And technically the devil would have to be turned around and bent over. What’s intriguing here is that even though he can talk out of his ass he’s chosen not to. This is a surprisingly frank look at how the devil and the saint both know the cathedral building project is an elaborate way to fleece taxpayers.
The name of the artist may actually be “Pacher”.
Given just the picture, Wolfgang on the left could easily be the 15th century super-villain, and our boy on the right could be the super-hero.
Hadn’t seen this work before, and enjoyed the joke about real estate contractors.
Shades of Hieronymous - a contemporary, or a pre-dating influence? But where did artists’ visions of terrible creatures come from? Are they composites of human and animal or reptile anatomy, or actual entities that ‘appeared’ to the ‘visionaries’? If Bosch, for instance was inspired by, say, the scriptures of St. John of The Apocalypse, was he just riffing off that, or did he have his own personal vision of Hell?
I don’t know, and no, I am not googling it.
This was a new legend for me (not being generally familiar with the late 10th century), and not
The TLDR:
Wolfgang goes up the mountain, throws his axe down, decides to build a church where the axe fell. Wolf comes along, Wolfgang asks it for help building. It declines since it was running from a hunter. Wolf takes off, and the hunter comes through next. Wolfgang asks him for help, and the hunger declines since he’s chasing the wolf. The devil comes along, Wolfgang asks for help, and the devil agrees on the condition he’s given the first soul to cross through the doors (reverse-“Dogma”?). Devil builds the church, and Wolfgang tries to renege. Devil insists, and Wolfgang hears the hunter and wolf coming towards them, opens the door, and the wolf runs in. Devil’s pissed, but takes the wolf down to hell and everyone lives happily ever after.
Happy side note: the church in Austria was a subcamp of Dachau during WWII.
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