Ship of Fools is a satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 published 1494  in Basel, Switzerland by Sebastian Brant

Sebastian Brant

Sebastian Brant was an Alsatian humanist and satirist. He is best known for his satire Das Narrenschiff .-Biography:...

, a conservative German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 theologian.

In a prologue, 112 brief satires, and an epilogue, all illustrated with woodcuts, it is notable for including the first commissioned work by the great Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 artist-engraver Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

. Much of the work was critical of the current state of the Church. Brant here lashes with unsparing vigour the weaknesses and vices of his time. Here he conceives Saint Grobian, whom he imagines to be the patron saint

Patron saint

A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...

 of vulgar and coarse people.

The Ship of Fools was inspired by a frequent motif in medieval art

Medieval art

The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa...

 and Literature, and particularly in religious satire, due to a pun on the Latin word "navis", which means a boat and also the nave

Nave

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...

 of a church.

The concept of foolishness was a frequently used trope

Trope (literature)

A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

 in the pre-Reformation period to legitimate criticism, as also used by Erasmus in his In Praise of Folly and Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

 in his Address to the Christian Nobility. Court fools were allowed to say much what they wanted; by writing his work in the voice of the fool, Brant could legitimise his criticism of the church.
The work immediately became extremely popular, with six authorised and seven pirated editions published before 1521. Brant did not support the Reformation movement, but many of the criticisms of the church expressed in his work mirrored themes which the reformers would pick up on.

The book was translated into Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 by Jacob Locher in 1497, into French by Paul Riviere in 1497 and by Jehan Droyn in 1498, into English by Alexander Barclay

Alexander Barclay

Dr Alexander Barclay was an English/Scottish poet.-Biography:Barclay was born in about 1476. His place of birth is matter of dispute, but William Bulleyn, who was a native of Ely, and probably knew him when he was in the monastery there, asserts that he was born "beyonde the cold river of Twede"...

 in 1509

1509 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Great Britain:* Anonymous, Richard Coeur de Lion, written about 1300, a mix of historical and romance elements...

 and by Henry Watson

Henry Watson

Henry Watson may refer to:*Henry Winfield Watson , Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania*Henry William Watson , British mathematician*Henry Keith Watson, member of the "L.A...

 also in 1509.
Many wood-cuts of the first edition are believed to have been carved by Durer. The additional wood-cuts are the work of the so called Haintz-Nar-Meister, the Gnad-Her-Meister and two other anonymous artists.
An allegorical painting by Hieronymus Bosch (that is a fragment of a triptych) was inspired by the 1494 German classic: The Ship of Fools (painting)

Ship of Fools (painting)

Ship of Fools is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch which may be intended to exemplify the human condition. The painting is dense in symbolism and is indebted to, if not actually satirical of Albrecht Dürer's frontispiece of Sebastian Brant's book of the same name.The painting as we see it today is a...

, 1490-1500. Exhibited in Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.
Some 20th century artists (including Art Hazelwood, Dusan Kállay, István Orosz

István Orosz

István Orosz Hungarian painter, printmaker, graphic designer and animated film director, is known for his mathematically inspired works, impossible objects, optical illusions, double-meaning images and anamorphoses. The geometric art of István Orosz, with forced perspectives and optical...

, Brian Williams

Brian Williams

Brian Douglas Williams is the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network, a position he assumed in 2004...

) made images based on "Das Narrenschiff", or drew illustrations for contemporary editions of The Ship of Fools.

External links

• Digitized version from the University of Houston 1498
• Ship of Fools online exhibit 1509 from the Glasgow University

• Ship of Fools illustrations by István Orosz