Erasmus and the Visual Arts: A Less than Terminal Case

• In Event: No, but Seriously: The Art and Afterlife of Erasmian Humor

Abstract

Since Erwin Panofsky’s 1969 article, the question of Erasmus’s relation to Renaissance artistic production has been afflicted as much by neglect as by an excess of seriousness. The witty disingenuousness underlying so much of Erasmus’s literary output is fundamental to understanding his commentary on the visual arts, but it is equally essential to considering his reception among his artistic contemporaries. This paper argues that two of Erasmus’s subversive alter egos—his personal emblem Terminus and the figure of Folly from the Moriae encomium—motivated the emergence of a veritable sub-genre in Netherlandish art: paradoxical portraits of old geezers. A selection of works by Quentin Massys, Jan Gossart, and Joos van Cleve reveal a knowing sensitivity to the fact that the great public intellectual of the Low Countries was not always to be taken at his word.

Author

• Marisa Anne Bass, Yale University