The Carnival parade also included masked celebrants who dressed up as peasants and behaved in a boorish, undignified manner. The Fastnacht plays that accompanied the Shrovetide celebrations often portrayed peasants as ill-mannered, hyper-sexual beings.^[12] In 1506, the Carnival included a staged peasant wedding in which a pretend bride was placed on a bed in a cart driven by peasants.^[13] Kinser believes that adopting the personae of peasants allowed Nuremberg city-dwellers to give reign to “repressed sexual and sensual inclinations,” while at the same time enabling them to “express disgust for these clodhoppers.” In the symbolically-charged atmosphere of Carnival, the peasant could represent the Fool as well as Everyman.^[14] Sumberg, on the other hand, suggests that the prominence of peasants in the Schembart parade was due more to the “rustic origin of the spring festivities” than to the desire to satirize them.^[15] The role of the peasant in Carnival should not be ignored when evaluating engravings such as Dürer’s Three Peasants in Conversation of 1496-7, Peasant Couple Dancing of 1514, and Peasants at the Market of 1519. In most of his peasant studies, the subjects appear ungainly, stupid and crude. It is possible that in these works Dürer is representing not actual peasants, but Carnival celebrants or Fastnachtspiel performers dressed up as rustics. Indeed, the man in Peasants at the Market is making a very dramatic, stage-like gesture, and appears to be in the middle of speaking. It may also be significant that the engravings of Three Peasants in Conversation and Peasants at the Market include a basket of what appear to be eggs — it was traditional during Schembartlauf for participants to throw eggs filled with rosewater at people looking out their windows.^[16] Whether or not Dürer was representing real rustics or Carnival “peasants,” their portrayal as crude figures worthy of ridicule in the Shrovetide celebrations may have influenced their representation by Dürer.

FROM The Nuremberg Schembart
(Illustrated manuscript on paper)
PHOTO: Christie’s

Schembart Hölle from 1521, showing fools
falling onto a bird-snare
(after Sumberg)

Design for a Gothic Table Fountain, c. 1500
(Pen and ink drawing, 560 x 358 mm)
BY Albrecht Dürer
The British Museum

Woodcuts for the 1494 edition of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, many of which are attributed to Dürer, have a carnivalesque feel to them; and indeed, Fools were an important part of the Schembart parade. Like those in the woodcuts, the Fools of Carnival wore bells and caps with pointy ears that resemble those of an ass. They are often shown wreaking havoc on the Höllen in the Schembart manuscript miniatures. In 1506 and 1539, the Höllen consisted of actual Ships of Fools on wheels. The float of 1521 depicted Fools jumping or falling out of trees onto a large bird-snare below, an image reminiscent of Dürer’s woodcut for the chapter “Of Making Plans Public” of the Narrenschiff. This chapter compares fools who reveal their plans too openly to birds that are ensnared by the fowler’s net.^[17] Possibly some of the Höllen were inspired by, or modeled after, Dürer’s illustrations for Brant’s poem.

There also seems to be a relationship between the Höllen floats of Schembartlaufen and Dürer’s Design for a Gothic Table Fountain, completed around 1500. Like the float, the table fountain presents the viewer with the spectacle of a story unfolding within a self-contained, artificially-constructed environment. Its base is a microcosm presenting a cross-section of society — farmers, knights, hunters, robbers, and others — going about their daily business in the countryside. Many of the Höllen appear to have served a similar purpose on a much larger scale, functioning as mobile dioramas for figures, or as stages for live performers who would enact various scenarios for the Carnival audience. For example, the Hölle of 1512 consisted of three shopfronts with vendors selling their wares, representing “[t]he life of the merchants of Nuremberg;”^[18] while the 1518 float portrayed a number of amorous couples embracing, promenading, and listening to music in a garden.^[19] Like Dürer’s fountain, some of the Höllen drew on everyday life for their subject matter; and both Dürer’s drawing and the floats convey an interest in using craftsmanship and artifice to create a three-dimensional tableau where human activities were put on display for all to see.