Three Moral Emblems: Cloth, Grafted Thorn, Falling Bricks
Red-chalk allegories of purification, virtue through teaching, and human estates
Three small red-chalk sketches on this folio each carry a moral allegory. A linen cloth held in running water, which leaves its filth behind, signifies purification; a thornbush grafted with good fruit stands for one made virtuous through his teachers; and a row of bricks toppling one against the next, 'l'un caccia l'altro' (one drives out the other), is read as human life and the succession of human estates. The drawings are lightly executed and partly faded.
On this page
Cloth washed clean in running water
A cloth held by hand in flowing water, leaving all its filth in the stream, signifies the person who is likewise purified. The image opens an unfinished moral comparison ('significa quello, ecc.').
Good fruit grafted onto a thornbush
A thornbush bearing good fruit grafted upon it signifies one who of himself was not disposed to virtue, but who, through the help of his teachers, yields most useful virtues. The graft makes the barren stock fruitful.
Falling bricks: 'l'un caccia l'altro'
A row of bricks falling one upon another, captioned 'one drives out the other', is understood to mean human life and the human estates. Each brick displaces the next, as fortunes and lives succeed one another.