7

Horses as Love Objects: Shaping Social and Moral Identities in Hans Baldung Grien's Bewitched Groom (circa 1544) and in Sixteenth-Century Hippology

Pia F. Cuneo

Just outside a stall, a groom lies supine near the rear hooves of a horse who turns to glower at the viewer while a bare-breasted hag brandishing a torch leans in through the stable's window. Felled by mysterious forces, the groom is further victimized by a perspective that violently foreshortens his body. The horse too is strategically posed for visual consumption but the awkward yet vigorous turn of its head, the open, down-turned mouth, and the manner in which it fixes the viewer with its gaze signal the animal's smoldering resistance to the imposed perspectival constraints and to any hermeneutic certainties. The woodcut illustrating this bizarre scene bears the prominent mark of its maker; the hapless groom's fallen pitchfork leads the viewer's eye to the simple tablet in the right foreground bearing Hans Baldung's monogram. A preparatory drawing in Basel of the figure of the groom dated 1544 indicates that the woodcut was produced at approximately this time.1 The artist died in the following year, 1545. Hans Baldung Grien's woodcut, known as the Bewitched Groom (Fig. 7.1), remains one of the most tantalizing and puzzling images in the history of early modern art. One of the reasons for its interpretive intransigence is that the image runs roughshod over the venerable tradition of equestrian iconography. Titian's portrait of the emperor Charles V at Schmalkalden, painted in 15482 and thus almost exactly contemporaneously to Baldung's Bewitched Groom, depicts the very essence of that iconography. In its display of the powerful stallion's complete submission to his rider's effortless control, the image asserts human rational mastery over an animal irrational other. Titian mobilizes an iconography that functions to assuage the very fears that Baldung's print seems so nightmarishly to evoke. In the claustrophobic confines of the stable, the animal is powerfully present while human rationality seems to have fled the scene. Pia F. Cuneo 153

Scholars have responded vigorously to the gauntlet flung by Baldung's hand. Some have endeavored to find a textual source that would account for the image's cast of characters and provide them with a stable and explanatory narrative framework. Various local folktales and legends and even fragments of ancient Roman satire have all been proposed as candidates.3 Others have taken the relationship between Baldung and his mentor and friend, Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), as the primary basis of interpretation. Linda Hults, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, and Joseph Leo Koerner are eloquent and convincing proponents of this line of argumentation which essentially sees Baldung engaging in a self-conscious dialog with Diirer.4 Baldung's artistic response to Diirer is characterized as everything from comic to terrifying and is understood to indicate that Baldung questioned and indeed rejected the ideals of stability and harmony as the goal of art, or, for that matter, carnal restraint as a viable possibility for human behavior. The Bewitched Groom is thus most often interpreted as a site for the expression of sexual and professional identities that are complex, problematic, ambiguous, and also deeply personal. Scholars tend to focus their efforts on divining the artist's intent. What was it that Baldung wanted to say in this print? Knowing his intent is tantamount to mastering the print's meanings. Fundamental to many of the interpretations sketched above is the understanding of the figure of the horse as a symbol of unrestrained carnality and lust. The classical and medieval texts, the folktales and legends referenced in the articles cited above also serve to provide proof of and precedence for the interpretation of the horse in this manner. For scholars, the animal is interesting only in terms of its function as something else, namely as a one­ dimensional symbol of human sexuality and the dangers of its unbridled expression. In these interpretations, the fact that the animal in the print is a horse is entirely secondary to its metaphorical function. As a signifier, the horse can certainly connote sexuality, and by extension, the artist, and artistic expression. And yet, what is it about the horse that allowed it in early modern culture to signify such phenomena? What kinds of attitudes and assumptions about this animal held currency at this time? Antique discourse contributed significantly to shaping these attitudes, but early modern man did not live by Aristotle alone. Attitudes were also shaped by the roles horses played in early modern life; by the horse-human interactions that took place and the physical, practical exigencies that arose from horse-keeping; and, at a further level, by the contemporaneous discourse on just these roles, interactions, and practices. In my analysis of Bal dung's Bewitched Groom, I argue for additional layers of interpretation by considering two interrelated aspects that have been mostly overlooked by the extant scholarship. One of these aspects is the central importance of the horse. My analysis treats the horse not as a symbol but as a real presence that acted as a locus for physical practice and intellectual 7.1 Hans Baldung Grien, Bewitched Groom, 33.8 x 19.8 cm, woodcut, c. 1544, discourse. I will argue that if we want to understand the resonances of this Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Prasse Collection 1966.172 profoundly ambiguous and probably intentionally difficult image, we need 154 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Pia F. Cuneo 155 to think about the horse as a physical presence with which most early modern together imply that the groom had intended to act on desires other than those people would have been necessarily familiar. As absent as horses are from for cleanliness. The print seems to hint strongly that one of the themes it most people's lives in the twenty-first century, so were they ubiquitous in the touches upon is bestiality. early modern period. They were seen in the fields as agricultural "equipment," While previous scholars have suggested a number of different references on the roads and in the cities as a means of transport for both goods and insinwi.ted by the print, such as sodomy, or the horse/witch constellation as a people, on the tournament swards and racing courses as entertainment, and metaphor of dangerous female sexual energy, they have delicately skirted the on the battlefields as instruments of war. Early modern people would have topic of outright bestiality. I believe this is so for two reasons. First, because seen, smelled, and touched horses, and many of them would have either been Baldung included his coat of arms and possibly his self-portrait as the groom, pulled in carriages or wagons by them or even ridden them. Furthermore, most scholars reasonably assume that the print is a personal statement made hippology, that is, the history and culture of the horse, was the subject of by the artist about himself. Therefore, they may be reluctant to think that the lively and copious early modern discourse that flowered in the second half of artist would be implicated-and much less implicate himself-in such beastly the sixteenth century and beyond. Between 1550 and 1600, we find well over practices. While much of the literature acknowledges and even accepts the twenty different printed works in the German language alone that deal with possibility that the figure of the groom is a self-portrait, not all scholars agree on the care, training, and breeding of horses.5 These works offer the historian this point. Like Sabine Soll-Tau chert who has recently published on Baldung' s valuable insights into practices and attitudes that both shaped and were self-portraits, I too am skeptical about identifying the figure as the artist.6 The shaped by human-horse interaction at the physical and discursive levels. distortion of the groom's face caused by the extreme foreshortening is too The other aspect, directly related to and interwoven with the focus on the great and the presence of a moustache and thick side-burns is too general to horse, is the possible identity of the print' s viewers. I use insights gained from allow for a definitive identification. Taken literally, the artist's coat of arms German hippological sources in order to reconstruct an audience for this print. affixed to the stable wall may refer to Baldung as owner of the structure, I speculate on what members of such an audience would bring to viewing this but it does not necessarily follow that the groom is a member of that same work and how they would understand it. Unlike existing scholarship which family (much less that he is Baldung himself) because a man who performed almost exclusively focuses on artistic intention, I am interested in audience such menial tasks as removing manure and cleaning animals would have reception, an issue that has received only the most general of considerations in been a hired employee. Even if Baldung did mean the figure of the groom previous literature on the print. I am also interested in following the reception to refer in some way to himself, later sixteenth-century viewers looking at of Baldung's print beyond the context of the artist's own lifetime and into the the print well after Baldung's death would most likely not have caught this second half of the sixteenth century. reference and would have constructed meanings from the print that did not Poised at the threshold of the stall, Baldung's horse turns to address the hinge upon an identification that they could not have recognized. Although viewer directly with a piercing gaze. What are we to make of this animal? in some senses primary, artistic intent nonetheless does not foreclose possible Certainly the horse's expression, taken together with the stricken groom and further meanings produced by ongoing interaction between an image and its the malevolent old woman, indicates that something strange and threatening subsequent audiences. It is the response of such subsequent audiences that is occurring. Whatever that should be, it is happening inside a stable and interests me in particular. everything there quite literally points to the horse: the groom's body, the A second reason why scholars have not considered the topic of bestiality unicorn's horn in the escutcheon, and the hayrack. Indeed, there is no other in relation to the print is that most art historians have not taken a close look element in the composition that is so insistently framed, so carefully packaged, between the horse's legs. 7 Perhaps because of the animal's powerful build, than the horse: the animal's body is contained by the stall's opening, and forcefully articulated in the bulging musculature of the neck, shoulders, and the head is tightly circumscribed by the trough, hayrack, and window. It hindquarters, most scholars have assumed that the horse is a stallion. But behooves us to follow the lead of these visual signposts and to center our own this is not the case. By positioning the viewer behind the horse, Baldung sites on the horse. has surely gone out of his way to make sure that we are able to identify the The horse had certainly been-or was about to have been-the focus of the animal's sex: the swishing tail allows us to just glimpse the vulva (the anal groom's attention, as the pitchfork and curry comb that have dropped out of opening would be situated higher up, directly below the dock of the tail), his frozen hands clearly indicate. But in approaching the horse, was the man's and the view between the horse's hind legs would allow us to see testicles (if only intention to clean the stall and groom the animal? The probing view it were a stallion) or a sheath (if it were a gelding) if these male anatomical between the man's and the horse's legs that the perspective forces upon the features were present. They are not. Such details were not taken lightly by spectator, and the presence of flames and several phallic objects (pitchfork, Baldung. In his 1534 woodcut of an aroused stallion preparing to mount a torch, unicorn horn, the curved surface of the curry comb and even its handle) mare, Baldung shows us the female genitalia by similar means: the horse, in 156 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Pia F. Cuneo 157

a three-quarter view seen from behind, lifts her tail to swish away flies and of Baldung's earlier witch imagery.11 The supposed effects of witchcraft in in so doing reveals her vulva. The horse in Baldung's Bewitched Groom is also the Bewitched Groom are experienced by a stable-hand. To judge from the a mare, a biological reality that is literally thrust in the face of the viewer. We man's handsome livery and the appointment of the stable in which he has are meant to notice and to know. worked, the groom in the print seems to have a wealthy employer, but he It is in the compositional proximity of the male groom with the female himself would have been a man with little formal education. Not surprisingly, horse and of their relevant anatomical features in particular that implies a in the cases of early modern bestiality, it is precisely amongst these kinds of disturbing intimacy between the two beings. In addition, there is the old bare­ men who worked closely with animals where the behavior often occurred. breasted woman with the torch who is almost always identified by scholars These are also the sorts of men whom many wealthy horse owners would as a witch. The mouths of the three figures-woman, horse, and man-are all have employed to carry out similar kinds of work, especially in terms of open, indicating various expressions of emotions evoked by their experience caring for fine horses. Baldung's groom, spread out before the viewer in his of one another. Linking bestiality with witchcraft in this image would in fact ignominious pose, may therefore be an object of social and moral disdain; the make sense since intercourse with animals became increasingly understood as viewer is literally meant to look down upon him as a person unenlightened evidence of heresy and dealings with the devil in late medieval attitudes.8 As enough to believe in witchcraft and foolish enough to fall in love with a horse. the devil usually assumed different shapes in order to seduce his victims, the Like Hults and a number of other scholars, I am hypothesizing that mare in this possible narrative is the devil in disguise, and the old woman acts members of Baldung's original audiences (that is, those accessing his work as a kind of demonic procuress who enthusiastically facilitates an encounter within a few years after production) included men who were outstanding in which we are not even sure actually has or at some point will take place. In the their level of education, social status, and economic means. In studying this early modern period, bestiality was a well-known and vigorously prosecuted print in particular, I argue, such men may well have found the explanation activity. Based on familiarity with legal trials, Hani Miletski asserts that for bestiality in literal bewitchment as laughable. To a certain degree, "bestiality was well established in ordinary life in Europe" between the Baldung himself would have belonged to this circle of men. As is already well sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.9 Bestiality was linked primarily with known, his father, uncle, brother, and cousins were all university-educated sodomy and also with witchcraft, and cases from early modern England, and deeply imbedded in elite ecclesiastical, juridical, cultural, and political Germany, and Switzerland have been published.10 Most of the people accused networks. Not only Baldung's immediate family gave him access to these of bestiality were men, and some tried to explain their actions by asserting networks; so did his own wealth, accumulated through shrewd investments that they had been bewitched. in property, land, civic bonds, and peasant debt.12 Baldung counted some But has Baldung's groom succumbed to his diabolically inspired desire? of the most powerful men in the Germanic lands as his patrons, such as the Although it appears that he has fallen under an evil spell, his codpiece is Habsburg Emperor Maximilian (1459-1519), the Archbishop of Magdeburg still securely fastened. Nonetheless, he has been unmanned, not only by the Ernst of Saxony (1464-1513), the Margrave of Baden, Count Palatine Philip, witch's spell but also by the artist's composition which lays the figure out, Landgrave Ludwig of Lowenstein, and Landgrave Georg of Erbach, as well utterly defenseless against our spectral examination of the most vulnerable as local nobility, wealthy merchants, and bankers from Strasbourg. By 1527, parts of his body. In a further feminization, the central seam of the codpiece Baldung lived in Strasbourg's most fashionable neighborhood where he which runs directly between the groom's legs gives his crotch the appearance rubbed elbows with the likes of patrician clans and cathedral canons. From of a female pudenda with clearly distinct labia. Indeed there is something 1533 until his death in 1545, Baldung belonged to the ruling council of his vaguely ridiculous about the whole image. The position of the groom's body guild Zur Steitz, one of the eight most powerful and wealthy guilds out of is so extreme and so humiliating that one could find the view between his legs a total of 20, 13 and there is ample evidence of his personal and professional and up his nose to his bug-like protruding eyes to be cruelly comical. This is involvement in Alsatian humanist networks. a perspective that distances the viewer physically and emotionally from the Baldung thus clearly belonged socially to those ranks of men who would figure; it provokes disdain more than it evokes empathy. The old hag with own or at least be familiar with and appreciate fine horses. He may well have her sagging breast and toothy leer is more of a caricature than a figure who owned and loved horses himself, to judge from his keen observation of equine inspires genuine fear and loathing. Even the horse who sticks her rear end in behavior and from the fact that he appears to use the figure of the horse as the viewer's face and then turns around to give him a withering stare is faintly a vehicle for his own artistic advancement. Even Baldung's profession as a funny. painter would have provided him with further connections to others involved Perhaps Bal dung's audience would have understood this scenario as poking with horses. Artists and saddlers were often professionally associated in the fun at the gullibility of those unenlightened segments of society who believe Middle Ages and into the early modern period.14 Painters and saddlers both in the power of witches, as Linda Hults has speculated about the function worked with joiners who would provide the former with panels and frames 158 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODER IDENTITY Pia F. Cuneo 159 and the latter with the wooden trees that constituted the structural backbone would have understood the image to reference just this issue by hinting at of the saddle. In some cases, painters and saddlers even belonged to the potential transgressions of appropriate boundaries. They would have seen same guild. This was true of Baldung's own guild, Zur Steitz, up until the late several indications of improper affection, of unseemly ardor, a dynamic love 1 fifteenth century. 5 for horses that goes too far. Furthermore, Baldung's Strasbourg had a long history connecting horse Certainly bestiality would occupy the extreme end of a range of behaviors ownership with strategic civic defense, social status, and personal wealth. associated with a man's passion for horses. Elite horsemen would have been Already at the end of the thirteenth century, the citizens of Strasbourg were familiar with the topic of bestiality through a number of avenues including obligated to support the maintenance of horses (for official use such as in war) stable rumors and actual prosecuted cases. Bestiality, particularly between in the civic stable, either by a monetary contribution or by an actual animal human and horse, was a theme addressed already in antiquity. In his book (or several). In either case, the value of the sum or the horse was calculated On the Characteristics of Animals, the second-century Roman writer Aelian tells according to each person's economic bracket.16 And in order for a citizen to the story of the groom Eudemus who consummated his desire for a beautiful move up into the ranks of the patriciate, he must be able to prove that as mare. The story has a bad ending for, as Aelian intimates, even the animal far back as his grandfather's generation, his family had served the city by kingdom punishes such unnatural behavior; the foolish groom is struck down personally maintaining and contributing stallions and other horses to public and ripped to pieces by the mare's foal who witnessed the man's misguided defense.17 Although the city began in circa 1500 to hire professional soldiers lovemaking.22 Renaissance humanists eagerly translated and compiled such to fight its wars,18 guildsmen and patricians continued to supply horses to the stories from classical antiquity. They used their access to classical sources and civic stable well into the sixteenth century.19 As an institution, the Strasbourg their critical linguistic skills to produce works on a variety of topics, including civic stable seems to have been a locus of horsemanship for centuries, as the hippology, itself a classical discourse to which Aristotle, Vergil, Pliny, master of the stable, Caspar Reuschlin, wrote a book on training and bitting Columella, and Vegetius, among other ancient authors, had contributed. horses, dedicated to the members of the Strasbourg city council, and published Such products of humanist hippology printed in sixteenth-century Germany in the city in 1593.20 include the Latin translation by Nuremberg humanist Joachim Camerarius Reuschlin's book takes us well beyond the date of Baldung's death in 1545. (1500-74) of Xenophon's fourth-century BCE Greek tract on horsemanship In addition to thinking about Baldung's roughly contemporaneous audience, (1556), and Johann Fayser von Arnstein's German translation of classical I am interested in following the reception of Baldung's print into the second and Byzantine texts on equine diseases and their cures (1576). 23 Marx Fugger half of the sixteenth century. This makes sense because it is at this time that a (1529-97), the wealthy Augsburg humanist, hippologist, and merchant­ number of books on the care, breeding, and training of horses, like Reuschlin' s, banker, wrote his own book Von der Gestiiterey (On the Breeding of Horses), were produced. These sources provide us with attitudes, practices, and first published in 1578, which is full of classical references.24 Both Fayser and discourses centered around horses and horse-ownership that may well help Fugger quote Aelian at length, and Fayser specifically includes the story of us to understand Baldung's print better relative to a plausible audience. Based Eudemus.25 on the print's own insistent focus on the horse, I am hypothesizing that men Thus it is possible that a classically educated man, or an attentive reader who owned, rode, and bred horses, and men who wrote, bought, and read the of sixteenth-century hippological works such as Fugger's, might have looked kinds of books on horses that I will discuss below, would have been interested at Baldung's print and found references on several levels. In attempting to in the Bewitched Groom. They would have looked at the print with the same read the relationship between the mare and the groom, such a viewer might eyes with which they evaluated their horses, studied their books, surveyed have been reminded of Aelian's story of the love-struck groom Eudemus from the labors of their grooms, stable-masters, horse trainers, and riding masters, antiquity and found it amusingly linked to contemporaneous notions about and judged their peers' ability in the saddle. To the viewing of a print in witchcraft. He might have used the image, for example, to muse about the which the figure of the horse plays such a striking and central role, horseman great arc of human folly spanning antiquity and the present. would have brought a keen awareness based on personal experience of issues Yet there are dangers even for an elite audience of horsemen, hints that and attitudes involved in human-horse relationships and practices. These in fact encourage an eroticized appreciation of the horse and that could also would include attitudes about hired stable-hands, as I have argued above, as lead to an excessive kind of fondness. Baldung surely meant the viewer of his well as the issue regarding attitudes about horses themselves. In relation to woodcut to notice the swelling, taut, curved shape of the mare's hindquarters. his animals, what attitudes were appropriate for a horseman to possess? Just He has accentuated that shape by placing it directly adjacent to the central axis how fond of his horse might a rider be?21 In hippological texts of the second of the image, and by highlighting it as an area of bright light bounded at the top half of the sixteenth century, we find attempts to circumscribe the parameters by a heavy dark shadow. In some of the hippological literature, discussion of of proper attitudes and behavior. I argue that audiences for Baldung's print ideal equine conformation includes comparison between a well-shaped horse 160 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Pia F. Cuneo 161

and a beautiful woman. According to this comparison, both horse and woman 7.2 The Petrarch should possess a shapely posterior (and breast), a desire to be "ridden," and iJ!'aa al1berbfu;lji\1onilft;11er_. Master, woodcut the ability to make pleasant movements underneath their "riders." 26 If we illustration to Ch. add to this notions of antiquity transported into the Renaissance about the 127, in Petrarch, Von der Artzney lustful nature of horses, especially of mares, 27 we can understood how, for aon einem fO?gf el rig en fl'erbenben menfcbcn ' wic ce mit ftynen gtittern vnb fintvrn gel)cn wcrb. . bayder Gliick a sixteenth-century audience, Baldung's image practically explodes with DasCXXVII. Capitd. ... (Heinrich sexually charged energy. In the end, total condemnation for the hapless Steiner, 1532), groom is at least blunted by the image's inescapable sensuality and ultimate fol. 169v. Image inscrutability. courtesy of the National Library Responses to the print may also have included a critical awareness of of Medicine, another kind of love for horses and its related overindulgence, namely the Bethesda MD passion of wealthy men for finely bred equines and the potentially vast amounts of money, time, space, and manpower that they lavished on caring for and maintaining these animals. In his book Von der Gestiiterey, Marx Fugger explicitly warns his readers against ruining themselves with related costs. In a chapter entitled "On the Large Expenses Incurred in the Care and Breeding of Horses," Fugger insists that "every man should care for his horses according to the [limits of] his means and his status, and he should not waste his resources on this. For as God commanded in Deuteronomy chapter 17 a king of Israel should not overburden himself with an excess of horses."28 Possessing horses and squandering income on them were evidently temptations to which wealthy men were particularly prone. Both earlier and later sixteenth-century audiences were aware of this. A woodcut illustration from circa 1520 clearly demonstrates the association between horse-ownership and wealth and the accompanying text criticizes emotional attachment to physical The woodcut serves to illustrate Petrarch's Chapter 127, which deals with possessions. I am proposing that this woodcut, easily accessible to Baldung, worries about what will happen to one's possessions, wealth, and children may in fact have influenced his composition and intention in the Bewitched after one has died.32 The text, a dialog between Fear and Reason, has Fear Groom woodcut. The connection between these two woodcuts has not been wondering and worrying about what will become of his possessions after his noticed in the scholarship on Baldung to date and the proposal that Baldung death, and bemoans the fact that he cannot take it with him: "I leave behind might have used this earlier woodcut is being made here for the first time. such treasures and go naked from hence!" Reason answers: A woodcut (Fig. 7.2), one of 261, was made by the Petrarch Master to illustrate the German translation of Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae Naked you came into the world, and naked you shall leave it. But you have (1358/66). The woodcuts were already completed by August 1520 but the book no reason for complaint, only for gratitude. While you lived, you were given the use of things that never belonged to you in the first place, so at your death 29 was not published until 1532 by Heinrich Steiner in Augsburg. Baldung may nothing that was truly yours is being taken from you.33 have come to the book through his humanist connections.30 Petrarch's work was known, appreciated, recommended, and published under the aegis of the Petrarch's fourteenth-century text makes no explicit reference to horses as humanist Sebastian Brant (1457-1521), who, like Baldung, lived in Strasbourg. treasured possessions, but the woodcut does. In fact, in the image we see In the foreword to the 1532 German translation of Petrarch's De remediis written a number of components that we know from Baldung's woodcut: a horse by the publisher, Steiner specifically states that it was Brant who guided the seen from behind standing in a stall filled with straw and including a unnamed artist in producing the woodcut illustrations to the edition. This hayrack; a man lying down with the axis from his feet to his head running richly illustrated German translation of Petrarch proved to be very popular. perpendicular to the picture plane; demonic creatures interacting with the Following the original edition by Steiner in 1532 came subsequent editions in man and with his possessions; even the strange low platform upon which 1539, 1551, 1559, 1572, 1583, 1584, 1596, 1604, 1620, and 1637.31 Thus the text the man's deathbed is placed and which gives the entire scene a rather and its illustrations would have been available to Baldung, his contemporary theatrical flavor is similar to the edging we see to the right of the groom's audience, and a later sixteenth-century audience as well. feet in Baldung's composition. 162 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDE TITY Pia F. Cuneo 163

Baldung may have felt himself challenged by the woodcut's composition associated with the production and reception of such hippological books is and he also may have been struck by the themes articulated in the interaction very similar to the social and political status of Baldung's patrons and peers between the woodcut image and the text by Petrarch.34 In Baldung's woodcut, mentioned above. Petrarch's text, and the Petrarch Master's illustration we find a similar A critical engagement with hippological culture, which would include not accent on prized property that, however, eludes complete possession. The just involvement in practices (such as breeding and riding) but also access to Petrarch Master's illustration goes beyond the text to include the horse as a scholarly and technical discourses (such as reading books on horses) as well as prized possession and to depict the demonic influence on the inappropriate to artistic products (such as viewing Baldung's print) may well have served to attachment to those possessions. Exactly these elements are found again in strengthen a sense of group identity among such men. Along with the social, Baldung's print. economic, and political prestige they enjoyed, such men also presumably But Baldung has transformed the Petrarch Master's rather predictable shared the knowledge, skill, and resources necessary to the proper care and variation on the Ars Moriendi theme into a complex and multivalent image also to the expert riding of fine horses. in which the horse shares center stage with the human figure. In Baldung's Baldung, his peers, and his later sixteenth-century audiences all belonged woodcut, the mare certainly fits the profile of a pampered animal and prized to the types of men who would have owned fine horses, employed grooms to possession. Baldung's coat of arms located adjacent to her stall may serve to look after them, purchased books dedicated to other elite men on the care of reference the artist himself, but it also characterizes the space of the stable horses, and enjoyed the numerous references therein to sources from classical as the property of someone with resources to spare. The pilaster, finely antiquity. Discerning, educated, appreciative of fine things, these men may decorated at its capital and base and framing the left side of the horse's well also have been the purchasers/recipients of Baldung's print. The image's stall, functions similarly. Like the possible resonance with Aelian's story of visual and narrative complexity, its elitist and misogynistic implications, and Eudemus, the pilaster also serves to introduce a classical note that would its odd and compelling eroticism, would presumably all find favor in the eyes have been appreciated by learned viewers. The mare's full frame, powerful of such viewers. So indeed would the print's focus on the horse. Sixteenth­ musculature, and luxuriously thick mane and tail coincide with the kind century audiences steeped in hippological culture would have understood, of equine ideal formulated in texts by horseman and in imagery by artists, even from personal experience, that humans' attraction to horses could be but they also bespeak of proper and generous nutrition and exercise. Her extremely powerful and thus in need of careful physical, moral, and economic hooves are expertly shod with heel caulks to prevent her from slipping and control. Poised at the threshold of her stall, and hovering at the limit of damaging her legs. She possesses her own stall and personal groom. Whether rational consciousness, the mare and the groom are together suspended in she functions as either a broodmare or as a riding horse, in either case she a moment and in a state that hint simultaneously at the urgent need for and has been the recipient of generous amounts of money, time, and care.3s the ultimate impotence of such control. It is the love of humans for horses A later German source on the training of horses in fact exhorts its readers and its potentially destabilizing effects that act as a kind of centrifugal force not to fall into "heathenish" ways by lavishing excessive attention on their holding the print's disparate and puzzling components together in a single animals. The author, stable-master to the Saxon dukes, sternly warns against and disquieting orbit. displaying inordinate affection because "that sort of irrational love for horses is unseemly." Instead, the proper goal of true horsemanship is to render the horse industrious and obedient.36 Indeed, Baldung's menacing mare seems the Acknowledgments farthest thing from industrious and obedient that one could possibly imagine. Yet it is of course precisely these desires to own, breed, train, and care My thanks to Peter Foley, Stacie Widdifield, Corine Schleif, and Miranda for horses that must have driven the market for the books discussed above, Metcalf for their critical encouragement. and perhaps for Baldung's image as well. Books on just these topics were produced in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and were dedicated to the likes of the Archduke of Austria, the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Notes Upper and Lower Bavaria, the Duke of Braunschweig and Liineburg, various All translations from the German are mine. dukes of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen, sundry local nobility, imperial councilors and courtiers, 1 For the 1544 drawing as well as the woodcut, see Jay Levenson's catalog entries in Han s Baldung Grien: Prints and Drawings, eds. James Marrow and Charles Talbot and even to members of city governments such as the city council ofBaldung's (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 270-75, cat. nos. 86-87; and Bodo own Strasbourg. Anticipated readership of these books would have included Brinkmann, Hexenlust und Siindenfall: Die seltsamen Phantasien des Hans Baldung allies and subjects of the dedicatees. The social and political status of the men Grien (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2007), 191-98, and 265, cat. no. 49. 164 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Pia F. Cuneo 165

2 Titian, Charles Vat Miihlberg, 1548, oil on canvas, Madrid, Museo de! Prado. Basler Ju rsidiktion in Stadt und Land 1399-1799 (Liestal: Verlag des Kantons 3 For example, Charmian A. Mesenzeva, "Der behexte Stallknecht des Hans Basel-Landschaft, 2002); and Helmut Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Baldung Grien," Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte 44 (1981), 57-61; Dale Hoak, "Art, Switzerland, 1400-1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Culture, and Mentality in Renaissance Society: The Meaning of Hans Baldung 11 Hults, "Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: The Evidence of Images," Journal Grien's Bewitched Groom (1544)," Renaissance Quarterly 38/3 (1985), 488-510; of Interdisciplinary History 18/2 (1987), 249-76. Margaret Sullivan, "The Witches of Diirer and Hans Baldung Grien," Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000), 378-92. 12 For Baldung's social and economic circumstances, see Thomas A. Brady Jr., "The Social Place of a German Renaissance Artist: Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85-1545) 4 Linda Hults Boudreau, "Hans Baldung Grien and Albrecht Diirer: A Problem at Strasbourg," in Central European History 8/4 (1975), 295-315. in Northern Mannerism," PhD diss. (University of North Carolina, 1978); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, "Hermeneutics in the History of Art: Remarks 13 For Baldung's neighborhood, see Brady, "Social Place," 299-300; for the on the Reception of Di.irer in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries," placement of Zur Steitz in the overall guild hierarchy, see Thomas A. Brady Jr., in New Perspective on the Art of Renaissance Nuremberg: Five Essays, ed. Jeffrey Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520-1550 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, Chipps Smith (Austin: Arche M. Huntington Art Gallery, 1985), 22-39, esp. 1978), 120-21. 30-33; Josef Leo Koerner, The Mom en t of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art 14 A drawing of a stained-glass design for a saddler, c. 1510, is attributed to (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 426-47; Linda Hults, The Witch as Baldung in From a Mighty Fortress, ed. C. Andersson and C. Talbot (Detroit Muse: Art, Gender and Power in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Institute of Arts, 1983), 56-57. Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 96-104. 15 Martin Alioth, Gruppen an der Macht. Zunfte und Patrizia! in Strafiburg im 5 Printed books on hippology in the German language from 1562-99 include: 14. und 15. fahrhundert. Untersuch ungen zu Verfassung, Wirtschaftsgefiige Kreutzberger, Eygentliche .. . Contrafactur und Formen der Gebifl, lst ed. (1562); und Sozialstruktur, vol. 1 (Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Helbing Tufft and Frolich's translation of Grisone (Augsburg, 1566); Johann Fayser von & Lichtenhahn, 1988), 345-50. The saddlers separated from the painters, Arnstain, translation of Grisone, 1st ed., Hippiatria ... Rofiarzney (Augsburg, goldsmiths, and others around 1471 to join the guild of tanners; my thanks to 1570); Ruellius, Rofiarzney, trans. Zechendorff, 1st ed. (Nuremberg, 1571); Professor Sabine von Heusinger, University of Mannheim (Germany), for Fayser, translation of Grisone, 2nd ed. (Augsburg, 1573); Ruellius, Rofiarzney, this clarification. trans. Zechendorff, 2nd ed. (Nuremberg, 1575); Fayser, Hippiatria ... Rofiarzney (Augsburg, 1576); Herwart von Hohenberg, Kunst der Reyterey, lst ed. 16 Alioth, Gruppen an der Macht, vol. 1, 298-312. (Tegernsee, 1577); Fugger, Von der Gestiiterey, lst ed. (Augsburg, 1578); Fayser, 17 Alioth, Gruppen an der Macht, vol. 1, 243-44. translation of Grisone, 3rd ed. (Augsburg, 1580); Herwart von Hohenberg, Kunst der Reyterey, 2nd ed. (Tegernsee, 1581); Anonymous, Rofiarzney, ed. 18 Brady, Ruling Class, 69. Wyriot (Strasbourg, 1583); Fugger, Von der Gestiiterey, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt, 1584); 19 See Brady, Ruling Class, 68, table 2. L.V.C., Ritterliche Reu tterku nst (Frankfurt, 1584); Mang Seuter, Gebiflbuch (1584); Loehneysen, Vom Zeumen (1588); Creutzberger [sic], Eygentliche ... Contrafactur 20 Caspar Reuschlein, Hippiatria: Grundtlicher unnd eigen tlicher Bericht van Art und und Formen der Gebifi, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1591); Caspar Reuschlin, Hippiatria Eygenschafften der Pferde (Strasbourg: Jobin, 1593). I have no information on (Strasbourg, 1593); Rofiarzney, ed. Foillett (Strasbourg, 1599); Fayser, translation Reuschlein other than that provided on the book's title page indicating that he is of Grisone, 4th ed. (1599); Reuschlin, Hippopronia (Strasbourg, 1599); Seuter, the retired civic stable-master of Strasbourg. Hippiatria/Rofiarzney (1583] (1599); Ruini, Anatomia dei cavalli (Bologna, 1599). 21 Karen Raber also investigates the slippery mixture of physicality, love, sex, 6 Sabine Soll-Tauchert, Hans Baldung Grien: Selbstbildnis und Selbstinzenierung and desire animating the practices and culture of horsemanship as referenced, (Bonner Beitrage zur Kunstgeschichte, n.F., vol. 8) (Vienna: Bohlau, 2010), in her study, in a number of Renaissance texts by Shakespeare and others: K. 257-58. Raber, "Erotic Bodies: Loving Horses," in Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 75--101. See also Elspeth 7 The few exceptions to this are Soll-Tauchert, Brinkmann, and Jens Jochen Sroka, Graham, "The Duke of Newcastle's 'Love ... for Good Horses': An Exploration Das Pferd als Ausdrucks- und Bedeutungstriiger bei Hans Baldung Grien (PhD diss., of Meanings," in The Horse as Cultural Icon: The Real and the Symbolic Horse in the Universitat Zurich, 2003). These scholars do identify the horse as a mare, but do Early Modern World, eds. Peter Edwards, Karl A.E. Enenkel and Elspeth Graham not raise the topic of bestiality in their interpretations. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 37-69. 8 Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 22 Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A.F. Scholfield, vol. 1 (Loeb 1994), 84-101; Charles Zika, "Diirer's Witch, Riding Women and Moral Order," Classical Library, vol. 446 (1958]) (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1971), in Dii.rer and his Culture, eds. Dagmar Eichberger and Charles Zika (Cambridge: 223. Cambridge University Press, 1998), 118-40. 23 Joachim Camerarius (1500-74), Xenophontis fiber de re equestri Latinus factus 9 Hani Miletski, "A History of Bestiality," Anthrozoos 18 (2005), 7. (Leipzig: Papa, 1556); Johann Fayser von Arnstain, Hippiatria ... Rofiiirtzney 10 For England, see Erica Fudge, "Monstrous Acts: Bestiality in Early Modern (Augsburg: Willer, 1576). England," History Today 50 (2000), 20-25; for Germany and Switzerland, see 24 Marx Fugger, Von der Gestiiterey [1578] (Frankfurt am Main: Feyerabend, 1584), Dietegen Guggenbiihl, Mil Tieren und Teufeln: Sodomiten und Hexen unter 81-89. For information on Fugger (1529-97) see most recently Mark Haberlein, 166 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY Pia F. Cuneo 167

Die Fugger: Geschichte einer Augsburger Familie (Suttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006), Bibliography 102--09; Sylvia Wolfie, Die Kunstpatronage der Fugger 1560-161 8 (Augsburg: WifSner, 2009), 13-99. Aelian. On the Characteristics of Animals, translated by A.F. Scholfield. Vol. 1 [Loeb 25 Fayser, Hippiatria, 153v. Classical Library, vol. 446, 1958]. London: William Heinemann, 1971.

26 There are variations on this comparison between a good woman and a good Alioth, Martin. Gruppen an der Macht. Ziinfte und Patriziat in Straflburg im 14. und 15. horse, and while the comparisons differ sometimes in terms of details, the Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zu Verfassu ng, Wirtschaftsgefiige und Sozialstruktur. Vol. main point is the same: that both women and horse should be beautiful to look 1. Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1988. at and pleasant to use. The earliest reference to this that I have come across Anonymous. Ein Newe und bewerte Roflartzney . Strasbourg: Niclas Wyriot, 1583. is in Herwart von Hohenburg, Kunst der Reyterey (Tegernsee, 1577), 3v; see also later references in an anonymous broadsheet from 1618, "Kurtzer und Anonymous. "Kurtzer und eigentliche Beschreibung deren 16 Eygenschafften I eigentliche Beschreibung deren 16 Eygenschafften I welche ein schon und welche ein schon und wolproportioniertes Pferdt an sich haben sol." Broadsheet wolproportioniertes Pferdt an sich haben sol," Wolfenbi.ittel, Herzog August 1618. Wolfenbi.ittel, Herzog August Bibliothek, IP 55. Bibliothek, IP 55. Boudreau, Linda Hults. "Hans Baldung Grien and Albrecht Di.irer: A Problem in 27 See for example Aelian, Characteristics of Animals, vol. 1, 225; and later echoes Northern Mannerism." PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1978. of Aelian in the anonymous Ein Newe und bewerte Roflartzney (Strasbourg, Brady, Thomas A., Jr. Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520-1550. 1583), 7. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978. 28 Fugger, Von der Gestiiterey, 36v. _ _ . "The Social Place of a German Renaissance Artist: Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85-1545) at Strasbourg." Central European History 8/4 (1975): 295-315. 29 Manfred Lemmer, "Nachwort," in Franciscus Petrarcha. Von der Artzney bayder Gliick I des Gu ten und widerwertigen [Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1532], (Leipzig: Brinkmann, Bodo. Hexenlust und Siindenfall: Die seltsamen Phantasien des Han s Ba/dung Edition Leipzig, 1983), 181-204. Grien. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2007. 30 For Baldung's connections with humanists, see Sergiusz Michalski, Han s Camerarius, Joachim. Xenophontis liber de re equestri Latin us factus. Leipzig: Papa, 1556. Ba/dung Grien; Buchholzschnitte aus Augsburger Bestiinden (Augsburg: Schroff, Dehnen Rothfelser, E. A. von. Von Abrichtung und Zaeumung. Dresden: Berg, 1637. 1992). As it turns out, Baldung's woodcut was probably made in the year before his own death. Baldung was then approximately sixty years old. We Enenkel, Karl A.E. "Der Petrarca des Petrarca-Meisters: Zurn Text-Bild-Verhaltnis in know nothing about the state of his health at this late stage in his life. But illustrierten De remediis-Ausgaben." In Petrarch and his Readers in the Renaissan ce, perhaps he had taken up Petrarch's famous book on how to deal with both edited by Karl A.E. Enenkel and Jan Papy, 91-170. Leiden: Brill, 2006. good and bad fortune, including its numerous chapters on meeting various Fayser von Arnstain, Johannes. Hippiatria: Grundlicher Bericht und aller ordennlichste fears at the hour of one's death, to find comfort for his own concerns. Bescreibung der bewerten Rofliirtzney [1570]. 2nd ed. Augsburg: Willer, 1576. 31 Karl A.E. Enenkel, "Der Petrarca des 'Petrarca-Miesters': Zurn Text-Bild­ From a Mighty Fortress: Prints, Drawings, and Books in the Age of Luther 1483-1546, Verhaltnis in illustrierten in De remediis-Ausgaben," Petrarch and his Readers in edited by Christiane Andersson and Charles Talbot. Detroit Institute of Arts, 1983 the Renaissance, eds. Karl A.E. Enenkel and Jan Papy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 91. Fudge, Erica. "Monstrous Acts: Bestiality in Early Modern England." History Today 50 32 Petrarch, Franciscus Petrarcha. Von der Artzney bayder Gliick I des Gu ten und (2000): 20-25. widerwertigen [Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1532] Leipzig, 1983, 169v-170v. Fugger, Marx. Von der Gestiiterey [1578]. Frankfurt am Main: Feyerabend, 1584. 33 Petrarch, Franciscus Petrarcha, 170v. Graham, Elspeth. "The Duke of Newcastle's 'Love ... for Good Horses:' An 34 Baldung may have been influenced in fact by a second woodcut by the Exploration of Meanings." In The Horse as Cultural Icon: The Real and the Symbolic Petrarch Master in the Steiner edition: the illustration to Chapter 31 in Book Horse in the Early Modern World, edited by Peter Edwards, Karl A.E. Enenkel, and 1 features a groom currying a horse, another animal seen directly from Elspeth Graham, 37-69. Leiden: Brill, 2012. behind in the left foreground, and, perhaps significantly for his earlier 1534 woodcuts, a herd of horses in the background forest. See Karl A.E. Guggenbi.ihl, Dietegen. Mit Tieren und Teufeln: Sodomiten und Hexen unter Basler Enenkel's insightful discussion of the Petrarch Master's illustration to this ]ursidiktion in Stadt und Land 1399-1799. Liestal: Verlag des Kantons Basel­ chapter, "Text-Bild-Verhaltnis," 114-22; Enenkel, however, does not mention Landschaft, 2002. Baldung's prints. Haberlein, Mark. Die Fugger: Geschichte einer Augsburger Familie. Stuttgart: 35 Mares were certainly used as working horses in the transportation and Kohlhammer, 2006. agricultural sectors, and as riding horses as well as broodmares; see Fugger, Von Herwart von Hohenburg, Hans Friedrich. Kun st der Reyterey. Tegernsee [1577]. der Gestiiterey, 75r-80v. Hoak, Dale. "Art, Culture, and Mentality in Renaissance Society: The Meaning of 36 E.A. von Dehnen Rothfelser, Von Abrichtung und Zaeumung (Dresden: Berg, Hans Baldung Grien's Bewitched Groom (1544)." Renaissance Quarterly 38/3 (1985): 1637), iir. 488-510. 168 ANIMALS AND EARLY MODERN IDENTITY 8

Hults, Linda. "Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: The Evidence of Images." journal On the Bit: Prince Maurits, Simon Stevin, of Interdisciplinary History 18/2 (1987): 249-76. and the Spanish Warhorse __ . The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender and Power in Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Ingrid Cartwright Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. "Hermeneutics in the History of Art: Remarks on the Reception of Diirer in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries." In New Perspective on the Art of Renaissance Nuremberg: Five Essays, edited by Jeffrey Chipps Smith, 22-39. Austin: Arche M. Huntington Art Gallery, 1985. Koerner, Josef Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Lemmer, Manfred. "Nachwort." In Franciscus Petrarcha. Von der Artzney bayder Gliick I des Gu ten und widerwertigen [Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1532], 181-204. Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1983. Levenson, Jay. Catalog entries in Han s Ba/dung Grien: Prints and Drawings, edited by James Marrow and Charles Talbot, 270-75, cat. nos. 86- 87. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Mesenzeva, Charmian A. "Der behexte Stallknecht des Hans Baldung Grien." Two storied warhorses, one fated and one feted, are at the center of the Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte 44 (1981): 57-61. mythology surrounding the Battle of Nieuwpoort, a short-lived yet violent Michalski, Sergiusz. Hans Ba/dung Grien; Buchholzschnitte aus Augsburger Bes tiinden. contest between Dutch and Spanish forces on 2 July 1600. The unlucky Augsburg: Schroff, 1992. casualty was one of Spanish governor general Archduke Albert's (1599-1621) Miletski, Hani. "A History of Bestiality." Anthrozoos 18 (2005): 1-22. favorites-a light-colored horse killed by a musket shot to the neck at close Petrarch. Franciscus Petrarcha. Von der Artzney bayder Gliick I des Guten und range. The horse allegedly saved the Archduke's life that day by rearing to widerwertigen [Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1532]. Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1983. take the fire aimed at the Spanish governor, allowing Albert to escape with Puff, Helmut. Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400-1600. Chicago: only a wound behind his ear thanks to "ii cavallo noble." As an honor, the University of Chicago Press, 2003. horse's skin was mounted on a wooden statue and returned to a memorial stall in the grand stables of the Archduke and Archduchess Isabella.1 The Raber, Karen. "Erotic Bodies: Loving Horses," in Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture, 75-101. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. stuffed horse still exists in a museum in Brussels as does the large gaping bullet hole near the horse's throat, a testament to its sacrifice in the Eighty Reuschlein, Caspar. Hippiatria: Grundtlicher unnd eigentlicher Bericht van Art und 2 Eygenschafften der Pferde. Strasbourg: Jobin, 1593. Years War. The other horse made famous at Nieuwpoort was also Albert's, but that Salisbury, Joyce. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages . London: Routledge, 1994. near-white stallion ended up as the pride of the victorious Dutch. Perhaps because the Archduke's mount was lost from under him, the commander of Soll-Tauchert, Sabine. Han s Ba/dung Grien: Se/b stbildnis und Selbstinzenierung [Bonner the Dutch cavalry, Lodewijk Gunther of Nassau-Siegen (1575-1604) seized Beitrage zur Kunstgeschichte, n. F., vol. 8]. Vienna: Bohlau, 2010. another stallion from Albert's prized string-one ridden by the Spanish Sroka, Jens Jochen. "Das Pferd als Ausdrucks- und Bedeutungstrager bei Hans commander-in-chief, Don Francisco de Mendoza (1547-1623). Mendoza was Baldung Grien." PhD diss., Universitiit Zurich, 2003. taken prisoner and the handsome stallion presented as booty to Maurits of Sullivan, Margaret. "The Witches of Diirer and Hans Baldung Grien." Renaissance Nassau (1567-1625), Prince of Orange and leader of the Dutch troops.3 In Quarterly 53 (2000): 378-92. the Dutch Republic, the striking horse quickly gained notoriety as a symbol Wolfie, Sylvia. Die Kun stpatronage der Fugger 1560-1618. Augsburg: Willner, 2009. of Spanish loss and Dutch gain, appearing as patriotic symbol in prints and Zika, Charles. "Diirer's Witch, Riding Women and Moral Order," in Diirer and his paintings over the following decades. Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1625) painted Culture, edited by Dagmar Eichberger and Charles Zika, 118-40. Cambridge: the famous horse in an unusual life-size work that is possibly unprecedented Cambridge University Press, 1998. (Fig. 8.1). The immense canvas, completed in 1603, illustrates Maurits' pride in his military prowess and also his great esteem for his "four-footed brood," which poet and Dutch States' secretary Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) Animals and Early Modern Identity

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