Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych

Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch

In onze literatuur gaat zij wel eens met een verlopen monnik op stap. Dacht de schilder, toen hij het tweetal in zijn schuit een plaatsje gaf, aan het gezegde: „Erm broerkens soeken erm susterluytkens [Gerlach, 1939, 10; Leuvense Bijdragen IX, 1910-1911, 66], d.i. soort zoekt soort? (p. 193)

Bax, 1949

#292

…a Franciscan friar and a nun of the Order of the Poor Clares, the latter playing a lute, are seated in the middle of the boat nearest to the viewer (p. 191)

Fischer, 2016

Jheronimus Bosch

#293

The combination is particularly piquant since the tonsured friar, as a priest, is strictly speaking in charge of the nun’s spiritual welfare and should be guiding her along the right, that is to say, religious, path. Both appear to be singing, and a loaf of bread hangs down from above, within reach of their mouths. (p. 191)

Fischer, 2016

Jheronimus Bosch

#355

Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

Two traditions are of importance in interpreting the merrymakers in the boat in particular. First of all, the branches, as well as the cherries on the plank that serves as a makeshift table, clearly show that these people have set out on a pleasure trip. Especially in the spring, highborn youngsters amused themselves by flirting and making music while sailing around in boats decorated with foliage. This happened in real life, but it was also portrayed in numerous book of hours as illustrations of the month of May. Those depictions, however, invariably show elegantly dressed boys and girls, whose polished manners cannot be compared with the debauched doings of Bosch’s figures. Merrymaking monks and nuns never appear in such scenes [Bax, 1949, 194; de Bruyn, 2001, 80-83; Silver, 2006, 243-252; Ilsink et al., 2016, 212] yet they are part of the other tradition from which this painting seems to derive. Revellers in boats or barges who flout the norms and values of society are known from countless sixteenth-century poems, prints and religious processions. Again and again, social norms were ridiculed by displays of dissolute behaviour, by showing how not to do it, by acting out the topsy-turvy world. For those receptive to the message, it was immediately clear where such behaviour would finally lead – to perdition [Pleij, 1979; Lammertse & van der Coelen, 2015, 62]. (p. 298)

Lammertse, 2017

#456

Folly herself describes human weakness and stupidity with a delicate irony, often implying that folly, after all, is the natural and note entirely undesirable conidtion of mankind. This tolerant approach is absent in the blunter, more caustic verses of the Ship of Fools. For Brant [Brant, 1944; Brant, 1962], folly is not amusing, but equated with sin and punished in Hell, a harsher attitude which also characterizes Bosch’s castigation of the loose morals of monks and nuns. (p. 44)

Gibson, 1973

#490

Hieronymus Bosch c.1450-1516

It shows a monk and two nuns or beguines carousing with a group of peasants in a boat. The oddly constructed boat carries a tree in full leaf for a mast, while a broken ranch serves as a rudder. (p. 28)

Bosing, 1987

#524

Certainly the monk and nun make up the central focus of an overtly satirical picture. It remains unclear if they are singing to each other or, with others of their silly company, are bobbing at the cake dangling between them. Whichever it may be, nothing here is to be taken as realistica. Everything becomes a sign alluding to something else: the swimmers, the fool on the mast, the man losing his dinner overboard, the one who crawls about in the bottom of the boat with a huge jug on a cord and over whom a woman is leaning-none of them can be taken as literal and real. (p. 66)

Linfert, 1989

#530

That even this highly eccentric-seeming Ship of Fools has to do with some activity connected with either the deadly sins or the seasons is suggested by an exploration of the new iconography of the Months introduced at the end of the fourteenth century. As Pächt shows, depictions of the activities of each month had been done mostly in the form of wall paintings until the fifteenth century, when they began to appear in manuscript miniatures [Pächt, 1948]. There are Books of Hours from the time when Bosch began his career in which, as Cuttler found, the month of May was generally illustrated with a boating party [Cuttler, 1969]. From the same period there are also pictures of groups of monks in boats, and since the devils always busy themselves with such lusty companies, these would appear to be meant as disreputable. It is a safe assumption that, in Bosch’s time, such an association of boat trips with sinful monks was widespread. Nevertheless much remains to be explained here, especially since in another source one finds a monk and nun cooperating (or worse) in some blasphemous action. In which case the cake suspended from above would be the host and the board between the two an altar table set with chalice and paten. Yet there are others in the picture, and their only message seems to be that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” (p. 66)

Linfert, 1989

#645

Lammertse & van der Coelen, 2015

What is funny at one point in time may not be regarded as remotely amusing at another. When Jheronimus Bosch painted a monk having fun with a nun in The Ship of Fools, most viewers would have seen the joke. Idling, merrymaking friars and lovesick pastors were among the stock characters in fiftheenth-century anecdotes, poems and farces. (p. 49)

De ontdekking an het dagelijks leven: Van Bosch tot Bruegell

#661

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

The illustrations show that the link between music, love, folly, spring and May boats was a relatively common one. The boat decorated with branches and the musicians we find in Bosch’s Ship of Fools mean we need to take this aspect into account when interpreting the painting, which also shows someone playing the lute. In the May boat image, the lute no doubt represents the harmony of the music itself and between the lady who plays the instrument and her lover. The nun and the monk in the Ship of Fools also sing along to the strains of the lute – less mellifluously, we imagine – but here the allusion can only be to indecency. (p. 328)

Ilsink et al., 2016

#722

Pennant with cresent symbol from Ship of Fools

In der Ausgestaltung des «Narrenschiff» von Bosch findet sich einigesbei Brant wieder. Zum Beispiel im ersten Titelblatt von 1494 [Dürer, 1494 (Frontispiece of Daß Narrenschyff ad Narragoniam)], sind die Elemente Musik, Wimpel und Zaungäste vergleichbar. Andere Gemeinsamkeiten ergeben sich mit dem Titelblatt der lateinischen Ausgabe Basel 1497 [Brant, 1498 (Frontispiece)]: eine ähnliche Anzahl von Personen, ein trinkender Mönch sowie einige Gesten, wie die erhobenen Arme und das Über-dieReling-Hängen. Die weiblichen Passagiere kann Bosch in einer Pariser «Narrenschiff»-Ausgabe von 1500 gefunden haben, in den «Stultiferae naves» des Humanisten und Verlegers Jodocus Badius [Badius, 1500; Renouard, 1964, 197-213, 2, Nr. C 1, 77f.; Universitätsbibliothek Basel & Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg im Breisgau, 1994, Nr. 110, 206f.]. Hier zeigen die Illustrationen Närrinnen auf Booten. Sie sind Allegorien der «Fünf Sinne», angeleitet von Eva als Ursünderin. Das «Eva»-Boot hat mit Boschs Bild den laubgeschmückten Mast gemeinsam, einen Paradiesbaum mit Schlange. Das «Geschmacks»-Boot («Scapha gustationis stultae») hat mit Boschs Schiff den Wimpel und die ähnliche Bootsform gemeinsam [Scaha gustationis sultae, 1500]. Auch die Gesten der Narren und Närrinnen entsprechen sich, insbesonderewenn man den Holzschnitt spiegelverkehrt betrachtet: Ein närrischer Passagier speist selbstzufrieden, ein anderer, offensichtlich betrunken, legtsich schlafen, eine Närrin verlangt mit erhobener Hand Wein, zwei anderesitzen sich am gedeckten Tisch gegenüber, und in der Mitte erhebt eine Närrin voll Freude ihr Glas. Bosch geht aber über diese Vorlage hinaus und nimmt noch Elemente aus der Maifeier hinzu, die er parodistisch abwandelt. (p. 163)

Hartau, 2002

“Narrenschiffe” um 1500

#855

No one could view the Bosch panels without realizing that this indulgence is sinful. But the Louvre panel contains explicit labels that mark the scene as evil. For one thing, the banner fluttering from the tree-mast bears the crescent moon of Islam, no longer associated with turbaned figures in exotic dress but now atop a boat with Christian monastics in the midst of their pleasures. (p. 252)

Silver, 2006