Page 124 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

smell of fruit (fol. ziyv). The best known pages, This tapestry shows various characteristic scenes countries and not, as has sometimes been claimed,
however, are probably those illustrating the of wild men — mythical figures who were sup- embodiments of sexual desire. Andrea Gattaro,
pepper harvest in Coilum (fol. 84r), the dog- posed to have a human body covered with hair a Venetian envoy to the Council of Basel in 1435,
headed men of the Adaman Islands (fol. /6v), except on the face, hands, feet, and sometimes recorded that he saw there twenty-two dancers
and the headless men (fol. i94v). J.M.M. elbows (for wild women, also breasts). Wild men dressed as wild men entertaining the guests of
were believed to be creatures halfway between the council; the fact that the event took place on
4 men and beasts, who lived roughly, close to Epiphany (6 January, the day commemorating the
nature, but often according to familiar social and coming of the Magi) suggests that they may have
Strasbourg artist familial patterns. On several upper Rhenish tap- been meant to symbolize the eastern world from
WILD MEN STORMING A CASTLE estries of the fifteenth century, they interact with which the Wise Men had come (Concilium Basi-
AND OTHER SCENES fabulous animals as well as perform the every- liense 1904, 5:413).
day tasks of raising their children, working the The Greek writer Herodotus, in the fifth cen-
c. 1440 land, hunting, and fighting. tury B.C., provided the earliest known account of
tapestry The concept of the wild man could be extended wild men in his Histories (iv, 191), where he
3
•LOO x 490 (}9 /s x 193 j to embrace social outcasts and people living in writes of strange inhabitants of Libya, among
references: Concilium Basiliense 1904, 5:413; exotic or "fabulous" countries. For the famous them "dog-headed men and the headless that have
Cavallo 1967, 47-49, no.i, pis. i-if; Husband 1980, Strasbourg preacher Geiler of Kaisersberg, "wild their eyes in their breasts, as the Libyans say, and
77-82, no. 14; Vandenbroeck 19^7, 15, fig. 11; Rapp men" included anchorites, various types of satyrs, the wild men and women, besides many other
and Stucky-Schurer 1990, 314-318, no. 96
gypsies, pygmies, and devils. The wild men in the creatures not fabulous." The fabulous races were
Museum of fine Arts, Boston Boston tapestry seem to be inhabitants of faraway discussed by many authors in classical antiquity

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD 123