«Then come jesters, musicians and trained dwarfs,
And singing girls from the land of Ti-ti,
To delight the ear and eye
And bring mirth to the mind»
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Sima Xiangru (Link)
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Jean Fouquet, Portrait of the Ferrara Court Jester Gonella (c.1442-1445, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna - Link)
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«The jester is an elusive character. The European words used to denote him can now seem as nebulous as they are numerous, reflecting the mercurial man behind them: fool, buffoon, clown, jongleur, jogleor, joculator, sot, stultor, scurra, fou, fol, truhan, mimus, histrio, morio. He can be any of these (...)».
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Beatrice K. Otto (Link)
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Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen (?), Laughing Fool (c. 1500, Davis Museum - Link)
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«We have all seen how an appropriate and well-timed joke can sometimes influence even grim tyrants. . . . The most violent tyrants put up with their clowns and fools, though these often made them the butt of open insults».
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Desiderius Erasmus (Link)
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Frans Hals, Jester with a lute (c. 1623-1624, Musée du Louvre, Paris - Link)
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Diego Velázquez, El bufón don Sebastián de Morra (c. 1645, Museo del Prado, Madrid - Link)
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«The court jester is universal not merely in having been at home in such diverse cultures and eras, but also in taking his pick from the same ragbag of traits and talents no matter when or where he occurs. Above all he used humor, whether in the form of wit, puns, riddles, doggerel verse, songs, capering antics, or nonsensical babble, and jesters were usually also musical or poetic or acrobatic, and sometimes all three. Some physical difference from the norm was common whether it was in being a dwarf or hunchback or in having a gawky or gangly physique or a loose-limbed agility—his movements might be clumsy or nimble, but they should be somehow exaggerated or unusual (...)».
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Beatrice K. Otto (Link)
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Jan Matejko, Stańczyk (1862, Warsaw National Museum - Link)
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William Merritt Chase, Keying Up - the Court Jester (1875, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - Link)
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«It is in the nature of jesters to speak their minds when the mood takes them, regardless of the consequences. They are neither calculating nor circumspect, and this may account for the "foolishness" often ascribed to them (...).
The jester also had humor at his disposal. He could soften the blow of a critical comment in a way that prevented a dignified personage from losing face. Humor is the great defuser of tense situations (...)».
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Beatrice K. Otto (Link)
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Para saber mais: Beatrice K. Otto, Fools Are Everywhere, The Court JesterAround the World, 2001.
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