4°S ýY6 THE FIVE SENSES IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART Carl Nordenfalik

HE THEME of the Five Senses made its first appearance in the Early Middle Ages. I From the outset, with the extraordinary Fuller brooch in the British Museum, A.. which dates from the ninth century, its monuments practically all belong to secular imagery. 2 There are scattered instances in Romanesque art, but only from the thirteenth century on do the Senses become more frequently depicted. There were two ways of representing them. One was to show them symbolized by five different animals according to the belief, first systematically laid down by the early Gothic encyclopaedists, that the senses are developed more keenly in certain animals than in man, an idea expressed in the well-known mnemotechnic verses, first quoted by Thomas de Gantimprc in his Liber de naturis rerum (q., t, 194): Nos aper auditu, lynx visu, simia gustu, Vultur odoratu praecellit, aranea tactu. 3

Taken over and illustrated by Richard de Fournival in his Besliaire d'amours,4 this tradition also came to belong to the type of didactic imagery concerning man and his place in the

Latina, I Carl Nordenfalk, 'Les Cinq Sens clans fart du H. Walther, Cannina medii ace: j"asi riaris Moyeii-age', Rcouede fart, xxxty, 1976,141.17-28. G6ttiogen t!; 59f1:, 1, no. 12243 and it, no. 18772x. Eloise 2 Rupert Bruce-Mitford, 'The Fuller Brooch', British Vinge, The Fite Seuu, Stt: dru in a Lilerary T: add: vu Litterarunt Lundei, l9usnnn Quarterly, xv1,1952, PP- 75-7G, and again more (Regiae Societatis Hunlaniorunl ss, . Sec I fully treated in Dark Age Britain. Studiespresented to E. T. I. xxn), Lund 1975, pp. 51,-5I. now also the critic: Ltb: Iseds, London 1956, pp. 171-201,, t paper repeated in an edition by H. Bocsc (Thomas Cantimpratenvis, r (it D. l appendix to M. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Onianin cal nawrareturn, Berlin 1973, p. lob). 31.11'. ýanaun.:! /"ýi an. Vt. : 1ia'tn, oik, London 1964. To my own interpretation of Ape Lore is ! 1u Middle ago (Studies of- the rrburg has the brooch as a token of love in the article quoted above Institute, xx), London 1952, pp. 23rt-. 10, sttt; f; rsterl (ii. r) should be added that the brooch is also likely to that Thomas took the complete set of zoomurphic lost h: wr had a magical function as a talisman, similar to symbols and the mncmotcchnic verses from t than intended Ihr the Lorica of Gildas whose inscription encyclopedia, the author of winch he calls the Thomas runs 'Cover all of tnc with my five senses that in no Experimentator. In the prologue, hawcver, says ... his lit member, without or within, n, ay I be sick'. (Charles that Ile mentions this predecessor of whenevvc Singer, From Magic to Sconce, London 1q28, pp. iii 1i:) relies on him, which he fails to do in speaking about the Thus I he appearance in 9th-century h. ngland ofa work olart animals as champions of the Scnscs. Janson's Tit. idea Iraturing the Five Senses is not so strange as it might at hypothesis loses much ofiis probability. - of the first scent, if we consider the cultural situation of the Senses being represented by five : utitnais was appa- period. During the first half of the century the English rently much in vogue at the begnulii; g of lfu" i3th Fraun- church suffered a great setback with the Viking century. They arc the subject o! ' a poem in the invasion. Manifestly by Ehret-Ton by tlinrtaLuger Reiner Zweier unable to provide prayer alone cyrle the . ran an ellective protection against the pagan pirates, it must (G. Roethc, Die Gedichte Rer.. rrt : tea Z veer, Leipzig I HH-1, temporarily have ceded a part of its prestige as a patron reprint 19"7,11.498)- ' Li beslia: d a, tlailtre Richart de Foosnteval li of the arts to secular Ibrces. As a result a certain ree nawt d: , a 'wo, ldliness' remained an underlying tendency of response du brsdaire, ed. Ces. uc Sere (Doculnrntl di Anglo-Saxon art, even after the Church had reasserted filologia, it), Milan and Naples 1957. Noidenfalk, op. itsrll as the dominant leader of cultural development. cit. n. I above, pp. 22-23, B. Degenhart and A. SLh: nits, Tltis manifests itself in the folklore elements of the Corpus der ila, irn: sehen Zeatrunpet r tro-r 150, It, 2, licriin unconventional illustrations of vernacular texts and in a 1980, pp. 2u8-tti. general note of 'gaiety' in Late Anglo-Saxon book illumination that has no parallel in Ottonian art. MGH"Bibliothek Nachlaß B. Bischoff fuurnal ojt/u Warburgand Courtauld/nttrtutu, Vol u tne g0,1 gß5

rrrý, B!'& ºC, ; LEl+PLiG 2 CARL NORDENFALK universe to which Fritz Saxl called attention in his pioneering article on medieval pictorial encyclopaedias. 5 Its most spectacular manifestations are found in two sets of wall Rome, 6 in paintings - one in the monastery of Tre Fontane in the other Longthorpe Tower near Peterborough. ' To these should be added a hitherto unpublished drawing in a Vatican manuscript from Bamberg, dating from the early fifteenth century (Pal. lat. 87I, fol. 21) in which the Five Senses, as in the two fresco cycles, are combined with the Seven Ages of Man (Pl. 1a). 8 The translation into Latin of Aristotle's Parva naturalia gave rise to another type of representation of the Five Senses, found in historiated initials to his De sensuet senuato, chiefly in the Corpus vetustiusredaction. 9 Although Aristotle himself was in fact acquainted with the belief in the superiority of certain animals in their sensory endowment (though not the entire set of correspondences), this imagery was little suited to his psychological treatment of the Senses in man. Aristotle's text required rather that each Sense should be depicted as a human figure acting in a charade by holding a significant object- a mirror for Sight, a musical instrument for Hearing, a flower for Smell, a fruit for Taste, and for Touch a harp - the plucking of this instrument being in French toucher.This developed one aspect of the Fuller brooch, which already showed the Senses personified by young men, but made their behaviour more explicit by the addition of suggestive attributes. Given the popularity of these secular iconographic traditions, it is remarkable that ecclesiastical art, which after all was predominant in the Middle Ages, so seldom included the theme of the Five Senses in its pictorial teaching. 10This is all the more surprising as Five Senses Bible, the occur quite frequently in Christian texts - in commentaries on the in sermons and other educational material - mostly with a moralizing cast, as dangerous gateways to the Vices: Sensussunt quinque quos custodire debemus Visus et auditus, contactus, gustus odorque. 11

s F. Sax], 'A Spiritual Encyclopedia of the Late Francois I", exh. cat. Geneva 1976, p. 59, in colour. A Middle Ages', this Journal, v, 1942, pp. 821f. fixed iconographic tradition, like that for the symboliz- 6 Carlo Bertelli, 'L'Enciclopedia delle Tre Fontane', ing of the Senses by animals, was never established in The Paragon, Arte 235,1969, pp. 24-69. Nordenfalk, op. cit., the case of the Gothic Aristotle manuscripts. initial pp. 23-24. The murals were detached from the wall in in Ambrosiana MS S 70 sup, fol. 292° has only two Taste, for 1970 and can now be studied in a museum adjacent to young men, one for Sight, Smell and the other the monastery. Hearing and Touch (here the harp serves as emblem for E. Clive Rouse and A. Baker, 'The Wall-Paintings both Senses). London, British Library, Harl. 3487, at Longthorpe Tower near Peterborough, Northants', fol. 216 has also two figures, one blowing a trumpet Arehaeologia, xcvt, 1955, pp. 1-58. E. W. Tristram, (Hearing), the other smelling a flower (Smell), the other English Nall Painting of the Fourteenth Century, London three Senses are only implied. Similarly Escorial, 1955, PP- 107-108, pl. 66b. E. Clive Rouse, Longthorpe MSf114, fol. 181, has two men flanking a tree, one Tower, Peterborough,Northamptonshire (Official Guidebook holding a mirror and a comb (Sight), the other eating of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works), London fruit (Taste). New Haven, Yale Medical Library MS 12, 1964. Nordenfalk", op. cit. n. i above, p. 24- fol. t ßo, shows all the Five Senses as young men at table; 8 The miniature was kindly brought to my attention and Vatican Library, Barb. lat. 165, fol. 330 has only one by Dr Leonie von Wilckens. figure smelling a flower, in conformity with the double 9 Nordenfalk, op. cit. n. i above, pp. 21-22. Misled by meaning in French of scntir as referring both to Smell the old catalogue of the manuscripts at Geneva, and to all the Senses in general. G. Lacombe in his Aristoteleslatinus, Rome 1939, failed to 10 It is significant that none of the volumes in Emile recognize the true 13th-century date of cod. lat. 76 in M51e's extensive survey of the religious art of the Middle Geneva University Library, which has a particularly Ages deals with the Five Senses. important representation of the Five Sensesin the initial 11 H. Walther, Cannina nlcdii acoi posterioris latina, on fol. 246, referred to in the text above. It was first Göttingen t 959 fl., i, no. 1752t a, 1t, nos. 30823a, 3381ga. published by B. Gagnebin, L'enluminuredo Charlemagnea FIVE SENSES 3 The tone was first struck by the Fathers of the Church in their allegorical interpreta- tions of the parables in the Gospels; it continued to sound all through the Middle Ages. 12 Typical examples are the Versusde quinquesensibus by Notker of St Gall in which the Senses are referred to as instruments of carnal love, 13and the Lauda byJacopone da Todi entitled `How to keep watch over the Senses', in which every stanza ends with the exhortation: Guarda!14 The distrustful attitude of the Church towards the Senses is perhaps most strikingly expressed in the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. This consisted in anointing the sense organs by which the dying man may have sinned, so that, to quote a Sacramentary from Oignies, described by the Benedictine travellers Martene and Durand, `the stains which through the Five Senses and weakness of mind and body might adhere to them, thanks to this spiritual medicine and the grace of God might be purged'. 15 This being so, it is hardly surprising to find the Senses often mentioned in medieval Penitentials. 16The subject has been comprehensively dealt with by Morton Bloomfield in his study The SevenDeadly Sins.17 Through the Five Senses the Capital Sins assail the human soul which yields to their temptations, disobeying the Ten Commandments of God. There is a hand-coloured single-sheet woodcut from about I48o in the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Nationale in which we finally find this concept also formulated visually (Pl. t b). 18 In the lower right corner there appears the coat-of-arms of the monastery ofTegernsee in Bavaria from which the print was distributed, and next to it a little scene with a penitent kneeling before his confessor. The rest of the sheet is taken up with five rows of interlaced rings each with an emblem inside. As explained in the inscriptions, those in the upper two rows refer to the Ten Commandments, those in the fourth and fifth to the Seven Deadly Sins and in between, in the third row, we see the Five Senses: Das sein diefünf Syn. The limited space evidently dictated a condensed or abbreviated form ofimagery. The Sins in the lower registers are all symbolized by animals: Pride by a peacock, Avarice by a

12 On the negative evaluation of the five Senses as Louvain 1962. Particularly striking is the exhaustive victims of the vices in the commentaries of the Fathers of confession of sins which has found its place in the the Church cf. Ernst von Dobschütz, 'Die fünf Sinne im Bohemian Bible Codex Gigas in the Royal Library of Neuen Testament', Journal of Biblical Literature, xtvtn Stockholm, published by H. J. Schmitz, `Die 1929, PP- 137 ff. Poenitentialien in den Bibliotheken Dänemarks und 13 Monumenta Germaniae historica. Poetae latini, iv, i, Schwedens', Archiv fur Kirchenrecht,u 1884, pp. 414 ft: Berlin, 1899, PP- 343-44- 17Subtitle: An Introduction to the History of a Religious 14 Evelyn Underhill, Jacoponeda Todi. Poet and Mystic Concept,with SpecialReference to hlcdietvalEnglish Literature, 1228-1306, London-Toronto-New York 1919, Michigan 1952, esp. pp. 168,171,185,238 and 360. pp. 274-77" Cf. also Karl Roth, DeutschePredigten des Y11. 78 Francois Courboin, Catalogue sommaire des gravures und X111. Jahrhunderts (Bibliothek der gesammten etc. composant la Riserve, Paris 1900, no. 670. Henri deutschen National-Literatur, Abt. i, vol. x1, i), Qued- Bouehot, Les deux cents incunables xylographigues du linburg 1839, no. xvii, a sermon commenting exten- Departement des Estampes, Paris 1903, no. 173, pl. 94. W. sively on the Five Senses. L. Schreiber, Handbuch der toll- und metallschnitte des XK Is Voyagelittiraire de deux Binidictins, a, Paris 1724, Jahrhunderts, iv, Leipzig 1927, no. 1849. P. A. Lemoisne, p. 121. In some late medieval Books of Hours there are Les xylographies du XIV" el du XV' siicle au Cabinet des prayers to the Virgin to protect the pious from sinning Estampes de la Bibliothigue Nationale, it, Paris 1930, no. eel. with eyes, with ears, etc. Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, tv, Leipzig 1930, 16 F. W. H. Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungender 110.5041. F. Geldner, Die deutschen Inkunabeldrucker, abendländischenKirche, Halle 185 1. H. C. Lea, A History of Stuttgart 1968,1, p. 128. Horst Kunze, Geschichte der Auricular Confession, Philadelphia 1896. P. Michaud- Buchillustration in Deutschland. Das r5. Jahrhundert, Leipzig Quantin, Sommesdt easuisliqueet manuelsde confessionau 1975, PP- 390 hff. moyen-dge (Analecta Medievalia Namurcensia, xnt), 4 CARL NORDENFALK wolf which has caught a lamb, Gluttony by a boar or pig, Anger by a lion, Envy by two dogs bone, Lechery by Sloth by 19 The Ten -biting the same a cock and an ass. Commandments in the upper rows are illustrated by a rebus-like mixture of objects and human busts or hands; only the Seventh Commandment, `Thou shalt not commit adultery', is rendered by an animal, a cock, the symbol of Lechery. For the Senses a similar emblematic language has been chosen. Sight is represented by the bust of a man pointing to a mirror, Hearing by a human ear, a flute and a lute, Taste by a head licking a spoon, Smell by a rose and Touch by a hand in the act of grasping something with bent fingers - the only one of the Senses for which no special object seems to have come to the artist's mind as an attribute. Like Hercules at the cross-roads, the Five Senses are here placed between Virtue (the Ten Commandments) and lust (the Seven Deadly Sins). For the owner of the sheet it should serve as a reminder of his duty as a Christian to watch over his Senses or, in case of failure, to confess his guilt as a penitent. The message is effectively that expressed in a confessional formula found in a block-book which may well have been printed in the same Bavarian workshop as the woodcut. 20 It reads: Ich bekenn Gotte herr das ich durch armer sündiger mensch mich meine ... misbrauchung meiner V sinn, sehen, hören, riechen, smacken and tasten, and durch böse neigung der hoffertigkeit, geitigkeit, hass, zorn, unmessigkeit in überessen and drucken, unkeuschheit and drägheit, schwerlich übertreten habe die gebot Gottes.

Or, as one of the Number Maxims contained in a collection of English verse in Cambridge (University Library, A'IS Ee. 4.37) puts it with unsurpassed laconic precision: Kepe well x and flee from vii Rule well v and come to Heaven! 21

II

Besides these allegorical devices for the representation of the Five Senses there was a third way, and that the most obvious - namely the depiction of the actual sensory organs, preferably by isolating each from the human body as a kind of physiological hieroglyph. We have already encountered this method on the Tegernsee Confession chart which has an ear for Hearing and a clenched hand for Touch. There are earlier examples, such as the eyes and ears beside the horses of Sight and Hearing in the drawings of the Five Senses in the illustrated Verona manuscript ofAlain de Lille's Anliclaudianus,22 or the illustrations of

19On the symbolising of the Deadly Sins by animals penitent, enumerating the Seven Deadly Sins, the Five see Bloomfield, op. cit. n. 17 above, passim and Senses, the Seven Works of Mercy and others. particularly Appendix i: `The Association of Animals 21 Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, ed. and Sins'. There are parallels for the emblems shown in Rossell Hope Robbins, Oxford 1955, p. 8o, no. 83. In the Bavarian woodcut in the (chiefly English) literature this context mention should also be made of an quoted by Bloomfield. He has, however, no other unpublished English prose text contained in MS M. 861 example of Luxuria symbolized by a cock. of the Pierpont Morgan Library, entitled A Treatiseon the 20 E. Spanier, Conjessionale ou Beichtspiegel nach den zehn Ten Commandments,in which both outer and inner sense Geboten, reproduit en facsimile d apris ! 'unique exemplaire are described on fols 5`-5 consent au Museum Meermanno-{Nestreenianum, avec une 22 Florentine Mütherich, 'Ein Illustrationszykluszum introduction part. W. Holtrop, The Hague 1861. There Anticlaudianus des Alanus ab Insulis', Alünchner is another Confession sheet by the Bavarian woodcutter Jahrbuchder bildenden Kunst, 3rd ser., it 1951, pp. 82ff., and Harms Schaur in London, British Library, Dodgson 'An Illustration of the Five Sensesin Medieval Art', this Ai uo (Schreiber, op. cit. n. 18 above, iv, no. 1855. It has Journal, xvtn, 1955, PP- 140-41. Nordenfalk, op. cit. n. t no illustration of the Senses, but has formulas for the above, p. 19, fig. 4. FIVE SENSES 5 these same organs as keyholes of the Tower of Memory in an initial to the prologue of Richart de Fournival's Besliaire d'amours in a manuscript in the Bibliothcque Nationale (fr. 410). 23 Another copy of Master Richart's Besliaire in the National Library of Vienna (cod. 26og) has as a vignette for Touch three hands mysteriously emerging from the ground in a landscape (Pl. 2a) - in the naive literalness of its realism a typical example of medieval illustration. 24 All these images, however, remain isolated cases. Only in the seventeenth century was a whole series of the Five Senses depicted in this way. 25 There are, however, medieval examples of all the Senses being represented by their physical organ `in situ', as integral parts of the human body. In a way the Fuller brooch already suggests this idea by having the figure of Taste point to his mouth, Hearing lift his hand to his ear, Touch rub both hands together and so on. 26 Here, however, the relative obscurity of the gestures explains why the correct interpretation of the brooch was not immediately recognized and indeed still occasionally meets with scepticism. There was, of course, one unmistakeable way of marking out the sensory organs of a human figure as symbols of the Five Senses, and that was with captions. This is what we find in some of those figurative diagrams locating the Inner Senses in the ventricles of the brain which demonstrate how scholastic doctrines about the process of knowledge were taught at universities. 27 The oldest of these is a rough but forceful pen and ink drawing in an English manuscript of St Augustine's De spirilu el anima in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (MS 0.7.16: Pl. 2b). 28 Placed opposite an elaborate table showing the divisions and the subdivisions of the Soul on fol. 46", it features the half-length figure of a friar, his head turned in profile and one hand emerging from an opening in his cloak. Captions in red ink in a firm thirteenth-century hand mark the location in the ventricles of the Inner Senses and name the Outer Senses on or by the appropriate organ. Labelling is, however, not the only means the artist has used to call attention to the Five Senses. Several organs are enlarged, as if in caricature, notably the nose, mouth and ear, recalling figures of monsters and devils as represented during the Middle Ages, particularly in British art. It leaves no doubt that the author considered the Five Senses as part of man's lower nature. Another interesting case is a drawing added as a frontispiece to the blank page at the beginning of the chapter De senuuin the copy of Harderwyck's Epiloma, seureparationes lotius philosophiae naturalis Arislotelis, printed in Cologne in 1496, which belongs to the Wellcome

23 Segre, op. cit. n. 4 above, p. 7. Nordcnfalk, op. cit., Mittelalters', Archiu fur Geschichteder Afcditin, vu, 19t3, P. 23, fig- 9- pp. 149-205. Edwin Clarke & Kenneth Dewhurst, An 2" H. J. Hermann, Die Westeuropäischen Handschrillen Illustrated History of Brain Function, Berkeley & Los und Inkunabeln der Gotik, u (Beschreibendes Verzeichnis Angeles 1972. der illuminierten Handschriften in Osterreich, N. F. vu, 28 M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of 2), Leipzig 1936, pp. 541 The caption reads: Li mains Trinity College, in, Cambridge 1902, p. 357. Loren d'amours lastans. MacKinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, 25 E. g. two sets of engravings by G. M. Mitelli. (A. London 1965, p. 116. Overlooked by Clarke and Bertarelli, Le incisioni di Giuseppe Maria Alitelli, Milan Dewhurst, the drawing is here published for the first 1940, nos 152-56 and 569. ) time with the permission of the Trustees of Trinity 26 See the details published by Bruce-Mitford in his College Library. contribution to Dark Age Britain (op. cit. n. 2 above). 27 Walther Sudhoff, `Die Lehre von Hirnventrikeln in textlicher und graphischer Tradition des Altertums und 6 CARL NORDENFALK Institute for the History of Medicine, London (Pl. 2c). 29 Even more than the Cambridge drawing it bears every mark of a non-professional draughtsman who does his best to his knowledge in communicate not only words - of which there are many written in a cursive hand - but also in images. 30 The page is divided by a double wavy line into two separate parts, a narrower upper and a broader lower one. In the former are two busts, the one on the left having the Inner Senses inscribed in four compartments in accordance with Galen and Avicenna, the one to the right showing them in five compartments following Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus. Of greater interest for our study however, is, the almost full-length figure of a man in the lower section. Naked apart from the loincloth, he displays the heart, in accordance with Aristotle, as the true seat of the sou1.31The image is exceptional not only in its plethora of explanatory inscriptions, but also in having the stimuli of each sensory organ represented by an attribute. On the upper left is a church bell (obiectumaudit ussonus), and to the right a round mirror (obiectumvisus). In his left hand the man holds to his nose a flowering sprig (obiectumolfaclus odor) and below there is a glass cup into which he dips his tongue (obiectumguslus sailor). At the bottom left there is a stove with an open fire into which the figure puts his right hand (obiectumtact us tangibile propter qualitatem tangibilem). The choice of attributes is largely the same as in the thirteenth century Aristotle manuscripts, the main exception being the fire as stimulus for Touch, the earliest example Touch of rendered as the sense of heat and - by implication - also of pain, since a hand thrust into a fire must get burned. Pain is also indicated in the snake biting the arm close to the elbow, aiming at the nerves inside it which are labelled interiorestaclus, in a remarkably modern conception of the nervous system of the human body. 32 In spite of its many novelties the Wellcome Institute drawing stands at the end of a development which had its basis in the psychology of Aristotle and his commentators in both East and West. At the time it was made, a fundamentally new approach to the Five Senses had already been proposed by Leonardo, who aimed at a replacement of the speculations of the scholastics with direct knowledge of the human nature from autopsy. 33

29 F. N. L. Poynter, A Catalogue of Incunabula in the first and second part, the second part of intelleclusbeing WellcomeHistorical Medical Library, London 1954, p. 6o, divided into abstractioand distinctio. On Aristotle's theory no. 283. W. Pagel, 'Medieval and Renaissance Contri- of the sensusconmunis being located in the heart cf. A. F. butions to the Knowledge of the Brain and its Chaignet, Essai sur la psychologied'Aristote, Paris 1883 Functions', The History and Philosophyof Knowledgeof the (repr. 1966), pp. 343If and E. Clarke, 'Aristotelian Brain, An Anglo-American S)mposium, Springfield and Concepts of the Form and Functions of the Brain', Oxford 1958, pp. 95-114, fig. 1. Clarke & Dewhurst, Bulletin of the History ofAledicine, xxxvu, 1963, pp. 1-14- op. cit. U. 27 above, pp. 16-17, fig. 14. 32 Cf. K. D. Keele, Anatomies of Pain, Oxford 1957, Jo I owe to the palacographical skill of Dr William PP. 3olf, reproducing the Wellcome Institute drawing Schupbach a complete transcription of the texts as pl. n. concerning the Five Senses and their stimuli. 3 Leonardo appears to have planned a treatise on 31 The first ventricle of the skull is provided with the man beginning with pre-natal life and finishing with the caption organum eongregaticumspecieruin multiplicatarum a nature of the Five Senses. Cf. K. Clark & C. Pedretti, souationibus exterioribusad sensurncommunem. The nerves The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, London 1969, from all the sense-organs converge there. At the same particularly nos 1go1g(B2), 19037(B20) and time it is connected by a single nerve with the heart, 19o52(B38), and K. D. Keele, 'Leonardo da Vinci's called organum censuscommunis. Only the ear has a Physiology of the Senses', Leonardo's Legacy. An Inter- separate direct connection with the heart as well, national Symposium,ed C. D. O'Malley (Publications of Hearing being in Aristotle's words 'more conducive to UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, knowledge'. The heart is also characterized as the seat of 2) Berkeley & Los Angeles 1969, PP. 35-56. the censusinterior and the intellectus,both divided into a FIVE SENSES 7 This approach did not immediately affect the iconography of the Five Senses, but it laid the ground for a more realistic view of their significance as part of man's mental apparatus. III

Since the Latin words for the Five Senses are all of masculine gender, it was originally considered natural - indeed inevitable - to have them personified by men. It is as men that they are depicted on the Fuller brooch, in the initials to the Aristotle manuscripts and even on the Confession diagram from Tegernsee in the roundels for Sight and Taste. The same is true of the didactic drawings of the nervous system we have just dealt with, and of the representations of the Senses by symbolic animals when a human figure appears in charge of them, as in the Tre Fontane and the Longthorpe Tower frescoes. In literature a corresponding situation prevails. 34 The lover in the Bestiaire d'amours, the pilgrim in the Pelerinagede la vie /iumaine of Guillaume de Deguileville and the naughty boys representing the Senses in Gerson's Moralile du Coeurel les Cinq Sensare all masculine. 35 A sudden change of sex takes place around 1500. From this time the rule is that the Five Senses should be represented as women. The main reason seems to have been the force of the traditional assgciation of womanhood - for good or for ill -with sensuality. But presumably it would also have been considered appropriate to give the Five Senses the same sex as other mental concepts such as the Virtues and the Vices which in the Latin were of feminine gender and had long been represented accordingly. The earliest instance of the Senses depicted as women is in the Lady with the Unicorn tapestry series in the Musee de Cluny (Pl. 3a-f). 36 There is no question that the coat-of- arms displayed on the banners or pennants carried by the unicorn and lion in these tapestries belongs to a male member of the Lyonnese family Le Viste, several of whom held important posts in the service of the French monarchy. At the end of the fifteenth century when the tapestries were woven, there were only two members of the family alive who could have commissioned them: the head of the dynasty, Jean IV (c. 1430-1500) and his cousin Aubert's son Antoine (c. 147o-1536). 37

34 Vinge, op. cit. n. 3 above, PP- 53-60. Palais, 26 October 1973-7 June 1974, Paris 1973, 35 However, in art history there are no rules without pp. 104-13. Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, La dame ä la exception. In the collection of illuminated didactic licorne, Paris 1978- tables called Le Verger dc, Soulas (Paris, Bibliothedue 37 On the Le Viste family see Rene Pedou, Les hommes Nationale, MS fr. 9220), there is on fol. 15" a table for de loi tyonnais ä la fin du morn-dge (Annales dc I'Universite meditation on the Seven 'Works' of the Passion, related de Lyon, 3rd scr., lcttres, fasc. 37), Paris 1964, passim on the one side to the Seven Canonical hours and on the and esp. pp. 3001C G. Souchal, "'Messieurs les Viste" other to the Five Senses, supplemented by Voluntary et la Dame ä la licorne', Bibliothigue de I'crole des chartes, Consent and Free Will, in which the latter group is CX1.1,1983, pp. 209-67, an admirably thorough critical represented by seven praying virgins, all alike. The survey of all genealogical, heraldic and other historical choice of sex is in this case primarily motivated by the facts available. emphasis on devotion, for which the personification of The tapestries have been dated differently: as early as the Senses as young men must have been considered c. 1480, as late as c. 1510. G. Souchal ('Un grand peintre inappropriate. francais de la fin du 15` siecle- le Maitre de la "Chasse 36 H. Martin, 'La dame a la licorne', Mimoires de la ä la licorne"', Revue de l'art xxu, 1973, pp. 22 fr. ) has Sociiti nationaledes Aneiyuaires de France, t.xxvtl, 1924-27, introduced a new basis for their dating by calling Paris 1928, pp. 137-68. P. Verlet et F. Salet, La dameä la attention to the fact that like La chaise a la licome in the licorne, Paris 1960. G. Souchal, 'A Tapestry Master- Cloisters, the set in the Musee de Cluny has close piece', Auction, 111,2,Oct. 1969, pp. 41-42. Chefs-d'oeuvre parallels in the woodcuts of the Books of Hours which de la eapisseriedu XIV' au XVI` siicle, exh. cat. Grand were printed in Paris between 1496 and 1507. 8 CARL NORDENFALK Of the latter we know that in 1493 he had followed his father as correcteuret rapporteur at the royal chancellery, which implies that he already had his juridical studies behind him. Unfortunately we have no record of the year in which he married his first wife, Jacqueline Raguier, but nothing prevents us from assuming that it was not too long after the beginning of his political career. 38 Since the tapestries pay homage to a young bride, his marriage could be the occasion of Antoine's ordering them. Jacqueline bore him a daughter Jeanne, and this lady and her husband were direct ancestors of the owners of the Chateau de Boussac the documented hanging in where tapestries were as 1837 , when they were acquired, together with the castle, by the municipality of Boussac, which in 1882 ceded them to the Musee de Cluny. 39 As for jean Le Viste, when the tapestries were woven he was already an old man, and he is not recorded as having married for a second time. There is no known occasion in his life with which the tapestries could be connected. The only argument that has been advanced in favour of his patronage is that, having failed to reach the rank of the noblesse d'epee, he wanted in compensation to see his armorial bearings displayed as often as possible on the works of art he possessed. Indeed we know that this was the case, since at his death in 1500 no less than three tapestry sets, not identical with the series in the Musee de Cluny, were inherited by his daughter Claude, eventually to be recorded as the property of the heirs of her second husband, jean de Chabannes. 40Had the Lady with the Unicorn tapestries also been made for jean IV, one would like to know why, having passed to Claude, they did not then share the fate of the others. One would have to suppose that the Unicorn set was retained by Claude until her death in 1547 and was then bequeathed Jeanne, to the daughter of her second cousin - although at that time Claude could hardly have been on very friendly terms with Jeanne, who had recently sued her over other family properties. 41 Whereas the invocation of the vanity of jean IV does little to explain why the tapestries feature allegorical representations of the Five Senses, the choice of theme would appear most appropriate for Antoine, if he intended the set as a present for his young bride. The connection of the imagery of the Five Senses with love has, as we have seen, a medieval tradition, and indeed runs as a kind of Leitmotif through the whole history of the theme. Already in the introductory (or concluding) scene, which shows the Lady standing at the opening ofa tent and taking a jewelled chain out ofa casket (Pl. 3a), this association is emphatically asserted by its inscription.

38 In her 1983 article just cited, Mme Souchal the walls of the two rooms in the Chateau de Boussac, speculates about the most probable date for the where they were on display. It is evident that there was marriage, opting for some time after 1500. But in the no space left for further panels. The assumption that the absence of documents, it seems futile to draw any set originally consisted of more than the six panels, can conclusions from a calculation of mere probabilities. therefore be dismissed as highly improbable. Granted that the couple's daughter Jeanne was born as 40 The credit for having discovered the presence of late as (. 1502, which is in no way certain, it does not these tapestries at the chateau de Montaigu-le-Blin in follow that her parents were necessarily married the 1595 goes to Pierre Verlet, who published the relevant year before. The marriage might at first have remained document first in the Bulletin de la Sociili nationale des childless, or the first child, or children, could have died Antiquaires de France, 1957, PP. 84-86 and then in the young without being recorded. But even if Antoine did book written in collaboration with F. Salet op. cit., n. 36 not marry Jacqueline until 15o1, it would not exclude above, p. 43- the tapestries being commissioned for that occasion, 41 Souchal, op. cit. n. 37 above, p. 246. Claude's will since their style in no way rules out such a date. allegedly disappeared between the two World Wars, 39 In his book on the tapestries, op. cit. n. 36 above, which creates an embarrassing state of uncertainty Brlande-Brandenburg publishes drawings, made before about what it actually said about the tapestries. 1837, which show the distribution of the tapestries on FIVE SENSES 9 When the tapestries were shown at the exhibition in Paris and New York in 1973-74, the panel was called `The Choice of the Jewels'. However, close inspection reveals that no choice is depicted, since the casket contains only one ornament, a long jewelled chain which the Lady takes at one end, using her veil to hold it. It has been said to be a necklace, and it is true that in this tapestry, as distinct from the others, the Lady does not already wear such an ornament. Nevertheless it is obvious that the chain is not quite like the necklaces depicted elsewhere. It is both longer and heavier; indeed, the Lady uses both hands to take possession of it. It therefore seems more reasonable to assume that it is a belt, the attribute of the mistress of a household, a common marriage symbol in art. 42 It is, in other words, a present chosen for its symbolic significance by her fiance, and in receiving it she makes use of her veil, the mark ofher virginity, which she soon will remove for ever. Even clearer is the inscription on top of the tent: A MONSEUL DESIRE, `To the only one I desire'. This is formulated as a straightforward dedication and the "J" which follows is the initial J' ofJacqueline Raguier. No doubt the pattern ofgolden tears on the tent also alludes to the bride, although so far nobody has been able to decipher its meaning. 43 Were it rather Jean IV who commissioned the tapestries, how should we understand the inscription and the scene below, which is obviously connected with it? The answer, which at present is the official version of the Musee de Cluny, is that the Lady, instead of receiving the belt as a present, actually puts it back into the casket as a mark of her wish to renounce such wordly show. 44 The inscription would therefore not be a dedication at all. Instead it must be explained as a motto. The fact that the preposition `a' in medieval French can stand for selonwould allow us to read the sentence as `According to my only desire'; it would thus express Jean Le Viste's wish to do without the good things in life -a surprising device for a man otherwise known for his love of earthly possessions 45 The five other panels show the Lady acting out, as if in a charade, one of the Five Senses (Pl. 3b-f). This she does by taking up different significant attributes. Such personifications normally make use of their objects as `consumers'. Thus in most allegories of the Five Senses Sight looks at herselfin her mirror, Hearing listens attentively to her instrument by playing or tuning it, Smell enjoys the scent of the flowers she has picked, and so on. This is how we would expect the Lady with the Unicorn to perform, were she nothing but an abstract personification. Instead we are presented with specific and quite particular actions which must have been chosen for reasons other than simply to refer to one or the other of the Senses. In all

42 E. Panofsky, Problems in Titian, mostly Iconographic S. Schneebalg-Perelman calls attention to the existence (Wrightsman Lectures, 11), New York 1969, p. 116, of a set of early 16th century tapestries, now lost, but G. de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dons ! 'art profane once owned by Erard de la Marck, Prince-Bishop of zjo-r6oo (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, Liege, which also had a sixth panel, entitled Liberum xxix), Geneva 1958, col. 63- arbitrium. There are no means of knowing how this 43 In my article 'Qui a commande les tapisseries dices tapestry looked. However, the combination of the de la Dame a la Licorne? ', Revue de fart, LV, 1982, Senseswith Free Will is also found in the medieval cycle PP- 53-56, n. 14,1 tentatively suggested that it might be quoted above, n. 35, where there was likewise a another marriage symbol, namely a reference to the supplementary Consent. As I have pointed out golden rain of Danae. However, another explanation, elsewhere (op. cit. n. 43 above), it is not admissible to more in line with the heraldic language, would be apply the title to the panel showing the Lady receiving preferable. the golden chain and thus to interpret it as meaning A4 Erlande-Brandenburg, op. cit. n. 36 above (no precisely the opposite of what it normally does. pagination). 45 In her article, "'La Dame ä la licorne" a ete tisse a Bruxelles', Gazettedes Beaux-Arts, Lxx, 1965, pp. 262-64, io CARL NORDENFALK five tapestries an additional allusion to love is intended - an allusion very much to the point, if the tapestries were intended as an engagement present. True, the lover is not present in person, but his representatives are the unicorn and the lion, supporters of his coat-of-arms, and particularly the unicorn whose legendary swiftness (in old French vistesse) qualified him as the heraldic animal depreference of the family Le Viste. As for the Lady, she does her best to live up to her role as the ideal loving partner, eager to please her fianccaccording to each of his five senses, a veritable ars amandi performed in five different tableaux. Thus in Sight she does not herself look into the mirror but makes the unicorn, lovingly resting in her lap, admire his own features. In Hearing, as their listening attitudes make clear, it is for the unicorn and the lion that she plays her table-organ. In Smell, instead of inhaling the scent of the flowers herself, she is about to tie them into a love-chaplet with which to crown her fiance. 46 Nor in Taste does she put any sweetmeats to her own mouth, but rather takes them from the goblet held by her maid to feed the sparrow-hawk she carries on her raised hand which is protected by a hunter's glove, her tender looks indicating that this animal too is a representative of her lover. 47 Finally in Touch she fondles with her delicate fingers the horn of the unicorn who now stands at her side looking up at her with obvious enchantment in a scene of rather blunt erotic significance. If at the same time she firmly grasps the unicorn's pennant, it is because as his betrothed she feels already entitled to make her bridegroom's coat-of-arms her own. It is hard to see how these ingenious references to love could be accounted for, were the patron an old man who simply delighted in his own heraldry. The choice between Jean IV and Antoine Le Viste can be made without hesitation: only as a commission of the latter can the tapestries be understood as the declaration of love they evidently are.

IV

The invention of printing, perhaps more than any other single event, can be taken to mark the end of the 1\-liddle Ages, and nothing is more characteristic of the Renaissance chapter in the history of the Five Senses in art than the fact that from the turn of the fifteenth century we find the theme represented predominantly in the graphic arts. The confession woodcut we have previously considered is a precursor of this development. However, it is modern in technique only, in spirit it remains medieval. Its simple dualistic distinction between right and wrong would hardly have satisfied humanist sophistication. Not everybody guilty of misconduct deserved to be called a sinner. There was a need for a less absolute term, and the Bible itself offered it in calling the godless man a fool. In pagan ethics too, to be foolish meant to be lacking in wisdom, and Humanism recommended that time-honoured maxim of Greek philosophy: `Know thyself! '

46 The flower chaplet is a well known symbol in Guillaume de hlaehaut', Zeilschrifl fur Kunstgeschichte, representations of loving couples in secular Gothic XLVII, 1984, pp. 70-81, figs. 1 and 2). D. W. Robertson, ivories. A particularly interesting parallel exists in the A Prefaceto Chaucer,Princeton 1969, p. 93, calls attention grisaille drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, to the existence of the topic in medieval literature as which have recently been proved to be bas-de-pagescenes well. Beryl of a manuscript containing poems by Guillaume de 47 On the sparrow-hawk as an erotic symbol cf. hlaehaut (Donal Byrne, 'A 14th century French Rowland, Birds with Huinan Souls. A Guide to Bird drawing in Berlin and the Livre du Voir-Dit of Symbolism, Knoxville Tennessee 1978, p. xtv, 6t, 88. FIVE SENSES ii The most popular exposition of this more differentiated sense of morality was Das Narren-Schyff, The Ship of Fools, by the Basle Humanist Sebastian Brant, published on All Fools' Day i 494- the world's first best-seller. 48 In one hundred or so `songs' it covers an equal number of types of `folly, blindness, error and stupidity of all stations and kinds of men', from serious offences against Divine Law to rather harmless weaknesses such as book-collecting by people with little interest in reading, treasure-hunting and bad manners at table. 49 In fact Brant did not draw a clear line between mere fools and grave sinners, for it appears in his verses again and again that at heart he was a Christian of the old sort, considering the whole of mankind liable to God's wrath on the Day of judgement. -50 In the prologue Brant assures the reader that in writing his satire, he had women in mind no less than men: That both I mean will follow soon, For man is not the only loon 'Mongst women fools are hardly fewer. He then goes on to speak of women's foibles for modish dress and coiffure. Yet in the songs the fools portrayed are practically all male. Women act as the cause of men's foolishness, rather than being fools in their own right, so to speak. Characteristically, when a Latin edition and a French translation were published in France, this was felt to be a serious deficiency. The French publishers, the brothers de Marnef, thus called upon a scholarly friend, Jodocus Badius Ascensius, to compose a supplement, partly in prose, partly in verse, on foolish women only. 51 Good Humanist as he was, Badius wrote it in Latin, leaving it to the publishers to have it translated into French. The Latin edition, Stultiferae naves,was printed in Paris by Thielman Kerver and dated 1500 (n. s. 1501), but the author's Peroratio finishes thus: Ex Lugduno anno MCCCCXCVIII quarto idus septembris(1o September 1498). 52

48 The best critical edition remains F. Zarnckc's, so C. Nordenfalk, `The Moral Issue in Sebastian Leipzig 1854, reprint Darmstadt 1964. There are two Brant's Ship of Fools', The Hurnanist as a Citizen. Studiesin facsimiles of the first edition, one by F. Schultz as Memory of CharlesFrankel, Raleigh N. C. 1979, pp. 89 if. forth Jahresgabeder Gesellschaftfür elsässischeLiteratur, Stras- 51 The course of events has been most clearly set des bourg 1913, and one by H. Kögler, Faksimiledruckfür die by Phillippe Renouard, Bibliographie des impressions et Gesellschaftder Bibliophilen, Basic A oeuvres de fosse Badius Ascensius, imprinieur et humaniste, 1913. good modern , translation into English is Edwin Zeydel, The Ship of 1482-1535, Paris 1908,1, PP- 159 ff- CE-also A. Blum, 'La Fools by SebastianBrant (Records of Civilisation. Sources Nefdes Folles', Bjblis. dliroirdesarts, v, 1926, pp. 13-17- Dorothy O'Connor, 'Sebastian Brant France and Studies, xxvi), New York 1944, reprint New York en au XVI' Revue de littirature 1962. siecle', conrparie, vin, 1928, if. La A'ef des folles Stultiferae de 49 Brant's concept of human folly has been analysed in pp. 308 and - nares - Reproduction de intr. Charles a great number of books and articles. See notably Rainer fosse Bade. 1'edition primps, Gruenter, 'Die Narrheit in Sebastian Brants Narren- Bene, ed. and transl. Odette Sauvage, Grenoble 1979. Brant's in Bibliotheque schiff', Neophilologus, xLII, 1951, pp. 207-21; Barbara In the copy of NaoisStultifera the Mazarine in Paris, Badius's Stu! Könneker, Wesenund Wandlungder Narrenideeim Zeitalter pressmark Inc. 972, - des Humanismus, Wiesbaden 1966; Ulrich Gaier, Studien tiferae naves is actually bound as a 'Postscript'. X V` zu SebastianBrants Narrenschiff Tübingen 1966; Hellmut 52 A. Claudin, Histoire de l'imprimerie en Franceau et Rosenfeld, 'Sebastian Brants Narrenschilf und die XVI' siicle, Paris 1900-14, it, pp. 128 ff. Renouard, op. Tradition der Ständesatire, Narrenbilderbogen und cit., it, p. 77, interprets the date of the first edition of the Flugblätter des 15. Jahrhunderts', GutenbergJahrbuch, Stultijerae navesas 22 Feb., i5oo (150: n. s. ), whereas 1965, pp. 242-48; Joel Lefebure, Lesfols et la folic. Etude Frederick J. Norton, Printing in Spain 1501-1520, sur les genresdu comiqueet la criation littiraire en Allemagne Cambridge 1966, p. 57 argues for the date 1500 n. s. pendantla Renaissance,Paris 1968, PP- 77 IF.

2 12 CARL NORDENFALK Like the Ship ofFools by Brant, Badius's supplement is illustrated with woodcuts (Pl. 4, a-f). 53 Although not quite as advanced as those of the German poem, the majority of which were designed by a rising star on the artistic horizon, the young Albrecht Dürer, they are nevertheless by one of the progressive craftsmen in Paris, to whose talent as a story-teller other books printed in the city bear witness. -14 In Brant's poem, in spite of the title, ships do not have a major role. Most of the fools are landlubbers, acting indoors, in the streets or in the countryside. Ships occur more frequently only towards the end of the cycle, most prominently in Song 1o8, which features a boat crammed with passengers heading for the land of Cockayne (Schlaraffen- land), the illustration of which was also used as a frontispiece to the book. Badius, on the other hand, does full justice to his title, using the navigation motif consistently; a ship therefore appears in every illustration. 55 Moreover, he had the idea of combining the nautical raise-en-scenewith the notion of the Five Senses by providing each ship with a crew devoted to one particular Sense. As its captain a woman is standing or seated in the middle; in the versified parts of the. text she calls her sisters on land to join her for a voyage to Cythera, the island of Venus: Quid tantum stupida trahitis pigra Otis mcntc? Idaliae cives, en Cytherea vocat. 56 In accordance 'with the usual order, the ship of Sight opens the series (Pl- 4b). Its captain is an elegantly dressed courtesan holding a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other. A male fool helps a waiting line of foolish women on board. They are greeted by two beaux seated at the oars. At the prow flutters a streamer with a peacock as its emblem, the symbol of Pride. 57 The second ship has the personification of Hearing standing in the middle, now dressed in fool's costume, with bells attached to her belt (Pl. 4c). Raising her arms in a dancing posture she sings to the accompaniment of two ladies, one playing the harp, the other the mandolin. The women waiting on shore are apparently characterized as tattle- mongers.

s3The first to comment upon and publish the poem it is rather an instrument of perdition. With illustrations as metaphors of the Five Senses is Samuel Badius, on the other hand, the sea voyage is a pleasure Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life, New Haven and London trip, the danger of which is only implied. 1962, PP- 192-93, figs- 133-37. Acquainted only with a se Quoted from Renouard, op. cit. n. 51 above, p. 205. jean Drouyn late edition, he misdates them to 1583. In his translation of these verses (a 54 Claudin, op. cit., it, p. 133, has recognized the same misunderstood the word Idaliae mountain city on Cythera) llaliae: I hand at work in the woodcuts of the Compostet Kalendrier to mean 'Italiens trop estes ebahy, This led des Bergers, published by Guy Marehant in 1499, trop paresseaux de vueur et de penser'. whereas A. M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Claudin, op. Cit., n. 52 above, it, p. 130, to assume that Woodcuts,1,, London 1955, P-674, identifies the artist Badius must have been alluding to the conquest of with the illustrator of Antoine Verard's Terence. Milan by Louis ?ill and the unenthusiastic reception October Whatever the case, it is, interestingly enough the same given him on his entry into that city on 12 1499. artistic milieu within which Mine Souchal locates the This is, however, out of the question from the point of artist who drew the cartoons for the Lady with the view of chronology, the French translation in fact being Unicorn tapestries. published before that event. ss The ship as a symbol may have different functions, 57 Banners with symbolic animals as coat-of-arms of as pointed out by R. Gruenter, 'Das Schiff. Ein Beitrag the Deadly Sins already occur in the 14th century. See zur historischen Metaphorik', Tradition and Ursprünglich- Ein SchöneMaleri von den Siben Todsuenden, Augsburg 1474, keit. Akten des 111. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses apparently a MUG version of the Lurnen animae; cf. O. 1965in Amsterdam,Berlin and Munich 1966, pp. 86-tot. Zöckler, Das Lehrstück von den sieben Ilaupisünden, Munich °'. In the writings of the Fathers of the Church the ship is 1893, p. u1, For the Augsburg printing see A. often a symbol of salvation, like the Ark of Noah (J. Schramm, llildersclunuck der Frühdrucke, Leipzig 1921, in, Rahner, Symboleder Kirche, Salzburg 1964, pp. 243 ff. ) pls. 35,36. Brant's use of the ship is precisely the opposite: in his FIVE SENSES 13 In the next woodcut the shore in the foreground is large enough to make room for two foolish women gathering flowers (Pl. A. One of them turns-her head towards the boat, which is just about to receive two more passengers. The personification of Smell is standing in the ship welcoming her sisters on board with a flower in her hand. 58 At the same time she turns to sniff a scent-ball which another woman has taken from the open box of a perfume-purveyor. standing in the bows with his merchandise -a standard medieval formula of a two-fold action. 59 Somewhat surprisingly the emblem on the banner is an ape, an animal otherwise little known and not really appropriate as a symbol of Smell, but rather one of sinfulness in general. 60 In the illustration of the sense of Taste the ship is already at sea (Pl. 4e). It is a floating tavern. The table is laid and at it sits the personification of Taste, a fat woman in a tight- laced dress. She raises a goblet in her right hand, while holding the other over her belly as if to indicate that she has feasted too much. She is served by two women also dressed as fools, one of them offering a ham-shank on a plate. The oarsmen seem to have forgotten their duties while carousing; one of them has collapsed, quite drunk. The banner has the emblem of a pig, symbol of Gluttony. In the allegory of Touch the ship, approaching the shore of Cythera, has seven passengers (Pl. 4f). The dominating central group of three standing figures consists of the personification of Touch attended by two male fools. She has taken the younger one by the hand and is at the same time kissing the other one, who presses his hand against her lap. In the prow a harlot is emptying the purse of her lover, and in the stern a fool approaches a foolish woman, lifting her skirt. The fluttering banner carries the emblem of Lechery, the goat. In his prose Explanatio to this vessel Badius stresses how Touch is the most voluptuous of the Senses and even quotes Donatus's commentary to Terence, Eunuch.4,2, about the gradus amoris conceived as a five-fold sequence: visus-colloquium-convictus-basia- factum. 61 The association of the Five Senses with lust leaves no doubt about Badius's basically This is from his medieval attitude - that they are instruments of sin. equally evident placing at the very beginning of the book yet another vessel, dedicated to the first foolish woman in the history of mankind, Eve, who by the Fall brought original sin into the world his illustration - certainly the most outstanding example of human folly. In to this introductory section the artist has wittily transformed the mast into the Tree of Know- ledge and placed Eve beside it, about to accept the forbidden fruit from the serpent who, following an old pictorial tradition in this case particularly appropriate, has a woman's head (Pl. 4a). Adam, his nakedness partly concealed by the stern-castle, approaches her expectantly. Two horned fools, no doubt myrmidons of the Evil One, are seated at the oars. A banner with a dragon, the Devil's armorial bearing, flutters from the top of the prow.

38 The Celeusmaolfaclionis faluae, the welcome song one for Taste, but never for Smell. It is true that there is addressed to the foolish women about to enter the ship of a monkey in the background for the Lady with the Smell, begins rather thoughtlessly with the words Unicorn tapestry representing Smell, but probably only Acceleraleairi (sic), as if the author had forgotten what sex as a pet. is at stake. 61 Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur and 59 On flowers and perfumes as attributes of Smell see lateinisches11filklallcr, 4th edn., Bern and Munich 1963, Heinz Ladendorf, 'Der Duft and die Kunstgeschichte', pp. 501-02. Further examples are given by Marc-Rene FestschriftErich Meyer, Hamburg 1959, pp. 251 ff. Jung, Eludes sur lc poinu alligorique en Franceau mo}cn-äge 60Janson, op, cit., n. 3 above, p. 256, n. 15, cites the (Romanica Helvetica, ixxxu, Bern 1971, PP. 140-01" use of the ape as a symbol of Touch beside the common 14 CARL NORDENFALK The illustrator of the Stultiferae navesencountered a particular difficulty. In their texts both Brant and Badius could easily apply the epithet of foolishness to women as much as to men. But in real life the fool's costume was worn by men only; they alone dressed as fools to participate in the revelries of Shrovetide or in the Orders of fools which became popular in the fifteenth century. In his illustrations to Brant's Skiff of Fools Dürer twice made a discreet attempt at transferring the fool's cap with long donkey's ears to the women dancing around the Golden Calf (Song 6i) and to the Five Foolish Virgins (Song io6) by making it hang loosely around their neck. Apparently it took some time for the illustrator of the supplement by Badius to become fully reconciled to the idea of giving his foolish women a costume never actually worn in real life, and he was particularly embarrassed when confronted with the Ship of Eve. Obviously, a fool's cap would have seemed too ridiculous when combined with Eve's nakedness. Nor would it have suited the head of the Serpent-who in any case was no fool. The artist's only expedient was to dress the two oarsmen as fools, at the same time characterizing them as the Devil's minions by having a pair of horns grow out of their hoods and by giving them paws instead of hands for rowing. In his next illustration, the ship of Sight, the artist still hesitated to dress the principal figure as a fool. It was sufficient to depict her as a courtesan - indeed, a fool's cap would have interfered with her main occupation, that of combing her hair. Nor did he make the two elegant oarsmen into fools. Only the women about to board the ship wear the fool's cap over their long hair. With the ship of Hearing the personification herself appears for the first time in a fool's attire, while the two women accompanying her on their instruments remain, as it were, out of uniform. From then on, however, the fool's costume becomes obligatory for all of them. It so happens that La Nef des Folles and the Lady with the Unicorn tapestries are associated with Lyons, the former by its author, the latter by its patron. The tapestries present the Five Senses as instruments of pleasure, and as such they also appear in the illustrations to the pamphlet on foolish women. But the message of the two works is quite different. Whereas the tapestries intone songs of praise to a lady considered most perfect of human beings, the pamphlet is essentially an exposure of the inborn sinfulness of the weaker sex. It takes up that misogynistic current which runs through the history of Christianity and has sources in Jewish thought. Philo is an outspoken representative. In his commentary on Genesis in, 6 he writes: Pleasure does not venture to bring her wiles and deceptions to bear on the man, but on the woman, and by her means on him. This is a telling and well-taken point; for in us the Mind corresponds to man and the Senses to woman. 62

A similar line of thinking underlies St Augustine's explanation of the parable of the Five Foolish Virgins. 63 This serves to explain how it was that it seemed natural to Badius to

62 On the Creation, ch. ux (Loeb Classical Library Philo, However, as shown by A. Kent Hicatt in this journal, i, London 1929, p. 131). Cf. also Richard Baer, Philo's 'Eve as Reason in a Tradition of Allegorical Interpreta- Use of the Categories Male and Female (Arbeiten zur tion of the Fall', XLttt, 1980, pp. 221 If., St. Augustine Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Juden- also professed another opinion about the Fall according turns, 111),Leiden 1970, esp. pp. 38 fl: to which the Serpent represented the Sensesand Eve the w Augustinus, SermonenLxii (A Select Library of lower Reason. For Badius the more usual interpretation Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian of Eve as the chief cause of original sin and the Church, eds P. Schaff and H. 11'ace, vl, 1313-447fl- equivalent of sensuality'was the only relevant one. FIVE SENSES 15 combine his censure of women's foolishness with the concept of the Five Senses. Yet his position is ultimately ambiguous. As much as it is a satire, his text as well as its illustration bears witness to a secret joy in Wein, Weib and Gesang.64 This is a dichotomy that from now on will characterize practically all moralizing representations of the Five Senses.

V

Like Sebastian Brant in his Narren-Schyff, Badius in his supplement is revealed as a Humanist with one foot still in the Middle Ages. For a more `authentic' Renaissance view of the Five Senses, we have to turn to a contemporary Italian, Francesco Colonna, author of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. 65 Set in antiqua by Aldus Manutius and provided with illustrations of haunting beauty by a follower of Mantegna, this book is one of the most perfect of all products of typography. 66 A dream novel, it features two terrestrial marvels: love and the relics of the classical past. The two merge in Polia, object of Polifilo's affection, for besides being adorable in herself her name means in Greek `Antiquity'. In Colonna's story we encounter for the first time the Five Senses associated with the culture of the ancient world. In a locus amoenus,a pleasure garden of orchards and fountains, Polifilo meets five nymphs, who promise to assist him in his pursuit of his beloved. As indicated by their Greek names they are the Five Senses personified, and in conformity with the chastely economical linear style of the illustrator, their identities are only just revealed by their attributes or gestures (Pl. 5a). First comes Aphea, the sense of Touch. She carries no attribute, but reaches out to Polifilo with her hand. Behind her follows, as we have to guess from the (presumably) fragrant bathing-towel which she carries over her arm, Osfressia, Smell. 67 Next to her stands Achoe holding a musical instrument, representing Hearing. Behind her the fourth girl, pressing a round mirror to her bosom is Orassio, Sight. Finally there is a nymph carrying a drinking vessel as an attribute for Taste; her name is Ceussia. The nymphs are on their way to a fountain enclosed in an octagonal classical building, seen in the succeeding illustration though only from the outside. They exhort Polifilo to follow them, and entering the monument invite the rather bewildered wanderer to join them in their bath. When the book was translated into French in 1546, the illustrator, who may have been jean Goujon, could not resist adding a woodcut in which the building is shown from the inside and in which the nymphs take up various graceful positions on the

64 In certain circles Badius's supplement was felt as an 1909,1,2, PP- 464-65. Albert Ilg, Ueber din kunsthistori- unseemly attack on the honour of the weaker sex which schen Were der Hypntrotomachia Poliphili, Vienna 1872, could not be left unanswered. A response came with the PP- 124-35, suggested the brothers Bartolomeo and publication in 1503 of a pamphlet by Symphorien Benedetto Montagna as authors of the woodcuts, which Champier entitled La Nef desfemmes vertueuses, in which are in fact by two different hands. Other hypotheses however, the allegory of the Five Senses is dropped. have been put forward, but so far none universally 6$ Francesco Colonna, HypnerotarnachiaPoliphili, eds accepted. Cf J. Poppelreuter, Der anonynte Meister des Giovanni Pozzi & Lucia Ciapponi, Padua 1964. (There Poliphilo (Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes, H. 2o), is a reprint of the first edition in the series TheRenaissance Strasbourg 1904, and particularly Martin Lowry, The and the Gods, ed. S. K. Orgel, New York and London World ofAldus Afanutius, Oxford 1979, p. 122, n. 47- 1976.) The author's name is not given on the title page, 67 According to the text Osfressia ought to carry boxes but the initial letters of each chapter form the sentence with unguents as well, but the artist omitted these. Poliam FranciscusColonna peramavit. 66 Prince d'Essling, Les liures dfigures oinitiens do la fin du XV' et du commencementdu XVI'siicle, Florence and Paris 16 CARL NORDENFALK steps of the basin while Polifilo, seated in the foreground, feasts his eyes on their naked beauty (P1.5b). 68 However, having laid aside their attributes, they are no longer individually recognizable. 69 Clearly, we have to understand Polifilo's bath with the nymphs as an act of purification of the Senses. Some similar symbolism is likely to underlie Dürer's. 11Miinnerbad, from his first Italy (Pl. 70 Edgar Wind has made shortly after the artist's return visit to 5c) . suggested that the four men surrounding the musicians are at once portraits of the artist himself and of his Humanist friends in Nuremberg, and at the same time representatives of the Four Temperaments. 71 However, it is easier to follow another scholar, Georg Kauffmann, in interpreting the figures as personifying the Five Senses.72 The two men in the foreground, one holding a scraper, the other a flower, would thus be Touch and Smell, the stout beer-drinker Taste, the two musicians Hearing, and Dürer himself, leaning against the hydrant and looking rather intensely at the others, an image of Sight - appropriately enough for a master of the visual arts. The figure in the background looking at us from a distance would not be part of the allegory. 73 The characterization of the Five Senses by men instead ofwomen is a throwback to the medieval tradition for which there must have been a special reason that remains to be explained. But for the next hundred years feminine personifications would prevail. One case, the next in line chronologically, is found on a faience stove in the Museo provinziale d'arte of Trento (Pl. 6 a, c). 74 Its upper part is decorated with glazed tiles in four rows, each featuring the bust in three-quarter view or in profile either of a bearded man -a The five Turk with a turban or a classical warrior - or of a beautiful woman. tiles which make up the third row from the top depict female figures of the Five Senses: Sight holding a mirror, Hearing a musical instrument, Smell a flower and Taste a jug, while Touch, lacking an attribute, is being embraced by a Turk - the loving couple motif, already

68 Hjjpnerotomachie ou Discours du songe or Poliphile. 71 E. Wind, 'Dürer's "Männerbad", a Dionysian Deduisant commeArnour le combat a l'occasion de Polia. Traduit Mystery', this Journal, it, 1938-39, pp. 269-71, where he dt langage italien en francais par jean Martin et Jacques calls it 'a broadly humorous travesty of the Dionysian Gohorry, Paris 1545- Of this book there is a facsimile with mysteries of inspiration and purification'. E. Panofsky, notes by Bertrand Guegan, Paris 1926. Albrecht Dürer, Princeton 1943, I1, p. 42, refers to Wind's 69 As shown by Anthony Blunt, `The "Hypneroto- article approvingly, with the reservation, however, that machia Poliphili" in 17th Century France', this journal, it is difficult to apply the same interpretation to the 1,1937-38, pp. 128 M, the scene of Polifilo bathing with Dürer drawing (L. IoI) in Bremen, representing a the nymphs is the subject ofa painting by Lesueur in the Frauenbad, which he thinks was a counterpart to the Musee Magnin of Dijon which was intended to serve as woodcut. An attempt to explain the woodcut as an the modillo for a tapestry. In this painting the artist has exploration of the 'unmentionable' love is Robert himself added the necessary identifying attributes. A Baldwin, 'Mutual Gazing, a Literary and Artistic Topic related bathing scene with women only is Ingres's Bain in the Renaissance', to appear in the Acts of the turque of 1863 which according to j. Connolly ('Ingres Symposium on 'The Language of Gestures in Renais- and the Erotic Intellect', IW'omenas Sex Objects.Studies in sance Art' at the University of Toronto in 1983. I thank Erotic Art 1730-rg7o, ed. T. Hess and L. Nochlin, New the author for having given me the opportunity to read York 1972, pp. 17-31) may also be understood as an his paper in typescript. allegory of the Five Senses. 72 G. Kauffmann, 'Dürer-Fragen', Festschrift fr 70Matthias Mende, Albrecht Dürer. Sämmtliche Holz- WernerHager, Recklinghausen 1966, p. 55. schnitte, 'Munich 1976, p.. }6, no. 93. Fedja Anzelewsky, 73 Kauffinann, op. cit., considers him to stand for Dürer. Werk and 117rkung,Fribourg and Stuttgart 1980, Sight. pp. 62-63, fig. 43, with extensive bibliography; to which 74 Rosemarie Franz, Der Kachelofen(Forschungen and could be added C. Zigrosser, Ars tfedica. A Collectionof Berichte des kunsthistorischen Instituts der Universität Medical Prints presentedto the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Graz, I), Graz 1969, pp. Iooff. and figs. 297, Soo-0I. I Philadelphia 1959, pp. 68-6g, and Albrecht Dürer's owe the photographs for the illustration of this article to Woodcutsand 111oodblocks,ed. Walter L. Strauss, New the kind assistance of Dr Franz. York 1980, p. 55, no. 31. FIVE SENSES 17 found in Badius's Stultiferae naves,which henceforth becomes a standard way of illustrat- ing that Sense. The attribute of Hearing with its unusual shape is something ofa puzzle; it is not the usual stringed or wind instrument, but rather some sort of percussive device, possibly a rattle. 75 Instead of figures, two of the tiles bear the coat-of-arms of two members of the South Tyrolean nobility. 76 Probably taken from a castle owned by one of these families, the stove is representative of a new type of furniture for whose decoration professional faience painters from Italy must have been employed. 77 Another stove, possibly by the same craftsman but with another type of decoration, has a shield with the year 1530, which provides some basis for dating the example in Trento. From about the same period, or slightly later, are the paintings by the Florentine Francesco Ubertino, better known as 11 Bacchiacca, which have been interpreted as allegories of the Senses (Pl. 7 a-b). 7B One belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts. 79 It shows a lady in profile holding a golden jug with a nosegay in much the same way as the personification of Taste on the Trento stove carries her vessel. A further point of resemblance is that both figures have their hair partly covered by a turban. The lady's concentration on the delicately painted flowers would make her a good candidate-for the symbolizing of Smell. At the same time, however, in her general appearance she recalls those much admired testedivine which Vasari tells us that Michelangelo drew for Gherardo Perini and for Tommaso de Cavalieri. 80 The other painting, recently in the New York art market, is a similar bust of a lady in three-quarter profile. "' She is holding a cat; being an animal that sees in the dark, it makes an appropriate symbol of Sight. 82The intense gaze of both the woman and the animal would seem to corroborate the assumption that this Sense is intended, rather than that of Touch, as has been suggested. 83 However, the absence of similar paintings representing Hearing, Taste and Touch makes it difficult to be certain. The respective measurements of the two pictures do not agree as perfectly as could be expected, were they part of the same set. 84 Moreover, in her monograph on 11 Bacchiacca Lada Nikolenko proposes to attribute them to different periods in the artist's career. Ultimately, therefore, we are faced with the question of

75 My appeal to specialists in Renaissance music has Novara 1977, pp. 89-9t and 312-15. For more than one so far been without result. of the copies after Michelangelo's lost originals II 76 Identified as those of the families von Hendl and Bacchiacca has been proposed as the artist: M. Delacre, Rambschlag by J. Ringler, 'Beiträge zur südtirolischen Le dessindo 41lichelange(Memoires de I'Academie royale Fayencekunst des 16. Jahrhunderts', Der Sclrlern,xxvii, de Belgique. Classe des Beaux-Arts, 2. ser., x111), 1953, p. 8- Brussels 1938, pp. 69 If. 77 Franz, op. cit. n. 74 above, p. tot. 81 I owe the photo of the painting here reproduced to 78 Lada Nikolenko, Francesco Ubertino called 11 Bac- the courtesy of Mr Henry V. Zimet, French & chiacca,New York 1966, figs 41 and 50, pp. 19-20,49 and Company, New York. 52 82 As a symbol of Sight the cat appears in two sets of 7v Bulletin of the Springfield Museum of Art, December engravings by Abraham dc Bruyn (F. W. H. Hollstein, 1954January 1955, p. 1. There is a replica in the Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts Palazzo Venezia in Rome, published by A. Venturi, c. 1400-1700, Amsterdam 1951,1v, P. 5, nos53-57; the Storia dell'arle italiana, ix, 1,1925, P. 469, fig. 352. other unrecorded) and by H. Coltzius (ibid., vin, 1953, Venturi's suggestion that it represents Mary Mag- p. 27, no. 1-5, and p. 131, no. 107)- dalene carries little conviction. 83 See exh. cat. Le Triomphedu, Uanierisme,Amsterdam, 80 Vasari, La vita di Michelangelonelle redazionidel , 55o e Rijksmuseum 1955, cat. no. 15. del 1.568,1,Milan and Naples 1962, pp. 118 IT. F. Hartz, 84 The Springfield painting measures 54.5 X 48 cm., The Drawings of Michelangelo, London 1970, pp. 259-64- that on the New York market 53.6 X 43.2 cm. Charles de Tolnay, Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo,it, i8 CARL NORDENFALK whether an artist of the period would have represented one or two of the Senses separately, without feeling obliged to illustrate all five. In favour of this it might be noted that in the first edition (1593) of his Iconologia Cesare Ripa`treated the Senses one at a time, in alphabetical order, each according to its name. But the fact remains that he included all five, and that the theme almost by definition presupposes the representation of the entire set. This being so, the interpretation of the pictures by 11Bacchiacca as allegories of Sight and Smell must be hypothetical. 85 Before leaving the Italian Renaissance and the contributions of its artists to the iconography of the Five Senses, we might consider an engraving by Adam Ghisi after Giulio Romano which represents the theme in a more unusual way (Pl. 6b). 86 In front of a river-god a chariot, drawn by five horses, hurtles along at breakneck speed with two struggling Cupids driving it, one giving his horses free rein, the other trying to hold his animals back. The caption Animi imperiorsensuumobsequio (With the Soul in command and the Senses in obedience) indicates that the chariot with its charioteers stands for the soul and the horses for the Senses. It derives from Plato's well-known myth in the Pliaedrus (246,25o and 256) in which, however, the chariot has but one Eros as driver and only two horses, one of noble, the other of ignoble breed. 87 In Giulio's composition the dichotomy between the higher'and the lower form of love is transferred to the two drivers, and the original pair of horses has become a five-in-hand. The simile of the Five Senses pulling a chariot does not appear in the Ghisi print for the first time. It was used by Alain de Lille in his poem Anticlaudianus (iv, 95), where each horse is identified with a particular Sense.88 At the beginning of the voyage Sight is the leading horse, but as the carriage reaches the Empyrean sphere the horse of Hearing alone is able to continue. In Ghisi's engraving the horses are not specifically identified; only that closest to the spectator is to some extent differentiated in that it stumbles and is about to fall. Presumably the artist here had in mind the least reliable of the Senses, Touch. 89

es The same difficulty applies in the case of the early se Alain dc Lille Anticlaudianus, ed. H. Bossuat (Textes genre paintings by Caravaggio which feature young philosophiques du tnoyen-age, i), Paris 1955, pp. tog ff. street urchins with attributes suggestive of one or the Its story about the ascension of Prudence to God in a other of the Senses. See now J ane Costello, 'Caravaggio, carriage drawn by the Five Senses is admirably Lizard and Fruit' Art, theApe ofNature, Studiesin honourof summarised by C. S. Lewis, TheAllegory ofLove, Oxford H. W. Janson, New York 1981, PP-37545t and H. 1936, pp. 98 if. The only illustrated copy of the text, a Hibbard, Caravaggio,London 1983, P. 259- 13th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Capitolare in 16 A. Bartsch, Le peintre graveur, Vienna 1803-21, XV, Verona, was published in this journal, xvn1,1955, p. 421, n. 12. Incisori Alantovani del Soo, ed. S. Massari, PP- 140-41 op. cit. n. 22 above by Florentine Mütherich. Rome 1980-81, pp. 46-47, cat. no. 53. The catalogue It portrays each horse separately, and omits practically reproduces the original drawing by Giulio, preserved in all the attributes applied to them in the text. Prudence's the Biblioteca Reale of Turin, inv. no. 15785- ascension is more dramatically represented in a 15th- 8' Plato's fable is illustrated on the cameo of century encyclopedia in images in the Biblioteca Donatello's bronze bust of a youth in the Bargcllo, as Casanatense, cod. 1404, in a drawing reproduced by F. was pointed out by R. Wittkower ('A Symbol of Platonic Saxl, 'AllerTugenden and Laster Abbildung', Festschrijl Love in a Portrait Bust by Donatello', this journal, it, fur Julius Schlosser,Zürich, Leipzig and Vienna 1927, 1936, pp. 260-61). See also A. Chastel, 'Le Jeune PP- 104-21, pl. xxtt, fig. 48- homme au cameo platonien a Bargello', Proporzioni, in, 119According to Chi-Tsung Li, The Five Sensesin Art, 1950, pp. 73-74. Chastel's doubts concerning the Diss. Iowa 1955, P" 107, n. 22, further representations of attribution of the bust to Donatello have been dismissed the Five Senses as horses occur on a set of tapestries by H. W. Janson, The Sculpture of Donatello, Princeton illustrating Prudentius's Psychomachiaafter cartoons by 1963, pp. 141-42. On the theme compare also Sander Jan Mabuse, which are said to belong to the Prado. Gilman, 'The Uncontrollable Steed: A Study of the However, I am informed that no such works exist in that Metamorphosis of a Literary Image', Euphorion, 1atv1, Museum. The present location of the tapestries has still 1972, PP. 32ft to be established. FIVE SENSES ig VI

In Giulio Romano's allegory of the inborn dichotomy of the human soul the notion of the Five Senses is only a secondary theme. The same can be said of the Lady with the Unicorn tapestries, which first and foremost express homage to a beloved bride, just as the illustrations to the Slultiferae navesprimarily tell the story ofwoman's foolishness. Similarly the identification with the Five Senses of nymphs who meet Polifilo in the Hypnerotomachia is a subordinate aspect of the plot. Even in the decoration of the faience stove in Trento, the singling out of five of the busts as personifications of the Five Senses is no more than a subsidiary theme. To find the Five Senses treated in Renaissance art as a subject in its own right, we must turn to a set of five copper engravings by one of the Nuremberg Kleinmeister, Georg Pencz (Pl. 8 a-e). 90 These prints mark a new chapter in the iconography of the Five Senses in another way too. Previously the Senses had been represented either by human figures or by animals; in Pencz's cycle the two appear for the first time in combination. And, most importantly, we find the Five Senses, as it were, elevated to a higher plane. They are now ideal female nudes, after the fashion of the Virtues, Temperaments and Liberal Arts as depicted in Italian Renaissance art. 91 In each engraving we see a girl seated in the corner of a room with a window-like opening in the wall behind her. The Latin names of the Senses are inscribed in capitals in the open space. 92At the bottom of each print appears the relevant section of the medieval couplet about the connection of the Senses with particular animals: the lynx with Sight, the boar with Hearing, the vulture with Smell, the ape with Taste and the spider with Touch. 93 The beasts keep the girls company from the floor, except for the spider which is in a corner of the window. It may be noted that for the first time we see the lynx correctly rendered as a spotted cat-like animal. 94 The women are engaged in appropriate occupations, though not altogether the same as those of the Senses in the Slultiferae naves and on the Trento stove. In the print symbolizing Sight the figure has no mirror but is gazing up at the sky where sun, moon and stars appear, in conformity with the words of Ovid (Metamorphosest, 85-87) that his looking upwards distinguishes man from the animals. 95 In Hearing a lute hangs on the

I I 90 Bartsch, op. cit. n. 86 above, vin, PP- 353-54, 93 It runs: 'Truxa per auditu linx visu milvus odore ( nos 105-og. The Illustrated Bartsch, ed. W. L. Strauss, Simla nos superat gustu sed aranea tactu. ' In New York 1978-, xvl (ed. R. A. Koch, 1980), pp. 123- mentioning odor before gustus and by replacing aper with 24. Meister um Albrecht Dürer (Anzeiger des Germani- truxa and vultur with milvus it deviates from the usual schen Nationalmuseums, Nuremberg 1961), pp. 151 ff. medieval version, quoted above p. I. David Landau, Catalogocompleto dell' operagrafica di Georg 94 In the Bestiaire d'amoursthe lynx was believed to be a Pencz,Milan 1978, PP- 135-36, nos 104-08. white worm which sees through walls and is represented 91 A similar group of personifications was used by as such in most copies of French origin (Nordenfalk, op. Pencz himself in a set of Christian Virtues which he cit. n. I above, fig. 12). In the Italian copies it was engraved in the period before 1530, when he signed with rendered as a nondescript quadruped, as also in our the letters lB (Bartsch, loc. cit. pp. 307-08, nos 23-29; Pl. Ia. The Illustrated Bartsch loc. cit. pp. 74-75), as well as in a 95 Pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terrain later set of the Seven Liberal Arts (Bartsch nos 110-17). Os homini sublime dedit caclumque videre 92 Pencz mistakenly put the label Olfactus on his print Iussit et crectos ad sidera tollere vultus. representing Sight before changing it to the correct The motif has been extensively discussed by Lionello Virus. Only the print with the image of Smell has its title Sozzi, La 'Dignilas hontinis' de la liUiraturc fraucaise do la (misspelt Olfalus) on a scroll across the window, since in Renaissance, Turin, 1972. In Pence's print the lynx too this case the opening was not broad enough for so long a raises his head, though not to the stars but to his word. Also, unlike the others, the print lacks the artist's mistress. monogram. 20 CARL NORDENFALK wall and other musical instruments are lying on the floor. The girl merely gestures towards them and she may rather be listening to the harmonies of Heaven. In Smell there are again scattered objects including two scent-bottles behind and at the foot of the figure, while she herself puts her nose to a horn of plenty stuffed with leaves and flowers. In Taste she is carefully selecting a morsel of food from a plate, using the two-pronged fork which became a normal eating implement only in the course of the sixteenth century, and which may well be illustrated for the first time here. 96Finally, for Touch, there is an entirely new symbolic activity. This personification is busy at a ribbon-loom, the work - as a typical handicraft - being an appropriate image for the sense we mostly experience with our hands. Obviously there is also a neat parallel with the spider, the symbolic animal for Touch. Each figure carries her head quite differently. Sight raises her eyes to Heaven, Hearing faces straight ahead. From Smell onwards the figures incline their heads more and more: Taste further down and Touch right over her work. The sequence is too obvious to be fortuitous and in fact corresponds to the classical ranking of the Senses.97 However there is a curious contradiction with the medieval verses added as captions, since the latter, which begin with Hearing instead of Sight, impose an order upon the set that partly spoils the artist's compositional device. A most conspicuous feature of Pencz's Five Senses is the near nudity of the figures. With the Renaissance the nude had of course regained its `pagan' positive meaning, although its negative evaluation had already begun to yield in, the early fifteenth century when in her Epistre d'Othee Christine de Pisan declared it a sign of `something spiritual and elevated above the earth'. 98 In the same spirit, in his representation of the Senses Pencz has used nudity as an ennobling attribute which, at the same time, of course underlines the essential sensuality of his theme. In style the five prints seem to fit the 1540s, the, last decade in Pencz's life. 99 A generation later they would still be used as models fr a set of small oval prints by the French engraver Etienne Delaune, who emigrated to Germany as a Protestant in 1572 (Pl. 9 a--e). 10° A goldsmith himself, he probably made the engravings to serve as patterns

96 Alma Helfrich-Dörner, Messer, L5ffel, ' Gabel, seit On this poem see F. Raby, 'The Date and Authorship of wann?, Schwäbisch Hall 1955, pp. 15 fl: Gertrud Benker, the poem "Adoro to deuote"', Speculum, xx, 1945, Alter Besteche, Munich 1978, pp. 15 ft The earliest forks pp. 236-38- were in fact two-pronged. According to F. Braudel, 98 'Et pource que deitte est chose espirituele et eslevee Cirilisation materielle et capitalisme, t: Le possible et de terre, sont les ymages figures en nues', quoted from ! 'impossible, Paris 1967, pp. 150-51, one has to wait until Marc-Rene Jung, Etudessur le po&mealligorique en France 1599 to find a fork represented in a painting of the Last au moyen-dge(Romanics helvetica, tacxxu), Bern 1971, Supper. Maybe, however, this is not the topic one p. 12, n. 12. should first consider in order to find the fork depicted on 99 Such a dating was suggested already by Carl von a laid table. Lützow, Geschichtedes deutschen Kupferstichs and Holzschnit- 97 Starting with Aristotle, Sight precedes Hearing in tes, Berlin 1891, P. 202. Landau, op. cit. n. 9o above, the ancient ranking of the Senses (Vinge, op. cit. n. 3 pp. 62-63, proposes more precisely 1544, with reference above, p. 18.)By contrast, medieval thought more often to the stylistically related engraving of a Harpist, dated gave precedence to Hearing, as the Sense by which faith that year. is taught, according to the word of St. Paul, fides ex auditu 100A. P. F. Robert-Dumesnil, Le peintregraceurfranfais, (Rom. x, 14). A striking formulation of this concept is in 1x, Paris 1865, PP-51-52, nos 149-53" A. Linzeler, the two lines of a sacramental hymn, ascribed to Inventaire du fonds franfais [du Cabinet des Estampes), Thomas Aquinas: Graveursdu XVI` siicle, t, Paris 1932-35, pp. 245-46. J. F. Visus, gustus, cactus in to fallitur, Hayward, Virtuoso Goldsmithsand the Triumph of Manner- Sed auditu solo tute creditur. ism, 154o-r62o, London 1976, pp. 180-83. FIVE SENSES 21 for the flourishing goldsmithing industry in Augsburg. 101 The Senses are shown as women in classical tunics, standing in a landscape and accompanied by their symbolic animals. Stylistically they are derived from the school of Fontainebleau; in iconography, however, they depend upon Pencz's series. Evidently it did not matter too much to Delaune that the switch from indoor to outdoor setting and from seated to standing postures prevented the personifications from being engaged in their activities in the same natural way as were their German prototypes, so that they are forced rather to resort to mere gestures. Sight is pointing with outstretched arm towards Heaven, Hearing to her ear and Touch to a loom which stands idle on the ground. Instead of a cornucopia, Smell holds to her nostrils a flower picked from a basket, and Taste's fork and plate have been replaced by a jug and ladle. About the same time as Delaune, a German woodcarver, Hans Dreger, made use of the engravings by Pencz for the decoration of the wainscot which he executed between 1572 and 1583 for the house of a wealthy merchant in Lübeck and which is now installed in the so-called Fredenhagen room of the Haus der K'aufnannsc/iaf in that city. 102 Overloaded with a mass of architectural and ornamental motifs, which are interspersed with statuettes and figurative reliefs, it is the most sumptuous Renaissance interior preserved anywhere north of the Alps. Along the principal wall, within arches of multicoloured laminae, are epitaphlike structures, and at the centre of each is a relief of one of the Senses faithfully copied from Pencz (Pl. gf). The prominence given in this scheme to the Five Senses suggests that the room was originally conceived as banqueting hall. 103As if the message needed repeating, the theme is reiterated in a set of alabaster reliefs, imported from Antwerp, Lübeck's rival as the centre of North European trade. This set of Five Senses is somewhat different in iconography from that of Pencz. 104Inserted into the upper part of the `epitaphs', these are not the only parts of the decoration in alabaster, for in the zone above them are larger reliefs in this material illustrating scenes from the life of Christ, each chosen to correspond in content to the Sense below in an idea which is likewise paralleled in prints from Antwerp: above Hearing is the Annunciation, above Sight the Adoration of the Shepherds, above Smell the Magi offering frankincense and myrrh, above Taste the Marriage of Cana and above Touch the Deposition of Christ. 105

101On the Augsburg goldsmiths see Hayward, op. cit., 104Similar alabaster reliefs exist in the Schleswig- pp. 225-39, and Carl Hernmarck, TheArt of eheEuropean Holsteinsche Landesmuscum, Schleswig, Inv. no. Silversmiths : 43o-183a, London and New York 1979, 1922/9 (Sight) and 1935/4 (Touch). pp. 23-25. 105 The combination of the Five Senses with five 102Hans Arnold Gräbke, `Die Kunstschätze im Hause episodes from the life of Christ was used about the same der Kaufmannschaft', too Jahre Industrie- und Handels- time by Maarten de Vos in three of his five cycles of the , kammer und Kaufmannschaft zu Lübeck. Lübeck 1953, Five Senses published by different Antwerp printers. pp. 103-50. Gerhard Eimer, Das FredenhagenscheZimmer His choice of themes, however, differs from that in the zu Lübeck, unpublished Diss. Kiel 1953. Kunst-Topo- Fredenhagen room, Sight being combined with Christ graphie Schleswig Holstein (Die Kunstdenkmäler des healing the blind, Hearing with john the Baptist Landes Schleswig-Holstein, ed. H. Besseler), preaching in the wilderness, Smell with Mary Mag- Neumünster 1969, pp. 116-17, fig. 274. dalene anointing the feet of Christ, Taste with the 103There are other banqueting halls decorated with Feeding of the multitude, and Touch with Peter rescued representations of the Five Senses, the most important by the hand of Christ when trying to walk on the water. being in Bolsover Castle, Derby (17th century) and Schloss Leitheim, Bavaria (ißth century). 22 CARL NORDENFALK The duplication of the theme of the Five Senses suggests that the patron wanted his wainscot to look up-to-date. For if the wooden reliefs are the offshoot of a fast vanishing Renaissance tradition, those in alabaster belong to the new `Mannerist' version of the theme which from 1561 onwards was popularized through prints of different Flemish artists. This new imagery of the Five Senses however, deserves, a treatment of its own. 106

NATIONAL MUSEUM, STOCKHOLM

106A survey of the 16th-century Flemish engravings Mannerism (Nationalmusei Skriftserie, N. S. tv), representing the Five Senses is Nordenfalk, 'The Five Stockholm 1985, pp. 135-54- Senses in Flemish Art before 16oo', A'elherlandish FIVE SENSES

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