Aegidii Albertini Hirnschleiffer
Aegidius Albertinus's Hirnschleiffer, printed in Cologne in 1645 by Constantin Münich, is a German-language collection of satirical and moralizing whimsy aimed at a general reading public. Its small framed copperplate engravings show figures in their own right, not as narrative scenes: a man with a second face on the back of his head, a crowned king holding a sceptre and a fish, a child leading an old man, a piper with a bagpipe beside a wooden boat. Designers might take the plain full-length figures in open landscapes, with their stiff poses and spare hatching, as a model for a small character series.
