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Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych

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40 interpretations found.

#45
Boat with ten people onboard from Ship of Fools

A related kind of scene, that is, a boating party without monks, allows a closer approach to the Louvre painting. Another manuscript from Bruges, roughly contemporaneous with that just discussed, contains a different boating scene. This appears in the lower margin of the Visitation scene in an horae in the Musee Conde, Chantilly [Meurgey, 1930, No. 79, p,. CXII]. Youthful couples are seen in the boat, and branches as well. A similar scene is found in another horae, attributed in part to the Master of the Dresden Prayerbook, which was sold from the Dyson Perrins Collection at Sotheby’s in 1958. In the calendar illustration for the month of May young couples are making music in a boat on a canal. A boating party as the May calendar illustration became popular in Bruges horae. The Chantilly May miniature shows a pair of lovers seated on the ground, but apparently it was made (seemingly it dates from the early 1480’s) before the boating scene became canonical for May illustrations in manuscripts from the Ghent-Bruges region. However, by the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century, a boating scene as the May calendar illustration is a constant in works from the shop of Simon Bening, Bruges’ leading illuminator. The scene is found in a closely related group of sumptuous manuscripts: the Breviary in the Musee Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp; the Golf Book in the British Museum, London (so called because one of its miniatures shows a golfing scene); the Hennessy Hours in the Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels; and the Da Costa Hours, Morgan Library, New York [Gaspar, 1932, pl. v.]. These manuscripts have been attributed to Simon Bening or Gerard Horenbout, or to the two artists in collaboration [Wescher, 1946, 198], and their May calendar scenes depict a musical boating party with one or more polers, male and female music-makers (usually flutists and lutenists), and leafy boughs in the boat. The Morgan Library manuscript illumination even shows a bottle hung over the side of the boat to keep its contents cool, as in Bosch’s painting. (p.273)

Cuttler, 1969
Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#46
Boat with ten people onboard from Ship of Fools

It has been seen that at the end of the fifteenth century and in the early years of the sixteenth, a musical boating party was substituted in May miniatures for one of the several earlier iconographic norms. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, May scenes show a mounted young man hawking, as in the Rohan Hours, a type also widespread in the fourteenth century, or, as in the Limbourgs’ calendar illustration from the even more famous Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a scene of the whole court hawking in May. Earlier, however, in northern Italy May was represented as a pleasant outing, with strolling couples and a luncheon al fresco, in the landscape painting in the Torre d’Aquila of the Castello de Buon Consiglio at Trent [Pächt, 1950, 38]. Then, in what is, according to Schretlen [Schretlen, 1950, 20, pl. 13a], a German copy of a Netherlandish calendar for the years 1458 to 1477, we find May characterized in a scene of a youthful courtier seated beneath a tree playing a lute for his lady love, an iconographic motif seemingly of Italian derivation, though the lady’s immersion in a tub has another source. The motif of a naked woman in a tub probably derives from the representation of one of Venus’ children in the popular planet pictures. Northern illuminations and prints repeat the theme of amorousdalliance as a characteristic of the May scene in the fifteenth century. The scene of a young music-making couple became the preferred type, though the earlier hawking scene also appeared, but with far less frequency. However, only in the Ghent-Bruges region does the musical boating party with boughs in the boat appear as the May calendar scene. (pp. 273-274)

Cuttler, 1969
Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#355
Boat with ten people onboard from Ship of Fools

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
Hieronymus Bosch: The pilgrimage of life triptych

#722
Boat with ten people onboard 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

#812
Boat with ten people onboard from Ship of Fools

Certainly images of courtly love bowers figure prominently within calendar page illustrations, particularly for the lusty spring months of April and May. Half a century after Bosch, Pieter Bruegel’s drawing design for a print of Spring [Bruegel, 1565 (Der Frühling)] still features not only the preparation of a formal garden under a matron’s careful supervision in the foreground but also, at its vanishing point, a love bower, where feasting, drinking, and music as well as boating provide conducive conditions for lovemaking. [Silver, 2006, 400:note 37; van der Heyden, 1570; Bening, ca. 1515; Orenstein, 2001, 236-238: no. 105-106; Wieck, 1988, 45-54]… Once more, it should be recalled that these are precisely the kinds of activities condemned elsewhere by Bosch as the sin of luxuria in his Prado table tabletop [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510] and in his wing panel of the Ship of Fools… Indeed, such activities mark gardens of love (sometimes with added ascetic figures to be discovered) in later Flemish and Dutch painting, from Pieter Pourbus, Allegory of True Love [Pourbus, c. 1547] to a nascent seventeenth-century genre of “merry companies,’ where well-dressed young aristocrats feast and flirt in outdoor garden settings [Silver, 2006, 400:note 38; Huvenne, 1979; Nevitt, 2003, 21-98; de Bruyn, 1604; de Bruyn, 1601; Hellerstedt, 1986, 42-44, no. 16; Renger, 1976, 190-203; Nichols, 1992, 32-42]. (pp. 52-53)

Silver, 2006
Hieronymus Bosch

#813
Couple in a pink tent with clothes on shore from An Allegory of Intemperance

Certainly images of courtly love bowers figure prominently within calendar page illustrations, particularly for the lusty spring months of April and May. Half a century after Bosch, Pieter Bruegel’s drawing design for a print of Spring [Bruegel, 1565 (Der Frühling)] still features not only the preparation of a formal garden under a matron’s careful supervision in the foreground but also, at its vanishing point, a love bower, where feasting, drinking, and music as well as boating provide conducive conditions for lovemaking. [Silver, 2006, 400:note 37; van der Heyden, 1570; Bening, ca. 1515; Orenstein, 2001, 236-238: no. 105-106; Wieck, 1988, 45-54]… Once more, it should be recalled that these are precisely the kinds of activities condemned elsewhere by Bosch as the sin of luxuria in his Prado table tabletop [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510] and in his wing panel of… an Allegory of Gluttony. Indeed, such activities mark gardens of love (sometimes with added ascetic figures to be discovered) in later Flemish and Dutch painting, from Pieter Pourbus, Allegory of True Love [Pourbus, c. 1547] to a nascent seventeenth-century genre of “merry companies,’ where well-dressed young aristocrats feast and flirt in outdoor garden settings [Silver, 2006, 400:note 38; Huvenne, 1979; Nevitt, 2003, 21-98; de Bruyn, 1604; de Bruyn, 1601; Hellerstedt, 1986, 42-44, no. 16; Renger, 1976, 190-203; Nichols, 1992, 32-42]. (pp. 52-53)

Silver, 2006
Hieronymus Bosch