"This book highlights the importance of secular and profane prints for the reconstruction and understanding of themes popular in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and examines their function as patterns for the other arts, and as sources for moral teaching and entertainment. As successors to the marginal illuminations of medieval manuscripts these prints represent the 'low' arts, and as such have licence for subversion and comedy. They are lower than paintings both in medium and subject-matter, concentrating on foolish and sinful behaviour, on world-upside-down situations and on base human passions, all discussed as a mirror of human folly and depravity. Some images cross the barriers of decency, resulting in scatological and grotesque representations.

The picture gained from secular and profane prints is one of humanity abandoning itself to the sins of the flesh and, therefore, folly; real life exists in details only, to serve in this satirical, yet convincing, illustration of the world."--Jacket.