Here to ruin the meme. The topic got my interest so I did a bit of looking around for the actual original woodcut and story. It’s less detailed than this recreation, and given the ballad/story that it goes along with, this is very likely the scene where the wife is cheating with another man. Not to say there wasn’t other stuff going on in the “platonic” sharing of beds normally done, but this isn’t a “picture” of that.
Rule of thumb - if you want illustrations to go along with your book, pay for a good artist.
Adding another tidbit of grounded reality - descriptions like the above should often be taken as tongue-in-cheek. Historians are only using the information given, so they can’t say FOR SURE it’s depicting two women lovers, but given the surrounding context it may be the most reasonable assumption.
“Who knows what these wacky ladies might be up to. Maybe they’re eating soup. Maybe some light lesbianism. Maybe it’s mercury poisoning. Who are we to say?”
Here to ruin the meme. The topic got my interest so I did a bit of looking around for the actual original woodcut and story. It’s less detailed than this recreation, and given the ballad/story that it goes along with, this is very likely the scene where the wife is cheating with another man. Not to say there wasn’t other stuff going on in the “platonic” sharing of beds normally done, but this isn’t a “picture” of that.
Rule of thumb - if you want illustrations to go along with your book, pay for a good artist.
I was wondering what made people think those were two women. Males have nipples, too.
Adding another tidbit of grounded reality - descriptions like the above should often be taken as tongue-in-cheek. Historians are only using the information given, so they can’t say FOR SURE it’s depicting two women lovers, but given the surrounding context it may be the most reasonable assumption.
“Who knows what these wacky ladies might be up to. Maybe they’re eating soup. Maybe some light lesbianism. Maybe it’s mercury poisoning. Who are we to say?”
historians and archeologists should just start using this in place of a description