Bizarre
  1. Lepic, Ce qui Restait du Puissant Guillaume de Naillac
  2. Claeaz, Dancers with Death
  3. Anonymous American, A Naked Man and Horse
  4. Klinger, Amor, Tod und Jenseits (Love, Death and the Hereafter)
  5. Surugue, La Folie pare la Décrépitude
  6. Legros, La Légende du Bonhomme Misère : La Mort dans le Poirier
  7. Rops, L’Enlèvement
  8. Sadeler, Allegory of Opulence, Fornication and Stupidity
  9. Mohlitz, La Vierge aux Étrons (The Virgin of Turds)
  10. Legrand, Épaves de Famille (Oddballs of the Family)
  11. Jacquemart, L’Écurueil (sic)
  12. Benassit, L’Absinthe!
  13. de Bry, Punishment of the Mutinous Indians
  14. Goncourt, Le Singe au Miroir (The Monkey at the Mirror)
  15. Callot, Les Martyrs du Japon
  16. Dillon, Les Mendiants (The Beggars)
  17. Barberis, The Witch
  18. Budzinski, The Thirsty Giant
  19. Meryon, Le Ministère de la Marine
  20. Torre-Bueno, Death’s Arrival
  21. van Meurs, Animals of America
  22. Redon, Félinerie
  23. Chagall, Le Vixe
  24. Martin, Indécision (Tête de Femme)
  25. Rops, Le Calvaire
  26. Rops, Les Frères de la Bonne Trogne
  27. Gillray, Tentanda via est qua ve quoque possim Tollere humo
  28. Underwood, Simian Ecstasy
  29. Veber, Beheaded!
  30. Strang, Death and the Ploughman’s Wife: Frontispiece
  31. Corman, The Temptation of Saint Anthony
  32. Bliss, Gargoyles Spouting
  33. Castellón, Of Land and Sea
  34. Eichenberg, Isaiah 11
  35. Rops, L’Idole (The Idol)
  36. Master MZ, Aristotle and Phyllis
  37. Bracquemond, “Hors de mon soleil, canailles!"
  38. Spare, Nemesis
  39. Higgens, Forgotten
  40. Anonymous, Jewish Amulet to Protect Mother and Child
  41. Daumier, Une Expérience Qui Réussit Trop Bien
  42. Seligmann, Le Roi du Charbon (King Charcoal)
  43. Braun, The Release of Force
  44. Callot, Le Grand Rocher
  45. Forest, Bâstard Foetus Hérédité, Comte D’Averton Mort-Né
  46. Jacque, La Souricière
  47. Veber, “Ah! Qu’il fait chaud"
  48. Pastelot, Les Sorcières
  49. Lepic, Le Verger du Roi Louis (The Orchard of King Louis)
  50. Grandville, Résurrection de la Censure
  51. Tidemann, The Earth Swallows Up the People of Korah
  52. Shields, The Descent
  53. Redon, C’est le diable
  54. Sadeler, Ita Erit et Aventus Filii Hominis

36. Master MZ (Mathias Zasinger)
(fl. ca. 1500)
Aristotle and Phyllis

(click on image to print)
Master MZ, Aristotle and Phyllis

Aristotle and Phyllis

Engraving, ca. 1500, 179 x 130 mm., Bartsch 18, Lehrs 22. Ex collection: Bernhard Keller, (Lugt 384). A fine, early impression, sharp, clear and black in the deep shadows, on laid paper with an apparently unrecorded watermark of a small flower with two leaves. Lehrs estimates forty impressions extant of which only twenty are early. The sheet has been given an added narrow margin and 5 mm. at the top and 2 mm. at the top left have been restored, with the very top curve of the whip drawn in pen and ink; a tear at the left has been neatly repaired. What we have here in this incredibly rare print is the bizarre image of a courtesan astride a philosopher, whipping him like a horse. In medieval legend, Aristotle was the philosopher friend and tutor of Alexander the Great, and Phyllis, Alexander's favorite courtesan. Aristotle, in attempting to end the relationship, warned Alexander that women had often been the undoing of strong men. Phyllis, to gain revenge, aroused the passion of the philosopher and demanded, as proof of his love, that she be allowed to ride on his back as on a horse. The incident was witnessed by Alexander who learned thereby to distrust women, against whom even old philosophers were powerless. The story became an allegory of woman's domination of man, something that seems not to have changed much over the ages.