• antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    5·
    7 months ago

    This has to have some weird ass allegorical meaning.

    EDIT: So apparently this is a picture from a “Stammbuch” (“friendship book”) by some Ludwig Hetzer, from 1620. The scan of the book can be found here: http://digital.wlb-stuttgart.de/purl/bsz475519329 (at 12 recto; has lots of other fascinatingly weird drawings and miniature paintings).

    The lower part of the page seems to be a dedication from a friend in Latin (seems to be referring to a birthday?), and above might be the text (probably a proverb) that explans the image but it’s in Greek and I can barely decipher cursive Greek, much less figure out the meaning. The first word seems to be θεος (god), the last might be διχαζει (divide?).

    Tbh just going off my intuition and the themes in other pictures in the book… the woman is poking the man with a stick with a heart-shaped ending, which could symbolise love/sexuality/marriage. So it could be like a caricature/“warning” showing a wife controlling her husband, literally pushing him around through emotional influence.