Les bois gravés dans La Nef des fous de Sébastien Brant

Abstract

The resounding and lasting success (mainly owed to Jacob Locher’s Latin version) of the Narrenschiff, this first European best- and long-seller published in German, is due to the invention of printing (Gutenberg), to the fact that Sebastian Brant’s work renders the atmosphere of western Christianity on the eve of the Reformation and to the idea of quantitative piety. The intertwining of text and image in this “total work of art” also shows the recurring motif during the Renaissance of the rivalry between artistic genres during the Renaissance.