The narrative of the Libro del Cortegiano involves at once subdued drama and slightly risky play. It begins with a game whose purpose is to propose a second game which will occupy the company at Urbino for the rest of the evening. This elaborately two-tiered pastime suggests immediately the centrality and formality of play for this group, and throws the dramatic focus on the question of a given proposal's suitability. The reader doesn't know what criteria will determine the excellence of the winning invention, but he is allowed to participate in the consideration of each. Thus in this preliminary contest, Gasparo Pallavicino makes a proposal, and then Cesare Gonzaga another; then the buffoon Fra Serafino and the poet, the Unico Aretino, each makes a kind of non-proposal in bad faith, which has to be dealt with by the arbitress, Emilia Pia.

The theme of the Haywain, Hieronymus Bosch's great allegory of avarice (Fig. I), seems to have enjoyed a certain vogue in Brabant during the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Two manifestations of its influence were published and extensively analyzed some years ago by Lebeer, Grauls and Keyser. One of these is an etching by Frans Hogenberg, issued in 1559 by the Antwerp print publisher Bartholomeus de Mompere (Fig. 2). It depicts a broad plain crowded with figures whose acts of folly are epitomized by the large hay cart dominating the middle distance. The cart unmistakably shows Hogenberg's debt to Bosch, although he replaced the music-making lovers seated on Bosch's wagon with a devil triumphantly displaying two tufts of hay.