Joust of Two Wild Men on Horseback, ca. 1480

About the Work

Here Israhel van Meckenem copied an imaginative drypoint etching by the Master of the Housebook. The “wild people” were fanciful woodland creatures who, covered with fur and endowed with mighty strength, lived close to nature in a counterworld to human civilization. These wild men wear “armour” made of curly leaves, the helmets moreover adorned with radishes and garlic. They parody the knights’ tournaments staged in the fifteenth century as courtly festivals.