MASTER of the Housebook
(active 1475-90 in Mainz)

Planet Venus

c. 1475
Pen drawing, 235 x 143 mm
Fürsten zu Waldburg-Wolfegg, Schloss Wolfegg

The Housebook Master derives his name from a set of pen drawings of "subjects useful and curious" in a Housebook (a manual of miscellaneous secular patterns and motifs, dating about 1475. In the sixty-eight (originally perhaps ninety-eight) leaves a variety of subjects ranging from the activities of the Children of Planets to scenes in brothels, the hunt, imperial battle marches and encampments, and other diverse subjects are rendered in fascinating detail with numerous anecdotal footnotes in the form of vignettes scattered about loosely composed settings. The seven sketches of the Children of the Planets preface his own original compositions of various secular activities.

The personifications of the planets are presented on horseback in the skies in the company of their "houses" or zodiac signs. Below, in a tilted landscape, the various occupations associated with the planet are assembled with tiny figures busily engaged in their activities.

The present drawing represents the Planet Venus. Venus, seen from behind, rides sidesaddle on her draped mount between Libra and Taurus above a deep landscape filled with the amorous pastimes that she governs.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.