In one of its most ambitious recent exhibitions, the Louvre in Paris looks at how the depiction of the fool—and by extension the perception of madness—has evolved from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. The fool comes in many forms across the centuries: simpletons, hermits, sinners mocking courteous love, party animals, royal buffoons, mad kings, immoral pleasure seekers, and even insecure artists. Some of his many faces are scarier than others.
“The large number of images of madmen, fools, and buffoons that the last centuries of the Middle Ages,” French medieval historian Michel Pastoureau writes in the exhibition catalog, “have left us makes it possible to draw up an exhaustive list of their attributes of their function or representation: bonnet, hood, cock’s head, bells, bauble, cheese, ball, moon, baldness, nudity, cut-out garments, striped, quartered, variegated clothing, wide, jagged collar, long, pointes shoes.”
Featuring over 300 works, the Louvre’s “Figures of the Fool” (through February 3) is a chronological and pedagogical display that will blow your mind away in its exploration of this fascinating, multifaceted subject. Below, a look at the 10 most bewitching illustrations of the fool.
