Hispalis (Seville), Braun & Hoefnagel, 1565 (detail)

Detail from the foreground of A view of the city of Seville published in the third volume of Georg Braun's Civitatis Orbis Terrarum (1597). Thisr part of the painting shows a strange scene, itemised in the Key as S: Execution de Justicia de los cornudos patientes and T: Execution de l'acazuettas publicas. The "patient cuckold", a man with bound hands, wearing horns made from leafy branches (or antlers wrapped with greenery?) hung with bells and flags, and his adulterous wife (half-dressed and surrounded by a swarm of bees) are riding asses, presumably as a punishment for their shameful behaviour. Or is his wife the woman on the third ass, who appears to be beating him, and is in turn being beaten with a strap or belt by the man with a trumpet? Five onlookers are making the cabrón, the obscene sign of the horns. A similar custom in England was sometimes known as a Skimmington Ride or Skimmity.