Erasmus, Title Page of Adagia (1518)

The woodcut title page by Urs Graf for the first Basel editions of Erasmus’s Adages makes a similar statement to Raphael’s monumental work in a much smaller form.  In its composition and in the figure at its summit, the page alludes to the tree of Jesse, the line of descent of the Davidic house; and indeed, a tree is featured at the base, although the upper portion is more architectural, with five tiers of mostly paired figures under arches or in lunettes.  At the bottom are the Latin historians and encyclopaedists – Pliny, Aulus Gellius, Livy and Sallust – and, above them, the orators and poets – Cicero and Quintilian, Virgil and Horace. Then follow the Greeks: Plutarch, Lucian, Theocritus and Pindar; and above them, the statesmen Aristides and Demosthenes, the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and the playwrights Euripides and Aristophanes.  At the top are the fathers of Greek literature, Homer and Hesiod, strumming their lyres for the figure in the centre: King Solomon, wearing a crown and bearing a sceptre.  Solomon, whose wisdom was a gift of God, was also the king of proverb writers; he authorizes the ancient authors and ancient proverbs over which he rules and from which Erasmus’s book is derived.

Credit: Oren Margolis (July 2018)