University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications and Creative Activity, School of Art, Art History and Design Art, Art History and Design, School of 1989 Sebald Beham's Fountain of Youth-Bathhouse Woodcut: Popular Entertainment and Large Prints by the Little Masters Alison G. Stewart University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/artfacpub Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Stewart, Alison G., "Sebald Beham's Fountain of Youth-Bathhouse Woodcut: Popular Entertainment and Large Prints by the Little Masters" (1989). Faculty Publications and Creative Activity, School of Art, Art History and Design. 15. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/artfacpub/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Art, Art History and Design, School of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications and Creative Activity, School of Art, Art History and Design by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in Register of the Spencer Art Museum, vol. VI, no. 6 (1989 [issued summer 1990]), pp. 64–88. Sebald Beham's Fountain of Youth-Bathhouse Woodcut: Popular Entertainment and Large Prints by the Little Masters Alison Stewart, University of Nebraska-Lincoln .1530, Nuremberg's poet-shoemaker Hans concept, but also to the belief in the fountain Sachs mentioned a fountain of youth as a reality, albeit one located in a distant located in the land of milk and honey, the place. As recently as 1977 the elixir Gerovital so-called Schlaraffenland. Sachs located the was imported from the German spa town fountain and Schlaraffenland some three miles Baden-Baden and was touted by some behind Christmas.' With this description, zealous supporters as a "fountain of youth."3 Sachs informed us of the sixteenth-century Sebald Beham designed a woodcut belief that there was more than one fountain representing a Fountain of Youth-Bathhouse that of youth, that one of them was found in a has been convincingly dated based on copies mythical location, and that this particular to the years ca. 1530131, when Sebald first fountain of youth would fulfill every used the monogram HSB printed at the gourmand's dreams. The fountain of youth center of the print.4 This date is corroborated was for Sachs, therefore, more imaginary than by the only known dated impression, which real. Pieter Bruegel's painting of also has a text (Oxford, the Ashmolean Schlaraffenland (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) Museum); the date 1531 and the name of the similarly delights in the gustatory and, publisher, Albrecht Glockendon, are printed therefore, sensual pleasures of the location at the end of the text below the print (Fig. 1). Sachs names for the rejuvenating fountain.2 The woodcut is large. It was printed onto Clearly there were contradictory opinions four sheets of full-size paper and measures on the subject of the fountain of youth in the over one foot high by three and one-half feet fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and these wide (506 x 1095 mm).5 It has more the size ranged from satirical descriptions of wrinkle- and format of a large foldout map than that removing mills and furnaces in farces to of Sebald's own postage stamp-sized medical discussions of elixirs for rejuvenating engravings. the old by the Swiss physician Paracelsus. The woodcut is known in two states. The theory that Ponce de Le6n was looking According to Hollstein and Pauli (no. 1120), for the fountain of youth when he discovered state I bears Beham's monogram while state Florida in 1513, though discredited, bears I1 includes the address of the Nuremberg witness not only to the popularity of the publisher, Albrecht Glockendon. In the latter Figure 1 Sebald Beham Fountain of Youth-Bathhouse ca. 1531 Woodcut Ashmolean Museum Oxford state, known only in the impression at fountain of youth theme in art was realized, Oxford, Glockendon's address identifying and it was on this tradition that Beham drew. him as publisher (Illuminist) is printed at the On a mid fifteenth-century French ivory comb upper right of the fountain immediately (London, Victoria and Albert Museum), for below the border of the print: "Albrecht example, a fool is represented between an old Glockendon Illuminist zw Nurmbergk."6 couple and a fountain with youthful bathers, Glockendon also signed his name, profession, thereby indicating the folly of the quest for and date below the image at the end of the youthfulness. The earliest German example text. The Oxford impression bears that text, of the fountain of youth has come down to us which is lengthy, below the image. It is in the form of a tapestry produced in Alsace hand-colored in brown, blue, and black tones in the first third of the fifteenth century and includes a woman urinating at the edge (Colmar, Muse'e dJUnterlinden).8 The old are of the bath basin, a detail that was later transported by litter and crutches, as in eradicated from the block. The Oxford Beham's woodcut, and by wheelbarrow and impression appears, in fact, to be a unique backpack to an enclosed area, perhaps a example of the first state, and not the earliest garden, accessible by two large gates. Once impression of that state, judging from the stripped of their clothing and immersed in breaks in the border lines at upper right. The the fountain's waters, the old regain their order of the two states as discussed in the youthful energies and desires. literature should, therefore, be reversed. The young man and woman at center Beham's print is unique in its delicately reach for one another in the juxtaposition of the subjects of the fountain of restrained manner reminiscent of the youth and bathhouse. In the left half of fourteenth century. The old man on crutches Sebald's woodcut, old men and women, states, in the banderole, "Praise God that I, an clothed and naked, arrive at the fountain of old man, have found the fountain." The youth by stretcher and on crutches. Once in young man on horseback behind the walls the fountain, the bathers-who are mostly adds, "We were also old. Our money was male-are transformed into young well spent."g musclemen who scale the fountain. They are The fountain of youth was first also transformed into amorous bathers in the represented as a print, the least expensive right part of the fountain basin and in the medium considered to have been the most Bathhouse half of the composition. In the popular one, in the third quarter of the latter, lovers embrace at far right and lounge fifteenth century by the Master of the together in bed at upper center. A variety of Banderoles (Fig. 2). His engraving of the bath utensils are strewn about before the bath 1460s stresses the erotic powers of the basin, and a group of spectators on the roof fountain's waters.10 The fountain is set within drinks, converses, and provides music. a Love Garden, which had become the Because Beham's print depicts both the canonical setting for lovers by the middle of fountain of youth and the bathhouse, which the fifteenth century when it included such have two distinct pictorial traditions, each water sources as fountains and springs." The subject will be treated individually here. thick wall of the fountain here forms the Representations of the fountain of youth date boundary between the old and young, as it back to fourteenth-century French does in Beham's Fountain of Youth-Bathhouse. manuscripts and ivories in w1.j-h the old are In the Master of the Banderoles' print, the shown transported by means of horse-drawn young are engaged in erotic play. The young wagons and wheelbarrows to rejuvenating woman in the fountain offers her breast yet water^.^ appears to push away the exploring hand of In the second half of the fifteenth century, her young male companion. The directness the satirical and erotic potential of the of his action is repeated by the man in the Figure 2 Master of the Banderoles Fountain of Youth ca. 1460-70 Engraving Graphische SammIung Albertina Vienna Figure 3 -S .v, v r a 3 7 y-rv-r.~1 1 % . p Hieronymus Bosch Detail of Luxuria from the Prado 9:; 3 Tabletop, ca. 1500 :.t!u;'+& Painting !+&. -., Prado, Madrid ::%#&% . ;%%j, Li. -.: ., lower right corner. The couple embracing, at Tabletop of ca. 1500 (Fig. 3) and engraving of upper right, continues this erotic activity-the 1549 (Bartsch, 109). Sebastian Brant linked man fondles the woman's breast. these ideas in his Ship of Fools of 1494: Beside the well or spring, at upper right, a young man proclaims his erotic interests by A man shows no sound reasoning the gesture of hand on knife placed between who only drinks for sordid ends, A drunken man neglects his friends his legs. The bagpipe, which provides music And knows no prudent moderation, for the lovers, is employed here for its shape And drinking leads to fornication.15 as a symbol of the male genitals, as it was in contemporary literature.12 The Fountain of Brant was, it needs to be kept in mind, a Youth by the Master of the Banderoles has member of the educated elite, a conservative thus become, at least in part, a fountain of minority that viewed the behavior of the lust. majority of the German population as in need Beham's lovers in the Fountain of Youth- of reform. It is difficult to imagine that all of Bathhouse employ similar postures drawing Beham's audience would have responded in on the fountain of youth and bathhouse the same manner as Brant, that is, viewing pictorial traditions, both of which emphasized the love play in the woodcut solely in the erotic.