To Frank Schaer:
In reply to your question:
> Some figures carved on columns in a church in Koszeg allegedly
> represent the seven sins. We thought we could identify the
> following:
> A bear = gluttony?
> A creature with two backs = lust?
> The others included a monkey, and a pair of figures of which one was
> a bird/woman with hoofs.
> Does anyone have fuller information on these equivalences?
You may have a problem here; the bear could certainly personify
gluttony. However, traditionally, the monkey also symbolises lust
(as do the pig and the goat).
Much as one would neatly like to identify medieval carvings,
there is not always an obvious iconographic programme to be detected
and you may need to consider the possibility that these are simply
depictions of animals and composite creatures (of the type that St
Bernard of Clairvaux was fulminating against) rather than try and
impose an iconographic interpretation onto them.
I am sorry not to be of more help.
Sophie Oosterwijk
Department of the History of Art
University of Leicester
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