History Viewed in a Funhouse Mirror

An exhibition at the Louvre follows the evolution of the fool, who has long served as a reflection of our own self-image

- DOMINIC GREEN

The figure of the fool walked off the margins of medieval manuscripts into the unholy courts of the Renaissance, then returned to the page as Hamlet's Yorick. Later, in the age of reason and democracy, the parodist of royal dignity became a mirror of the universal condition: Dostoevsky's "holy fool" and Picasso's grubby clowns; Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Curated by the Louvre's Élisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, and presenting over 300 works from 90 European and American collections in eight sections, "Figures of the Fool: From the Middle Ages to the Romantics" is an ingenious reflection on the march of folly. From medieval Catholicism to Quasimodo on film, the fool is our constant companion, a shifting reflection of our self-image and its blind side.

In the first sections, "On the World's Margins" and "In the Beginning: The Fool and God," the fool is born in the painted pages of breviaries, psalters and Bibles. In a psalter created for the English prince Alphonso around 1284, he plays with apes. In one of Jacquemart de Hesdin's illustrations for the Duc de Berry's psalter (c. 1386), a nearly naked fool clutches a club.