COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION.
When Luther began the immortal part of his public career in 1517 by
nailing to the church door his ninety-five theses against the sale of
indulgences, wood-engraving was an art which had been practiced nearly a
century. He found also, as we have seen, a public accustomed to
satirical writings illustrated by wood-cuts. The great Holbein
illustrated Erasmus's "Praise of Folly." Brandt's "Ship of Fools," as
well as the litter of works which it called forth, was even profusely
illustrated. Caricatures as distinct works, though usually accompanied
with abundant verbal commentary, were familiar objects. Among the
curiosities which Luther himself brought from Rome in 1510, some years
before he began his special work, was a caricature suggested by the
"Ship of Fools," showing how the Pope had "fooled the whole world with
his superstitions and idolatries." He showed it to the Prince Elector of
Saxony at the time. The picture exhibited a little ship filled with
monks, friars, and priests casting lines to people swimming in the sea,
while in the stern sat comfortably the Pope with his cardinals and
bishops, overshadowed and covered by the Holy Ghost, who was looking up
to heaven, and through whose help alone the drowning wretches were
saved.
In talking about the picture many years after, Luther said, "These and
the like fooleries we _then_ believed as articles of faith." He had not
reached the point when he could talk at his own table of the cardinals
as "peevish milksops, effeminate, unlearned blockheads, whom the Pope
places in all kingdoms, where they lie lolling in kings' courts among
the ladies and women."
[Illustration: Papa, Doctor Theologiae et Magister Fidei.
"A long-eared ass can with the Bagpipes cope
As well as with Theology the Pope."--Germany, 1545.]
Finding this weapon of caricature ready-made to his hands, he used it
freely, as did also his friends and his foes. He was himself a
caricaturist. When Pope Clement VII. seemed disposed to meet the
reformers half-way, and proposed a council to that end, Luther wrote a
pamphlet ridiculing the scheme, and, to give more force to his satire,
he "caused a picture to be drawn" and placed in the title-page. It was
not a work describable to the fastidious ears of our century, unless we
leave part of the description in Latin. The Pope was seated on a lofty
throne surrounded by cardinals having foxes' tails, and seeming "_sursum
et deorsum repurgare_." In the "Table-talk" we read also of a picture
being brought to Luther in which the Pope and Judas were represented
hanging to the purse and keys. "'Twill vex the Pope horribly," said
Luther, "that he whom emperors and kings have worshiped should now be
figured hanging upon his own picklocks." The picture annexed, in which
the Pope is exhibited with an ass's head performing on the bagpipes, was
entirely in the taste of Luther. "The Pope's decretals," he once said,
"are naught; he that drew them up was an ass." No word was too
contemptuous for the papacy. "Pope, cardinals, and bishops," said he,
"are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches; rich, wallowing in wealth
and laziness, resting secure in their power, and never thinking of
accomplishing God's will."
[Illustration: The Pope cast into Hell. (Lucas Cranach, 1521.)]
The famous pamphlet of caricatures published in 1521 by Luther's friend
and follower, Lucas Cranach, contains pictures that we could easily
believe Luther himself suggested. The object was to exhibit to the eyes
of the people of Germany the contrast between the religion inculcated by
the lowly Jesus and the pompous worldliness of the papacy. There was a
picture on each page which nearly filled it, and at the bottom there
were a few lines in German of explanation; the engraving on the page to
the left representing an incident in the life of Christ, and the page to
the right a feature of the papal system at variance with it. Thus, on
the first page was shown Jesus, in humble attitude and simple raiment,
refusing honors and dignities, and on the page opposite the Pope,
cardinals, and bishops, with warriors, cannon, and forts, assuming
lordship over kings. On another page Christ was seen crowned with thorns
by the scoffing soldiers, and on the opposite page the Pope wearing his
triple crown, and seated on his throne, an object of adoration to his
court. On another was shown Christ washing the feet of his disciples, in
contrast to the Pope presenting his toe to an emperor to be kissed. At
length we have Christ ascending to heaven with a glorious escort of
angels, and on the other page the Pope hurled headlong to hell,
accompanied by devils, with some of his own monks already in the flames
waiting to receive him. This concluding picture may serve as a specimen
of a series that must have told powerfully on the side of reform.[11]
[Footnote 11: From "A History of Caricature," p. 254, by Thomas Wright,
London, 1864.]
[Illustration: "The Beam that is in thine own Eye," A.D. 1540.]
These pictorial pamphlets were an important part of the stock in trade
of the colporteurs who pervaded the villages and by-ways of Germany
during Luther's life-time, selling the sermons of the reformers, homely
satiric verses, and broadside caricatures. The simplicity and directness
of the caricatures of that age reflected perfectly both the character
and the methods of Luther. One picture of Hans Sachs's has been
preserved, which was designed as an illustration of the words of Christ:
"I am the door. He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." The
honest Sachs shows us a lofty, well-built barn, with a very steep roof,
on the very top of which sits the Pope crowned with his tiara. To him
cardinals and bishops are directing people, and urging them to climb up
the steep and slippery height. Two monks have done so, and are getting
in at a high window. At the open door of the edifice stands the Lord,
with a halo round his head, inviting a humble inquirer to enter freely.
Nothing was farther from the popular caricaturists of that age than to
allegorize a doctrine or a moral lesson; on the contrary, it was their
habit to interpret allegory in the most absurdly literal manner.
Observe, for example, the treatment of the subject contained in the
words, "How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out
of thine eye, and, behold, a _beam_ is in thine own eye?"
[Illustration: Luther Triumphant. (Paris, 1535.)]
The marriage of Luther in 1525 was followed by a burst of caricature.
The idea of a priest marrying excited then, as it does now in a Catholic
mind, a sense of ludicrous incongruity. It is as though the words
"married priest" were a contradiction in terms, and the relation implied
by them was a sort of manifest incompatibility, half comic, half
disgusting. The spectacle occasionally presented in a Protestant church
of a clergyman ordained and married in the same hour is so opposed to
the Catholic conception of the priesthood that some Catholics can only
express their sense of it by laughter. Equally amazing and equally
ludicrous to them is the more frequent case of missionaries coming home
to be married, or young missionaries married in the evening and setting
out for their station the next morning. We observe that some of Luther's
nearest friends--nay, Luther himself--saw something both ridiculous and
contemptible in his marriage, particularly in the haste with which it
was concluded, and the disparity in the ages of the pair, Luther being
forty-two and his wife twenty-six. "My marriage," wrote Luther, "has
made me so despicable that I hope my humiliation will rejoice the angels
and vex the devils." And Melanchthon, while doing his best to restore
his leader's self-respect, expressed the hope that the "_accident_"
might be of use in humbling Luther a little in the midst of a success
perilous to his good sense. Luther was not long abased. We find him soon
justifying the act, which was among the boldest and wisest of his life,
as a tribute of obedience to his aged father, who "required it in hopes
of issue," and as a practical confirmation of what he had himself
taught. He speaks gayly of "my rib, Kate," and declared once that he
would not exchange his wife for the kingdom of France or the wealth of
Venice.
But the caricaturists were not soon weary of the theme. Readers at all
familiar with the manners of that age do not need to be told that few of
the efforts of their free pencils will bear reproduction now. Besides
exhibiting the pair carousing, dancing, romping, caressing, and in
various situations supposed to be ridiculous, the satirists harped a
good deal upon the old prophecy that Antichrist would be the offspring
of a monk and a nun. "If that is the case," said Erasmus, "how many
thousands of Antichrists there are in the world already!" Luther was
evidently of the same opinion, for he gave full credit to the story of
six thousand infants' skulls having been found at the bottom of a pond
near a convent, as well as to that of "twelve great pots, in each of
which was the carcass of an infant," discovered under the cellars of
another convent. But, then, Luther was among the most credulous of men.
The marriage of the monk and the nun gave only a brief advantage to the
enemies of reform. The great German artists of that generation were
friends of Luther. No name is more distinguished in the early annals of
German art than Albert Duerer, painter, engraver, sculptor, and author.
He did not employ his pencil in furtherance of Luther's cause, nor did
he forsake the communion of the ancient Church, but he expressed the
warmest sympathy with the objects of the reformer. A report of Luther's
death in 1521 struck horror to his soul. "Whether Luther be yet living,"
he wrote, "or whether his enemies have put him to death, I know not; yet
certainly what he has suffered has been for the sake of truth, and
because he has reprehended the abuses of unchristian papacy, which
strives to fetter Christian liberty with the incumbrance of human
ordinances, that we may be robbed of the price of our blood and sweat,
and shamefully plundered by idlers, while the sick and needy perish
through hunger." These words go to the heart of the controversy.
Holbein, nearly thirty years younger than Duerer, only just coming of age
when Luther nailed his theses to the castle church, did more, as the
reader has already seen, than express in words his sympathy with reform.
The fineness and graphic force of the two specimens of his youthful
talent given on pages 72, 73,[12] every reader must have remarked. Only
three copies of these pictures are known to exist. They appeared at the
time when Luther had kindled a general opposition to the sale of
indulgences, as well as some ill feeling toward the classic authors so
highly esteemed by Erasmus. They are in a peculiar sense Lutheran
pictures, and they give expression to the reformer's prejudices and
convictions. A third wood-cut of Holbein's is mentioned by Woltmann,
dated 1524, in which the Pope is shown riding in a litter surrounded by
an armed escort, and on the other side Christ is seen on an ass,
accompanied by his disciples. These three works were Holbein's
contribution to the earlier stage of the movement.
[Footnote 12: From "Holbein and his Time," p. 241-243, by Alfred
Woltmann; translated by F. E. Bunnett, London, 1872.]
This artist was soon drawn away to the splendid court of Henry VIII. of
England, where, among other works, he executed his renowned paintings,
"The Triumph of Riches" and "The Triumph of Poverty," in both of which
there is satire enough to bring them within our subject. Of these
stupendous works, each containing seventeen or more life-size figures,
every trace has perished except the artist's original sketch of "The
Triumph of Riches." But they made a vivid impression upon the two
generations which saw them, and we have so many engravings, copies, and
descriptions of them that it is almost as if we still possessed the
originals. Holbein's sketch is now in the Louvre at Paris. It will
convey to the reader some idea of the harmonious grandeur of the
painting, and some notion of the ingenious and friendly nature of its
satire upon human life.
[Illustration: The Triumph of Riches. (Holbein, about 1533.)]
In accordance with the custom of the age, the painting bore an
explanatory motto in Latin: "Gold is the father of lust and the son of
sorrow. He who lacks it laments; he who has it fears." Plutus, the god
of wealth, is an old, old man, long past enjoyment; but his foot rests
upon sacks of superfluous coin, and an open vessel before him, heaped
with money, affords the only pleasures left to him--the sight and
conscious possession of the wealth he can never use. Below him Fortuna,
a young and lovely woman, scatters money among the people who throng
about her, among whom are the portly Sichaeus, Dido's husband, the
richest of his people; Themistocles, who stooped to accept wealth from
the Persian king; and many others noted in classic story for the part
gold played in their lives. Croesus, Midas, and Tantalus follow on
horseback, and, last of all, the unveiled Cleopatra. The careful driver
of Plutus's chariot is Ratio--reason. "Faster!" cries one of the crowd,
but the charioteer still holds a tight rein. The unruly horses next the
chariot, named Interest and Contract, are led by the noble maidens
Equity and Justice; and the wild pair in front, Avarice and Deceit, are
held in by Generosity and Good Faith. In the rear, hovering over the
triumphal band, Nemesis threatens.
The companion picture, "The Triumph of Poverty," had also a Latin motto,
to the effect that, while the rich man is ever anxious, "the poor man
fears nothing, joyous hope is his portion, and he learns to serve God by
the practice of virtue." In the picture a lean and hungry-looking old
woman, Poverty, was seen riding in the lowliest of vehicles, a cart,
drawn by two donkeys, Stupidity and Clumsiness, and by two oxen,
Negligence and Indolence. Beside her in the cart sits Misfortune. A
meagre and forlorn crowd surround and follow them. But the slow-moving
team is guided by the four blooming girls, Moderation, Diligence,
Alertness, and Toil, of whom the last is the one most abounding in vigor
and health. The reins are held by Hope, her eyes toward heaven.
Industry, Memory, and Experience sit behind, giving out to the hungry
crowd the means of honorable plenty in the form of flails, axes,
squares, and hammers.
These human and cheerful works stand in the waste of that age of
wrathful controversy and irrational devotion like green islands in the
desert, a rest to the eye and a solace to the mind.
When Luther was face to face with the hierarchy at the Diet of Worms,
Calvin, a French boy of twelve, was already a sharer in the worldly
advantage which the hierarchy could bestow upon its favorites. He held a
benefice in the Cathedral of Noyon, his native town, and at seventeen he
drew additional revenue from a curacy in a neighboring parish. The
tonsured boy owed this ridiculous preferment to the circumstance that
his father, being secretary to the bishop of the diocese, was sure to be
at hand when the bishop happened to have a good thing to give away. In
all probability Jean Calvin would have died an archbishop or a cardinal
if he had remained in the Church of his ancestors, for he possessed the
two requisites for advancement--fervent zeal for the Church and access
to the bestowers of its prizes. At Paris, however, whither he was sent
by his father to pursue his studies, a shy, intense, devout lad, already
thin and sallow with fasting and study, the light of the Reformation
broke upon him. Like Luther, he long resisted it, and still longer hoped
to see a reformation _in_ the Church, not outside of its pale. The
Church never had a more devoted son. Not Luther himself loved it more.
"I was so obstinately given to the superstitions of popery," he said,
long after, "that it seemed impossible I should ever be pulled out of
the deep mire."
He struggled out at length. Observe one of the results of his conversion
in this picture, in which a slander of the day is preserved for our
inspection.[13]
[Footnote 13: From "Musee de la Caricature en France," Paris, 1834.]
[Illustration: Calvin branded. (Paris.)]
Gross and filthy calumny was one of the familiar weapons in the
theological contests of that century. Both sides employed it--Luther and
Calvin not less than others--for it belonged to that age to hate, and
hence to misinterpret, opponents. "Search the records of the city of
Noyon, in Picardie," wrote Stapleton, an eminent controversialist on the
Catholic side, and professor in a Catholic college of Calvin's own day,
"and read again that Jean Calvin, convicted of a crime" (infamous and
unmentionable), "by the very clement sentence of the bishop and
magistrate was branded with an iron lily on the shoulders." The records
have been searched; nothing of the kind is to be found in them; but the
picture was drawn and scattered over France. Precisely the same charge
was made against Luther. That both the reformers died of infamous
diseases was another of the scandals of the time. In reading these
controversies, it is convenient to keep in mind the remark of the
collector of the Calvin pictures: "When two theologians accuse one
another, both of them lie." One of these calumnies drew from Calvin a
celebrated retort. "They accuse me," said he, "of having no children. In
every land there are Christians who are my children."
Another caricature, shown on the following page, representing Calvin at
the burning of Servetus, had only too much foundation in truth.
The reformer was not indeed present at the burning, but he caused the
arrest of the victim, drew up the charges, furnished part of the
testimony that convicted him, consented to and approved his execution.
Servetus was a Spanish physician, of blameless life and warm
convictions, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Catholic and
Protestant equally abhorred him, and Protestant Geneva seized the
opportunity to show the world its attachment to the true faith by
burning a man whom Rome was also longing to burn. It was a hideous
scene--a virtuous and devoted Unitarian expiring in the flames after
enduring the extremest anguish for thirty minutes, and crying, from the
depths of his torment, "Jesus, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy
on me!" But it was not Calvin who burned him. It was the century. It was
imperfectly developed human nature. Man had not reached the
civilization which admits, allows, welcomes, and honors disinterested
conviction. It were as unjust to blame Calvin for burning Servetus as it
is to hold the Roman Catholic Church of the present day responsible for
the Inquisition of three centuries ago. It was Man that was guilty of
all those stupid and abominable cruelties. Luther, the man of his
period, honestly declared that if he were the Lord God, and saw kings,
princes, bishops, and judges so little mindful of his Son, he would
"_knock the world to pieces_." If Calvin had not burned Servetus,
Servetus might have burned Calvin, and the Pope would have been happy to
burn both.
[Illustration: Calvin at the Burning of Servetus.]
One of the best caricatures--perhaps the very best--which the
Reformation called forth was suggested by the dissensions that arose
between the followers of Luther and Calvin when both of them were in the
grave. It might have amused the very persons caricatured. We can fancy
Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics all laughing together at the
spectacle of the two reformers holding the Pope by the ear, and with
their other hands fighting one another, Luther clawing at Calvin's
beard, and Calvin hurling a Bible at Luther's head.
On the same sheet in the original drawing a second picture was given, in
which a shepherd was seen on his knees, surrounded by his flock,
addressing the Lord, who is visible in the sky. Underneath is written,
"The Lord is my Shepherd; he will never forsake me." The work has an
additional interest as showing how early the French began to excel in
caricature. In the German and English caricatures of that period there
are no existing specimens which equal this one in effective simplicity.
[Illustration: Calvin, the Pope, and Luther. (Paris, 1600.)]
Perhaps the all-pervading influence of Rabelais in that age may have
made French satire more good-humored. After all efforts to discover in
the works of Rabelais hidden allusions to the great personages and
events of his time, we must remain of the opinion that he was a
fun-maker pure and simple, a court-fool to his century. The anecdote
related of his convent life seems to give us the key both to his
character and his writings. The incident has often been used in comedy
since Rabelais employed it. On the festival of St. Francis, to whom his
convent was dedicated, when the country people came in, laden with
votive offerings, to pray before the image of the saint, young Rabelais
removed the image from its dimly lighted recess and mounted himself upon
the pedestal, attired in suitable costume. Group after group of awkward
rustics approached and paid their homage. Rabelais at length, overcome
by the ridiculous demeanor of the worshipers, was obliged to laugh,
whereupon the gaping throng cried out, "A miracle! a miracle! Our good
lord St. Francis moves!" But a cunning old friar, who knew when miracles
might and might not be rationally expected in that convent, ran into the
chapel and drew out the merry saint, and the brothers laid their knotted
cords so vigorously across his naked shoulders that he had a lively
sense of not being made of wood. That was Rabelais! He was a natural
laugh-compeller. He laughed at every thing, and set his countrymen
laughing at every thing. But there were no men who oftener provoked his
derision than the monks. "How is it?" asks one of his merry men, "that
people exclude monks from all good companies, calling them
feast-troublers, marrers of mirth, and disturbers of all civil
conversation, as bees drive away the drones from their hives?" The hero
answers this question in three pages of most Rabelaisan abuse, of which
only a very few lines are quotable. "Your monk," he says, "is like a
monkey in a house. He does not watch like a dog, nor plow like the ox,
nor give wool like the sheep, nor carry like the horse; he only spoils
and defiles all things. Monks disquiet all their neighborhood with a
tingle-tangle jangling of bells, and mumble out great store of psalms,
legends, and paternosters without thinking upon or apprehending the
meaning of what they say, which truly is a mocking of God." There is no
single theme to which Rabelais, the favorite of bishops, oftener returns
than this, and his boisterous satire had its effect upon the course of
events in Europe, as well as upon French art and literature.
The English caricatures that have come down to us from the era of the
Reformation betray far more earnestness than humor or ingenuity. There
is one in the British Museum which figures in so many books, and
continued to do duty for so many years, that the inroads of the worms in
the wood-cut can be traced in the prints of different dates. It
represents King Henry VIII. receiving a Bible from Archbishop Cranmer
and Lord Cromwell. The burly monarch, seated upon his throne, takes the
book from their hands, while he tramples upon Pope Clement, lying
prostrate at his feet, the tiara broken and fallen off, the triple cross
lying on the ground. Cardinal Pole, with the aid of another dignitary,
is trying to get the Pope on his feet again. A monk is holding the
Pope's horse, and other monks stand dismayed at the spectacle. This
picture was executed in 1537, but, as we learn from the catalogue, the
deterioration of the block and "the working of worms in the wood" prove
that the impression in the Museum was taken in 1631.[14]
[Footnote 14: "Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,"
Division I., vol. i., p. 2. London, 1870.]
The martyrdom of the reformers in 1555, under Queen Mary of bloody
memory, furnished subjects for the satiric pen and pencil as soon as the
accession of Elizabeth made it safe to treat them. But there is no
spirit of fun in the pictures. They are as serious and grim as the
events that suggested them. In one we see a lamb suspended before an
altar, which the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner), with his wolf's head,
is beginning to devour; and on the ground lie six slain lambs, named
_Houperus_, _Cranmerus_, _Bradfordus_, _Rydlerus_, _Rogerus_, and
_Latimerus_. Three reformers put a rope round Gardiner's neck, saying,
"_We will not this feloue to raigne over us_;" and on the other side of
him two bishops with wolves' heads mitred, and having sheepskins on
their shoulders, are drinking from chalices. Behind Gardiner are several
men attached by rings through their noses to a rope round his waist. The
devil appears above, holding a scroll, on which is written, "_Youe are
my verye chyldren in that youe have slayne the prophetes_. _For even I
from the begynning was a murtherer._" On the altar lie two books, one
open and the other shut. On the open book we read, "_Christ alone is not
sufficient without our sacrifice_." The only window in the edifice, a
small round one, is closed and barred. Many of the figures in this
elaborate piece utter severe animadversion upon opponents; but none of
them is scurrilous and indecent, except the mitred wolf, who is so
remarkably plain-spoken that the compiler of the catalogue was obliged
to suppress several of his words.
The English caricaturists of that age seem to have felt it their duty to
exhibit the entire case between Catholic and Protestant in each
broadside, with all the litigants on both sides, terrestrial and
celestial, all the points in both arguments, and sometimes the whole
history of the controversy from the beginning. The great expanse of the
picture was obscured with the number of remarks streaming from the
mouths of the persons depicted, and there was often at the bottom of the
engraving prose and verse enough to fill two or three of these pages.
Such extensive works call to mind the sermons of the following century,
when preachers endeavored on each occasion to declare, as they said,
"the _whole_ counsel of God;" so that if one individual present had
never heard the Gospel before, and should never hear it again, he would
hear enough for salvation in that one discourse.
Another of these martyrdom prints may claim brief notice. Two companies
of martyrs are seen, one composed of the bishops, and the other of less
distinguished persons, between whom there is a heap of burning fagots.
Nearly all the figures say something, and the space under the picture is
filled with verses. Cranmer, with the Bible in his left hand, holds his
right in the fire, exclaiming, "_Burne, unworthie right hand!_" Latimer
cries, "_Lord, Lord, receive my spirit!_" Philpot, pointing to a book
which he holds, says, "_I will pay my vowes in thee, O Smithfield!_" The
other characters utter their dying words. The verses are rough, but full
of the resolute enthusiasm of the age:
"First, Christian Cranmer, who (at first tho foild),
And so subscribing to a recantation,
God's grace recouering him, hee, quick recoil'd,
And made his hand ith flames make expiation.
Saing, burne faint-hand, burne first, 'tis thy due merit.
And dying, cryde, Lord Jesus take my spirit.
"Next, lovely Latimer, godly and grave,
Himselfe, Christs old tride souldier, plaine displaid,
Who stoutly at the stake did him behave,
And to blest Ridley (gone before) hee saide,
Goe on blest brother, for I followe, neere,
This day wee'le light a light, shall aye burne cleare.
"Whom when religious, reverend Ridley spide,
Deere heart (sayes hee) bee cheerful in y{r} Lord;
Who never (yet) his helpe to his denye'd,
& hee will us support & strength afford,
Or suage y{e} flame, thus, to the stake fast tide,
They, constantly Christs blessed Martyres dyde.
"Blest Bradford also comming to the stake,
Cheerfully tooke a faggott in his hand:
Kist it, &, thus, unto a young-man spake,
W{ch} with him, chained, to y{e} stake did stand,
Take courage (brother) wee shal haue this night,
A blessed supper w{th} the Lord of Light.
"Admir'd was Doctor Tailers faith & grace,
Who under-went greate hardship spight and spleene;
One, basely, threw a Faggot in his face,
W{ch} made y{e} blood ore all his face bee seene;
Another, barberously beate out his braines,
Whilst, at y{e} stake his corps was bound w{th} chaines."
In many of the English pictures of that period, the intention of the
draughtsman is only made apparent by the explanatory words at the
bottom. In one of these a friar is seen holding a chalice to a man who
stretches out his hands to receive it. From the chalice a winged
cockatrice is rising. There is also a man who stabs another while
embracing him. The quaint words below explain the device: "The man which
standeth lyke a Prophet signifieth godliness; the Fryer, treason; the
cup with the Serpent, Poyson; the other which striketh with the sworde,
Murder; and he that is wounded is Peace." In another of these pictures
we see an ass dressed in a judge's robes seated on the bench. Before him
is the prisoner, led away by a priest and another man. At one side a
friar is seen in conversation with a layman. No one could make any thing
of this if the artist had not obligingly appended these words: "The Asse
signifieth Wrathfull Justice; the man that is drawn away, Truth; those
that draweth Truth by the armes, Flatterers; the Frier, Lies; and the
associate with the Frier, Perjury." In another drawing the artist shows
us the Pope seated in a chair, with his foot on the face of a prostrate
man, and in his hand a drawn sword, directing an executioner who is in
the act of beheading a prisoner. In the distance are three men kneeling
in prayer. The explanation is this: "The Pope is Oppression; the man
which killeth is Crueltie; those which are a-killing, Constant Religion;
the three kneeling, Love, Furtherance, and Truth to the Gospel." In one
of these crude productions a parson is exhibited preaching in a pulpit,
from which two ecclesiastics are dragging him by the beard to the stake
outside. Explanation in this instance is not so necessary, but we have
it, nevertheless: "He which preacheth in the pulpit signifieth godly
zeale and a furtherer of the gospel; and the two which are plucking him
out of his place are the enemies of God's Word, threatening by fire to
consume the professors of the same; and that company which (sit) still
are _Nullifidians_, such as are of no religion, not regarding any
doctrine, so they may bee quiet to live after their owne willes and
mindes." Another picture shows us a figure seated on a rainbow, the
world at his feet, up the sides of which a pope and a cardinal are
climbing. In the middle is the devil tumbling off headlong. The world is
upheld by Death, who sits by the mouth of hell. This is the explanation:
"He which sitteth on the raynebowe signifieth Christ, and the sworde in
his hand signifieth his wrath against the wycked; the round compasse,
the worlde; and those two climing, the one a pope, the other a
cardinall, striving who shall be highest; and the Divell which falleth
headlong downe is Lucifer, whiche through pride fel; he whiche holdeth
the world is Death, standing in the entrance of hell to receyve all
superbious livers."
In another print is represented a Roman soldier riding on a boar, and
bearing a banner, on which is painted the Pope with his insignia. A man
stabs himself and tears his hair, and behind him is a raving woman. This
picture has a blunt signification: "The bore signifieth Wrath, and the
man on his back Mischief; the Pope in the flag Destruction, and the flag
Uncertaine Religion, turning and chaunging with every blaste of winde;
the man killing himselfe, Desperation; the woman, Madness."
There are fourteen specimens in this quaint manner in the collection of
the British Museum, all executed and published in the early part of the
reign of Elizabeth. As art, they are naught. As part of the record of a
great age, they have their value.
[Illustration: Titian's Caricature of the Laocooen.]
Germany, England, and France fought the battle of the Reformation--two
victors and one vanquished. From Italy in that age we have one specimen
of caricature, but it was executed by Titian. He drew a burlesque of the
Laocooen to ridicule a school of artists in Rome, who, as he thought,
extolled too highly the ancient sculptures, and, because they could not
succeed in coloring, insisted that correctness of form was the chief
thing in art. Since Titian's day, parodies of the Laocooen have been
among the stock devices of the caricaturists of all nations.