Fortuna: identification needed

Zephyros

Hope I'm not too late to join the party :)

Actually a very interesting find. Even at face value with no translation it seems a religious page, but possibly a non-mainstream one; synagogues usually aren't decorated with naked ladies, whomever they may be.

Now, as Ross pointed out, it is difficult to make out many of the words, although I suspect this may be because of the original printing, not computerized loss of quality. However, from what I can make out, it is indeed an excerpt from the Song of Songs, starting with "thou art lovely, my wife and hath no blemish" (Chapter 4, verse 7). The rest is even more interesting, however, since it doesn't go "by the book." The Song should go on about Lebanon, but that doesn't appear to be the case here (the verse, incidentally, goes from right to left and each line is divided at her head). Here, it goes on to another verse which, because the text is fragmented, I can't find in the Song, but imagine it to be one of the racier parts with mentions of pigeons and towers and lips.

I wonder, though, why the page is called "Book of Songs" and not the original name? Perhaps something like the Sistine Chapel Moses statue with the horns, a case of mistaken translation, although that makes little sense here.

Anyway, the word next to the goblet is "drink" and below, next to the gentlewoman's middle section is written another part of the Song, but this is strange as well, it is from the beginning of the song, Chapter 1, verse 5 "I am black and comely."

The next page is a little thornier. There is a prayer at the top two lines, but again, it is written strangely, not according to the traditional way of saying it. It is the prayer one says when seeing a rainbow :) It reminds one of the pact God made that with the sign of the rainbow, the world would never again be destroyed. It is a little jumbled, however, and not strictly in accordance with tradition. I'm gambling that someone here has Hebrew fonts, so I'll just past the original prayer:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמַן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָּם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ.

Translation: "Blessed art thou Lord our God, King of the World, who remembers the covenant and is loyal to his covenant and is keeper of his word". The covenant in this case is not Abrahan's, but Noah's.

The next lines seem to have meanings, I mean, they're words, but I can't make out all of it. From the break in the third line it goes something like "Blessed something something all the world," and then a break, then "something something all by His Will" or something like that. It's obviously a prayer, but most Jewish prayers start with Blessed and end with His Will, so it's really hard to tell which. I'm not religious, someone who is might shed some light. I'll see if I can't find one in the next few days.

The prayer is a strange one to quote, though. Not too popular or well known, and the fact that it comes from the Noah story and the naked woman seems to suggest to me that the text is from some sort of Jews for Jesus or something like that who believe in the Noahide laws that were set on all of mankind, keeping basic morality and modes of conduct, but I could be on the wrong track (in a purely Jewish text, no pictures of people would be drawn, much less a naked woman).
 

Zephyros

Update:

I did ask someone religious, but the others prayers don't really shed more light on the subject. I'll go on where I left off, at the second prayer.

ב א ה (=ברוך אתה ה') זוכר הברית:

The Beit, Aleph, Heh in the next part is an acronym for Blessed art Thou, oh Lord (Baruch Ata Adonai)

ברוך שכחו ברתו מלא העולם (=ברוך שכחו וגבורתו מלא עולם):

Blessed He who has made the world that his might fills the world

ב א ה א מ ה (=ברוך אתה ה' אלוהינו מלך העולם) שכל (=שהכל) נהיה בדברו

Another acronym here, Beit, Aleph, Heh, Aleph, Mem, Heh (Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam) : Blessed are thou oh Lord, that all is done to His will.

I must admit, the English translations aren't exactly literal, but it is the gist, but now that I've done all that, I must admit I'm more mystified than ever...
 

Debra

From the 1500's. So the equivalent for contemporary English speakers of reading Middle English--it's great that you can translate so much of it :)
 

Zephyros

Well, Hebrew was a dead language for centuries and only revived less than a hundred years ago, or something like that. So it hasn't developed over time like English has. Plus, schoolchildren in Israel take bible classes, so people here are far more familiar with texts like these than someone would be translating English texts from the same period.

But thanks :)
 

Huck

Bartholomaeus Caesar appears in a Luther letter discussion in 1519 ...

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-e...-the-story-of-luthers-life-volume-2-wua.shtml

On April 13 Luther writes to Lang: —

As regards that Hebraist of yours whom you recommend,
I beg that you will do us the favor to have him come to us by
all means, and that at once, because our Boeschcnstein, who was
a Christian in name, but quite a Jew in fact, has left us, to the
shame of our imiversity (Footnote).
...
(Footnote): The young Hebraist was Bartholomaeus Caesar of Forchheira,
near Hamberg
. Boeschcnstein first recommended him, then changed his
mind and criticized him severely. Carlstadt wrote to Spalatin the same
day as Luther: "See to it, please, that our old gentleman receives his
dismissal, otherwise he will leave without our will to the reproach of tke
university.
The transcription of this text is bad and has many errors. Forchheira is Forchheim. Boeschcnstein is Boeschenstein.

**********

http://books.google.de/books/about/Bartholomaeus_Caesar.html?id=eV9JywAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
B.Caesar wrote a teaching text (?) for Hebrew in 1516. Elementale Hebraicum ... but it possibly had only 4 pages (?).
I get the snippet: "In Leipzig Melchior Lotter in 1516 printed the Hebrew grammar of *Bartholomaeus Caesar (Kaiser), 'Elementale Hebraicum,' B. 21, in which blank spaces are left for all the Hebrew." ... likely it was intended to fill the blank spaces by hand or with woodcuts (?)

http://books.google.de/books?id=UvNMAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
A book with the same (or similar) title appeared 1520 and was printed in Leipzig. The author was then ... Philipp Michel Novenianus
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Michel_Novenianus

*****************

Here's a list of publications in Hebrew letters till 1555:

http://books.google.de/books?id=cDF...sc=y#v=onepage&q=boeschenstein caesar&f=false

Caesar and Boeschenstein appear on the list, but not Novenianus, though the Novenianus text is called the first printed book with Hebrew letters in Leipzig.
Boescheinstein's texts had all pamphlet-length.

http://books.google.de/books?id=cDF...sc=y#v=onepage&q=boeschenstein caesar&f=false

Caesar and Boeschenstein appear as pupils of Reuchlin, Boeschenstein with an additional Jewish instructor.

*****************

It seems likely, that B. Caesar wasn't a Jew. Likely one has to search him under the category "young German humanists". He had studied in Erfurt since 1507.
 

Debra

So I desperately need to find more information about this image, and I was hoping you guys could help, what with all the discussions that take place here about ancient iconography and old woodcuts.

Hey Spoon, I'm curious ... what's up with the image? An interesting project? I'm nosy :laugh:
 

spoonbender

Debra: Yeah, a very interesting project. I'm studying art history and I'm doing an internship at a Belgian museum... The museum recently acquired a collection of woodcuts, etchings, engravings, etc. (either original or facsimile) and I'm supposed to find out as much as I can about each of the images. Sometimes that's far from easy, but it's always a lot of fun. :)

Huck: Thanks for all the information!

Closrapexa: I am in awe.

It seems like you guys might be interested in the 1931 article from the British Museum, but I'm not sure if you can access the content, so I'll just quote some relevant passages:

"[...] a woodcut of a nude woman who stands on a globe like Fortune. The accompanying text, in Hebrew, with some errors due to the woodcutter, consists, however, of quotations from the Song of Songs; it must therefore be understood that the subject is the Bride of that poem, who is traditionally identified with the Church, so that the globe may possibly symbolize the latter's world-dominion."

"Near the globe, we read the first and fourth letters of the Hebrew alphabet. [...] It has been suggested before the woodcut was offered to the Museum that the letters are the initials of Albrecht Dürer. [...] Professor Panofsky has supplied arguments for thinking that the woodcut may have been made at a considerably later date, from an early drawing by Dürer [...]"

"The dates of [Bartholomeus Caesar Trutaviensis's] birth and death are unknown. His biography can be partially reconstructed from several sources in which references to him occur, collected by G. Bauch in an essay on the introduction of Hebrew studies at Wittenberg."

(C. Dodgson, "Woodcut with Hebrew Text Ascribed to Dürer", in: The British Museum Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2 (1931), pp. 41-42)

Thanks again for all the replies. You guys rock.
 

Huck

Debra: Yeah, a very interesting project. I'm studying art history and I'm doing an internship at a Belgian museum... The museum recently acquired a collection of woodcuts, etchings, engravings, etc. (either original or facsimile) and I'm supposed to find out as much as I can about each of the images. Sometimes that's far from easy, but it's always a lot of fun. :)
Indeed an interesting project. I've read, that the British Museum had the only one surviving print, if the Belgian Museum acquired a second "original" ... but you said there are also "facsimile". So likely they got a facsimile.
I personally would imagine the following background of the picture: The young B.Caesar desired to become a published author and he met all these difficulties, which also meet other not published authors: You need money for this or sponsors.
"Back to the sources" was a big theme in 1510-20 ad generally it was book-printing explosion, I've read, that the number of existing German prints in 1520 had been 6x the number of the year 1500. As a pupil of Reuchlin the young B.Caesar had been in the mid of all these scandals around the Dunkelmännerbriefe (written by persons, who also lived with the desire to take part in the literary genre) and "learning Hebrew" became just a fashion and the market waited for it: the teaching book of Hebrew language. Ha, he tried it to get some attention ... with this Fortune picture and with a 4-pages-text in 1516. It didn't work really and can't have been that, what he really desired. Well, he went to Wittenberg in 1519, and made an oratio, and Luther found praising words for him, but anyway, he didn't get the job. Then he (possibly) turned to Leipzig, as indicated.
Now we have just in Leipzig, that Novenianus, Philipp Michael, made his debut as a writer 1420 just with a work, whose title, at least in parts, had appeared 4 years before on the short pamphlet of B.Caesar: "Elementale Hebraicum".

That is a little strange, isn't it? What's the relation between Novenianus and B. Caesar? B. Caesar stopped to exist after 1519/20, as far I see it, nobody seems to know, what happened to him. B. Caesar had been from "Forchheim" and Novenianus from "Hassfurt", two locations around Bamberg with about 60 km between them. Novenianus stopped with his Hebrew interests in 1520/21 and became a physician, and somehow one doesn't hear in biographical researches, what he made before 1520.
From 1531 it's known, that Novenianus had friendship with Crotus Rubianus. In the question, who wrote the Dunkelmänner-letters a lot of hypotheses were discussed, but modern research has come out with the idea, that the major author had been - just this Crotus Rubianus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Crotus
English Wikipedia hasn't much about it.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelmännerbriefe
Crotus Rubeanus wrote likely a great part of the first part (in other words, he likely started it), and, as far I know it, he made an Italy journey. Then - in the second part - likely Ulrich von Hutten was most active with Hermann von dem Busche following as the second. Crotus Rubeanus (* c. 1480) studied in Erfurt, in 1507 there is a record of B. Caesar in Erfurt.
Since 1505 there was a "Mutianischer Bund" around the humanist Conradus Mutianus Rufus, who lived in Gotha (26 km to Erfurt), which attacted a lot of the students in Erfurt. Mutianus had studied in Italy longer years, and made a doctor degree in Ferrara (1498). The Mutianischer Bund was later connected to the circle around Reuchlin in Tübingen (400 km to Erfurt), and if B.Caesar indeed went from Erfurt to Tübingen to study Hebrew from Reuchlin ... well, then it's plausible, that the Mutianischer Bund played a role in it and that B.Caesar knew Crotus Rubeanus, who had been an important man in the Bund.

The Dominicans in Cologne were mighty, and it was dangerous to have trouble with them. The Dunkelmänner had reason to hide themselves. The journey from Crotus Rubeanus in 1517 to Italy might have had a background in "hidden persecution".
In 1517 the "Baldo" (in a first version) appeared in Italy, a funny work of Teofilo Folingo, who published with the name "Merlinus Coccai". Folengo later made also Tarocchi Sonnets, so he's a man of some Tarot importance.
The 1521 edition of the Baldo we find this funny devil ...

merlinus-12.jpg


... and he's called "Rubicanus", not Rubeanus. Well, also Folengo wrote in the dark, some time also claiming, that he hadn't anything to do with the Baldo.And he's under suspicion to have had positive feelings for protestantism.

Returning back to the question ... what's the relation between Novenianus and B. Caesar? ... that isn't such a clear point.