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

40. Anonymous German or East European (?)
18th Century (?)
Jewish Amulet to Protect Mother and Child During Childbirth Against Lilith

(click on image to print)
Anonymous, Jewish Amulet to Protect Mother and Child

Jewish Amulet to Protect Mother and Child During Childbirth Against Lilith

Woodcut, 18th Century (?), 155 x 192 mm. A good impression on old laid paper, trimmed just outside the borderline, unevenly within it at the bottom; a printer’s crease and a wormhole. If the image here does not appear to be quite so bizarre, the context certainly is. Lilith as a demon and as the first wife of Adam, created contemporaneously with him and from the same clay, is a scantily documented legend that goes back to the Dead Sea Scrolls and perhaps before. It finds its most complete documentation in the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira (8th-10th century), where amulets against Lilith’s preying upon new-born boys, before their circumcision, are described. The names of three angels, potent against Lilith, are mentioned – Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof – and those three names are inscribed in this print, in abbreviated forms: Snvi, Snsnvi, Smnglf. Such an amulet would have been attached to the wall or door of the birthroom to protect the occupants. The image at the top of the print shows, unexplainedly, a blessing over food. The rest is ornamental work and text, apart from the male and female figures, the former representing Adam and the latter presumably Eve. Despite the Hebrew typography, we have been informed that the text is not in Hebrew, nor in Yiddish, but in a medieval form of German. Rare, need it be said?

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