I keep an eye out for images of medieval scribes and artists. This one from Pierre Sala's emblematic Livre d'amour jumped out at me because the artist is painting a jester—yea! Oh, and wait a minute, look!—the jester is painting a portrait of the artist.
The British Library labels the artist and jester, wise man and fool; and the Livre d'amour certainly contains emblems. Could this one suggest that any persona we project is also a parody of ourselves? I can imagine having a writer or actor in a story pin it up as a reminder of that lesson.
Other possible story lines:
- An artist and a jester are set to painting each other as a malicious court joke.
- A court artist paints a jester little realizing that the jester is surreptitiously sketching him in return.
- Someone says, "It's a wise man knows his own face."
- Two writers put each other in romans à clef; one is a tragedy, the other a farce
What else?