«La necedad humana cabalga en un caballo de caña»: un giro en la concepción del juguete en un emblema de Frans van Hoogstraten

Abstract

The hobby horse —a symbol of human foolishness— appears frequently in European paintings and artwork of the Modern Age in a bid to pass on moral teaching. It is in line with this that artists such as Bruegel the Elder, David Vinckboons or Jan Steen make use of the hobby horse in scenes which portray Dutch kermis in which the children’s toy is used as a parody of an ignorant society. Emblematic literature on its part is not oblivious to this iconographic genre and actually uses it to denote human irrationality. It is within this understanding that an emblem of the Dutchman Frans van Hoogstraten is inscribed, in which a little girl appears in the foreground playing with the hobby horse. The analysis of this emblem will take us along different European genres which revolve around symbols and meanings, and usher us towards a novel way of conceiving it in European visual culture.