In early youth he dedicated a number of works in prose and verse to the Emperor Maximilian, who made him Chancellor of the Empire, and frequently summoned him to his camp to take part in the negotiations regarding the Holy See.  He was universally admired, and Erasmus, who saw him in Strassburg, spoke of him as the “incomparable Brandt.”  His portrait represents the polished Italian rather than the sturdy middle-class German citizen.  His features are delicately cut, his nose long and thin, his face smooth, and his fur-bordered cap and brocade robes suggest aristocratic surroundings.  No doubt he graced, by his appearance and bearing as well as by his richly stored mind, the dignity of Count Palatine, to which rank the Emperor raised him.  He died in Strassburg in 1521, and lies in the great cathedral.

In addition to the pictures in the ‘Ship of Fools’ (some of which he drew, while others he designed and superintended), he illustrated ‘Terence’ (1496); the ‘Quadragesimale, or Sermons on the Prodigal Son’ (1495); ‘Boetius’ (1501), and ‘Virgil’ (1502), all of which are interesting to the artist and engraver.  In the original edition of the ‘Ship of Fools,’ written in the Swabian dialect, every folly is accompanied with marginal notes giving the classical or Biblical prototype of the person satirized.

“Brandt’s satires,” says Max Mueller in his ’Chips from a German Workshop,’ “are not very powerful, nor pungent, nor original.  But his style is free and easy.  He writes in short chapters, and mixes his fools in such a manner that we always meet with a variety of new faces.  To account for his popularity we must remember the time in which he wrote.  What had the poor people of Germany to read toward the end of the fifteenth century?  Printing had been invented, and books were published and sold with great rapidity.  People were not only fond, but proud, of reading.  This entertainment was fashionable, and the first fool who enters Brandt’s ship is the man who buys books.  But what were the wares that were offered for sale?  We find among the early prints of the fifteenth century religious, theological, and classical works in great abundance, and we know that the respectable and wealthy burghers of Augsburg and Strassburg were proud to fill their shelves with these portly volumes.  But then German aldermen had wives and daughters and sons, and what were they to read during the long winter evenings?...  There was room therefore at that time for a work like the ‘Ship of Fools.’  It was the first printed book that treated of contemporary events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French knights.

“People are always fond of reading the history of their own times.  If the good qualities of the age are brought out, they think of themselves or their friends; if the dark features of their contemporaries are exhibited, they think of their neighbors and enemies.  The ‘Ship of Fools’ is the sort of satire which ordinary