The gate of the year

Fool Scepter (Narrenzepter), called in French marotte, sculpted in ivory and dating to the XVI century, now in the Kunstgewerbemuseum (National Museums), Berlin, Germany.
The term marotte indicates an indispensable accessory of the Fool, a sort of “double” or reflection of himself. Often it is represented, in iconography, with a long handle. The Fool’s scepter is substantially the equivalent of the Wild Man’s stick and constitutes a connecting element between these two characters, who show several analogies. Both are beings who are placed at the borders of the human world, signaling a point of passage, an intersection: between humanity and animality, settled spaces and woody places inhabited by wild beasts, between the rational order of thought and the abandonment to elation and the openness to the disorder of folly, between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org]




Folly

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Fool Scepter (Narrenzepter), called in French marotte, sculpted in ivory and dating to the XVI century, now in the Kunstgewerbemuseum (National Museums), Berlin, Germany. The term marotte indicates an indispensable accessory of the Fool, a sort of “double” or reflection of himself. Often it is represented, in iconography, with a long handle. The Fool’s scepter is substantially the equivalent of the Wild Man’s stick and constitutes a connecting element between these two characters, who show several analogies. Both are beings who are placed at the borders of the human world, signaling a point of passage, an intersection: between humanity and animality, settled spaces and woody places inhabited by wild beasts, between the rational order of thought and the abandonment to elation and the openness to the disorder of folly, between the world of the living and the world of the dead. [Image: http://library.artstor.org]