Demonic & Lesbionic
that one sapphic woodcut print
This wonderful lesbionic woodcut print is from a german translation of an early 1300s italian book known as Fiore di virtù which has no known author *gasp*
The german version is called Buch der tugend and both titles basically mean the Book of Virtues and its from 1486 so later than the OG versions. If ur nosey like me u can find a copy online on the Library of Congress.
The book describes various virtues and vices (i think thats subjective hen) with examples given to back up why it is what it is
So lets get to the good stuff and why we have a dyke wedding in a medieval woodcut
This comes under the section on Injustice and its really not explained why but the story is the the Devil wanted a wife so he could have daughters to marry off. The only reason given for this is to bring his son-in-laws into hell which doesn’t make much send to me but i guess its about tryna spread sin?
So he takes a wife known as Lady Injustice, which is a comic book villain name if ever i heard one, and she bares him 7 daughters and as any religion nut will tell u the number 7 represents perfection and completeness in the christian faith and its various flavours
The daughters are:
Lady Pride who was married off to noblemen
Lady Avarice who was married off to ‘men of the people’
Lady Falsehood - who was married off to peasants
Lady Envy - who ‘went bride to’ the artisans
Lady Hypocrisy - who was ‘given to’ the clergy
Lady Vanity - who ‘glory and women took this one for themselves’
Lady Lust - not married but sent to whore around the world (goals tbh)
The woodcut shows us the scene of the Ladies Hypocrisy and Vanity being married off with demons presiding over their ceremonies. As funny as the clergy marrying hypocrisy is, we are all actually WAY more interested in the lesbian wedding of Lady Vanity.
“Women took this one for themselves” this suggests women being the chasers here (idk how else to put it my brain is rotted sorry) rather than the others who the sin lady was the active one. Like the important word here is took so i guess women were the top in this relationship which honestly yes pls
We can safely assume that Lady Vanity is on the left as that is what we are shown in the ceremony next to hers. She has long flowing hair, not covered up to be modest or to keep it from getting dirty cuz she is Lady Vanity she is always serving
This is the main way they can show her slaying cuz there often wasn’t space to do loads of detail especially if ur only using one colour to print a bunch of these pages
Both Lady Vanity and her new wife (wives? all women?) are stood bow legged which can only suggest one thing (imo) - scissoring. They know about scissoring in the early 1300s and i won’t hear another word about it!
its giving every woman is a lesbian at heart
The demon presiding over their wedding has a flat chest and a fanny on show so we got ourselves a gender non-conforming demon! Whether the demon is a butch or a trans masc is up to u cuz thats why we got imaginations.
So we potentially got some #LwiththeT artwork from 1300s! Or butch dyke demons other dykes. Either way we gotta take the wins where we can lol
I don’t understand why this is in the section on Injustice other than the Devil marrying Lady Injustice there isn’t anything injust happening here just gals being pals. Just two roommates etc…