Jesters

After the bauble I wanted to look up more jesters, because I liked the idea of them in art. I mostly found them in the details of art, like illustrated bibles.

Yes yes, there are philisophical implications abound, but lets face it first, they are awful cute and pretty.

This next one is on a wall.

In art they represent folly or madness, which lends itself to another fantastic thing I stumbled upon in my search: "The Ship of Fools." It's an old idea that all humans on earth are as silly and sad as a wayward ship of fools out to see. How romantic. Here is the most famous version of The Ship of Fools, by Bosch. The jester is in the back with his little hat and sippy cup.

This next one by Brant is like, all jester.

Although none have quite the allegory of ship of fools, some of the jester art I found hit human folly right in the head with the name alone. For instance, 'A Maiden Tempted by a Fool'.

Or, 'A Jester Points Out God in a Cloud.' Okay, fine, this one is probably a serious bible story, but I like my insinuation better.
The best title by far though is the next one, "The Son of Lucretius Wastes his Father's Money on Women."

Finally, I started to actually read about the actual jesters of the Middle Ages. Some had a certain amount of real, if hilarious, political respect. Think John Stewart . One of the most famous, Stanczyk, was employed by three separate Polish kings for both laughs and guidance. He is featured below as being the only patron of a royal party to be concerned about the political state of affairs.

Another sort of jester was known as a "Fool for Christ". These guys were basically Robin Hood types who thought the system was bullshit and would go around being illegal about all sorts of things and loud about it as well. One of them was my new hero Basil.

Basil here spent his life going off on Ivan the Terrible, and when he died, Ivan himself acted as one of the pallbearers. Isn't that sweet. Oh that's right, then Ivan the terrible built this on top of his grave and called it "Saint Basil's Cathedral."

Damn.

As far as in art though, I think it's a great little symbol and sorely underused. Although, I do think we get a good little gem every once in a while.