Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it.
– Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795)
Wise serpents and innocent doves beware: this room is full of big bad wolves. A perverse pastoral, a site of a trickster weaving plots against all us fools. You may recognize the story. You may even recognize the faces. It takes us back to 1573, to the wake of the Slovenian-Croatian Peasant Revolt, also known as Gubec's Rebellion. The revolt lasted twelve days and took the lives of over 3,000 peasants – an uprising, so the story goes, triggered by the despicable cruelty of one Baron Ferenc Tahy.
Notice that the serfs’ hero, Matija Gubec, is missing.
But the Baron is present in all his devilish glory, a horned figure armed with bells, beads, leather scraps, and bottle caps. A monster? Perhaps. In any case, he is not alone. The Duchess’s severed head waves a jiggling flag, adorned with the same language of meticulously crafted materials and…
