De lusoribus [Of gamblers]. Page from Sebastian Brant, Stultifera Navis [The Ship of Fools].

Written in German by the distinguished humanist Sebastian Brant (1458-1521) in 1494 and titled the<em> Narrenschiff, The Ship of Fools</em> was one of the most successful published works of its age. There was such a demand for it that it was translated into all the leading European languages of the time. Brant's friend Jacob Locher translated it into Latin in 1497, giving it the title <em>Stultifera Navis</em>. This page is from a pirated 1497 edition, published in Nuremberg by Georg Stuchs. The work immediately became extremely popular: six authorised and seven pirated editions (as here), were published before Brant's death in 1521.

In the book Brant describes 110 assorted follies and vices, each undertaken by a different fool or fools, devoting chapters to such offences as arrogance toward God, marrying for money and noise in church. Some of the chapters are united by the common theme of a ship which will bear the assembled fools to Narragonia, the island of fools. Each chapter is illustrated by a woodcut giving either a literal or allegorical interpretation of the particular sin or vice.

This woodcut, attributed to the Haintz-Nar-Meister (Master of the Haintz fool), depicts the folly of gambling. Four gamblers are seated at a table. Each wears a fool's cap, and another fool's cap hangs on the wall besides them, straddling the composition. They are playing at dice, and the large glass and jug on the table denote the drinking that almost invariably accompanies gambling.  Edwin Zeydel's English translation idiomatically conveys Brant's warnings:

"Some foolish idiots I could name,/They love the cards, the dice, the game,/ Preferring never to exist/ Before from gambling they'd desist,/ And day and night they game and rattle/With cards and dice, and drink and prattle..."

Little is known of the so-called Haintz-Nar-Meister, who was active in Basel and created up to a third of the woodcuts for 1490s editions of <em>The Ship of Fools. </em>Other illustrations are attributed to the young Albrecht Dürer when he visited Basel in 1494.

See:

Sebastian Brant, <em>The Ship of Fools</em> (trans. Edwin Zeydel), https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=qLzCAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT261&lpg=PT261&dq=brant+ship+fools+gamblers+77&source=bl&a mp;a mp;a mp;a mp;a mp;a mp;a mp;ots=J8qW52h4Kb&sig=HStIN8bYZTbCk75q1YVuVoKs9vU&hl= en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4tdT9l-nSAhVGm5QKHXTfDTYQ6AEIHTAB#v=onepage&q=brant%20ship%20fools%20gamblers%2077&f=false

'Ship of Fools (satire)', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Fools_(satire)

Dr Mark Stocker      Curator, Historical International Art        March 2017