The Trusty Servant
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The Trusty Servant is an emblematic figure in a painting at Winchester College and the name of the college's alumni magazine.
The wall-painting called The Trusty Servant was painted by John Hoskins in 1579.[1] It was reworked by William Cave in 1809, giving the painting now on display there.[2] It hangs outside the kitchen of Winchester College in Hampshire, England.[3]
The American author Arthur Cleveland Coxe (1818-1896) described "the time-honoured Hircocervus, or picture of 'the Trusty-servant,' which hangs near the kitchen, and which emblematically sets forth those virtues in domestics, of which we Americans know nothing. It is a figure, part man, part porker, part deer, and part donkey; with a padlock on his mouth, and various other symbols in his hands and about his person, the whole signifying a most valuable character."[4]
The painting of The Trusty Servant had a didactic function: it is accompanied by allegorical verses that associate the servant's various animal parts with distinctive virtues that the students of Winchester College were meant to follow.[5]
Latin | English |
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Effigiem servi si vis spectare probati, |
A Trusty Servant's Portrait would you see, |