapiro, Meyer 132, 225, 226, 227 Schäufelein, Hans 109, 122, 127 Schongauer, Martin 117 Schön, Erhard 105, 107

236

SATIRE, VENER ATION, AND ST. JOSEPH IN ART, C. 1300–1550

sermo humilis see rhetoric sermons 17, 21, 22, 24, 52, 117, 139, 153, 155, 156, 161, 162, 165, 166, 168, 171, 173, 180, 181, 188, 189, 195, 206, 207, 209, 219, 220, 221, 227; see also mendicant orders Siena 19, 22, 39, 153, 161, 181, 188, 206, 207, 214, 219, 220, 221 Sixtus IV, Pope 23 Starnina, Gherardo 214 Stoss, Veit 121 Strasbourg 134, 135, 136, 142, 156, 168, 179, 198 subversion 22, 95, 104, 187, 216, 220, 221, 229 Suso, Henry 53 Tannhäuser 112 theology 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 64, 66, 71, 77, 80, 82, 83, 84, 132, 142, 144, 152, 154, 156, 166, 167, 173, 182, 187, 188, 189, 193, 195, 206, 211, 216, 220, 221, 225–28 theory, anthropological 33, 92, 95, 98–103; see also inversion, margins Apte, Mahadev 33, 102 Douglas, Mary 33, 95 theory, image see vision; visuality Thomas à Kempis 23, 24 Thomas Aquinas 182, 206 Summa theologiae 182 Trithemius, Johannes 22 Ulm 152 unequal couples 20, 91, 92, 94, 129, 139–41, 168, 226; see also Chaucer, Geoffrey; Boccaccio, Giovanni; Brant, Sebastian; Deschamps, Eustache; Erasmus of Rotterdam; Graf, Urs; Lucas van Leyden; Sachs, Hans urbanitas see courtesy varietas see rhetoric Vasari, Giorgio 158, 179 Virgin Mary 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 63, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73,

74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 91, 94, 98, 103, 105, 109, 113, 119, 120, 121, 129, 132, 136, 143, 152, 155, 156, 168, 177, 187, 188, 195, 198, 211, 213, 215, 218, 225, 226, 227, 228 Ecclesia 38, 66, 73, 75, 77, 155 imitatio Mariae 83 Marian devotion 18, 44, 75 vir facetus see wit vision, optics 29, 31–32, 176, 213; see also visuality Alhazen 31 Roger Bacon 31 John Pecham 31 visuality 19, 29–33, 40, 41, 52–54, 56, 58, 60, 144, 176, 225, 228 ‘contemplative immersion’ 40–41 ‘empathic approach’ 31, 144, 167 imagination 30–31, 52–53, 177, 179 meditation 30–31, 41, 52–54, 61, 63, 113, 155, 211, 218 sensory, aesthetic appeal 70, 153, 165, 173, 176 see also devotion; vision Walter von der Vogelweide 217 Wickram, Jörg 93-94, 116, 205 Das Rollwagenbüchlein 93-94, 116 Der Jungen Knaben Spiegel 205 see also jokes Wild Man 104, 124–28, 164, 172–73; see also Germania wit 16, 33, 98, 99, 152, 156–63, 167–71, 173–80, 215, 226–27, 229 facetia 157–63, 167, 169, 171, 174–77, 179, 181–82 in sacred art 168–83 ingenuity and estrangeté 21, 163, 174–78 artist as ‘genius’ 175, 178, 180, 182 vir facetus 157, 159–61, 167, 171, 173–77, 182, 229 and humanist artists, patronage 160, 167–79, 182, 229 see also courtesy; rhetoric Wittenwiler, Heinrich see jokes World Upside Down see inversion