Iconology of the Wayfarer Triptych

Le Musée national du Louvre, Paris

Lafond [Lafond, 1914, 79-80] voit ici une interprétation de la Nef des Fous de l’humaniste Sébastien Brant (Das Narrenschiff), ouvrage paru à Bâle en 1494… Avant Lafond [Lafond, 1914, 79-80], [Maeterlinck, 1907, 218-219] avait signal. l’importance du livre de Brant et son influence sur l’art de Bosch, sans toutefois le rattacher à notre tableau, encore inconnu à cette époque. Demonts [Demonts, 1919, 3-8; 296-298] reprend cinq ans plus tard la même interprétation du tableau du Louvre, y voyant non seulement l’influence de l’œuvre de Brant, mais aussi celle, plus précise, d’une suite à la Nef des Fous publiée en 1498 par l’écrivain Josse Bade: la Nef des Folles. Trois gravures en auraient fourni des motifs à Jérôme Bosch. (pp.21-22)

Adhémar, 1962

Le Musée national du Louvre, Paris

[Demonts, 1919, 3-8, 296-298] émet l’hypothèse que le tableau du Louvre serait un volet de triptyque, dont l’ensemble aurait illustré d’une maniéré plus complété l’œuvre de Brant. (p.22)

Adhémar, 1962

#18

Le Muse_e national du Louvre, Paris

En 1957, Benesch [Benesch, 1957, 28, 33-34] accepte le rapprochement entre l’oeuvre littéraire de Sébastien Brant et le tableau [Bosch, ca. 1505-1510, “The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things”]. Celui-ci pourrait avoir fait partie d’une série des Péchés capitaux et signifier la gourmandise. L’auteur y verrait une transcription assez littérale du poème de Brant intitulé Dass Schluraffen Schiff car le peintre aurait transposé les jeux de mots de Brant : Nargon et Naragun dérivés du mot _ Aragon _, par allusion au mot germanique Narr, fou; de même Montflascun pour Montefiascone est une allusion à l’italien fiascone, grosse bouteille de vin… Benesch aussi avait d.j. constat. une certaine similitude entre la Nef des Fous et l’Allégorie dans laquelle il voit la peinture d’une nuit d’orgie. (p.25)

Adhe_mar, 1962

#19

Le Muse_e national du Louvre, Paris

En 1959, Baldass [Baldass, 1959, 16, 226-227] accepte de voir l’origine du thème dans la société carnavalesque flamande De Blauwe Schuit et lui reconnaît un parallèle littéraire dans la célèbre Narrenschiff de Sébastien Brant. (p.25)

Adhe_mar, 1962

#27

Hieronymus Bosch: son art, son influence, ses disciples

M. Camille Benoit, à Paris, possède un panneau en hauteur, peut-être un volet de triptyque, qui figure une barque voguant sur l’eau, pleine de passagers, incontestablement un souvenir de la Nef des fous de Sébastien Brandt [Brant, 1962]… (p. 79)

Lafond, 1914

#28

Hieronymus Bosch: son art, son influence, ses disciples

Concert dans une barque (La Nef des Fous) [Brant, 1962] (p. 114)

Lafond, 1914

#34

Deux primitifs néerlandais au Musée du Louvr

La composition principale eût représenté toutes les folies humaines, empruntées à l’oeuvre de Sébastien Brant [Brant, 1962] plutôt qu’à celle de Badius, et se dirigeant dans des centaines d’embarcations vers la grande- nef qui va faire voile vers l’ile de Narragonie, ou, selon les termes de la vieille traduction française, « le grand naufrage des fols qui sont en la nef naviguant en la mer de ce monde ‘. (p. 8)

Demonts, 1919

#56

Knightly jousting objects, draped cloth with winged figure from Death and the Miser

The Narrenschiff beggar before the low wall has been transformed by Bosch into a veiled disparagement of knights and chivalry, suggested by the helmet, lance, gauntlet, sword, and shield. The objects seem to be related visually and conceptually to the nearby draped cloth and the little evil monkish figure behind it. There is a vague allusion to jousting and tournaments, a very popular form of entertainment in the late medieval period. Naturally tournaments were castigated in the literature, as in the sermons of Jacques de Vitay and in other writings [Bloomfield, 1952, 129, 172]. (p.275)

Cuttler, 1969

Bosch and the Narrenschiff: a problem in relationships

#63

Bosch and Brant: Images of Folly

Bosch and Brant were not alone in their fascination with this theme. In 1413 Jacob van Oestvoren had made a ship of fools the central image of his poem, De Blauwe Schuit (The Blue Boat) [van Oestvoren, 1413], and this literary tradition found its highest expression in 1509 [Erasmus, 1913] with the publication of Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly [Combe, 1957, 24]. (p.18)

Rossiter, 1973

#65

Man on a barrel with five skinny men in the waters from An Allegory of Intemperance

Although not a real ship, the barrel adrift at sea may refer to the ship of fools portrayed by Brant in the Prologue [Brant, 1498 (Frontispiece)] (p.18)

Rossiter, 1973

Bosch and Brant: Images of Folly

#83

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

Their drinking removes all barriers to the onslaught [Brant, 1962, 97]. (p.23)

Rossiter, 1973

Bosch and Brant: Images of Folly

#107

Nun playing the lute from Ship of Fools

Music (often an emblem of wasteful indulgence in Bosch, especially in the Hell wing of The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych) is common to both worlds of luxury, but the Prado panel contains both harp and recorder, while the Paris panel has only a lute. (p.630)

Silver, 2001

God in the Details: Bosch and Judgment(s)

#108

Nun playing the lute from Ship of Fools

Ironically, these instruments tend to occur in images with angelic musicians in 15th-century Flemish paintings, presumably as prestige instruments associated with (heavenly) court life, in contrast to the more vulgar bagpipes and other peasant instruments. [Winternitz, 1967, 66-85, 129-149; Hammerstein, 1962; Brant, 1944, 186.] (p.647, note 19)

Silver, 2001

God in the Details: Bosch and Judgment(s)

#125

Hieronymus Bosch: son art, son influence, ses disciples

M. Camille Benoit, à Paris, possède un panneau en hauteur, peutêtre unvolet de triptyque, qui figure une barque voguant sur l’eau, pleine de passagers, incontestablement un souvenir de la Nef des fous de Sébastien Brandt [Brant, 1962]… grimpé sur une branche de cet arbre, absorbe gloutonnement le contenu… (pp. 79-80)

Lafond, 1914

#126

La nef des fous (p. 117)

Demonts, 1919

Jérôme Bosch

#127

Deux primitifs néerlandais au Musée du Louvre

The nave of the fools (p. 118)

Demonts, 1919

#128

A propos d’une oeuvre de Bosch au Musée de Gand

La Nef des fous [Brant, 1962], qui pendant l’époque de production artistique de Bosch et de Breughel eut une si grande popularité, doit certes avoir influencé ces artistes. Ce livre était d’ailleurs illustré par une série de gravures sur bois hardiment exécutées. Prenant pour point de départ les paroles du prédicateur : Stultorum numerus est infinitus, Brand montre, sous toutes les formes, la folie de ses contemporains et en met les causes à nu. Les gravures qui l’ornent constituent de véritables tableaux satiriques du temps. (p. 219)

Maeterlinck, 1907

#130

Een zottengilde dus. Het thema werd dan ruim verspreid door het veel gelezen satirische gedicht Das Narrenschiff van Sebastian Brant, in 1494 te Bazel verschenen en spoedig in verschillende talen overgebracht. Het staat verder vast, dat dat schip der dwaasheid ook in ommegangen voorkwam. (p. 17)

Vermeylen, 1939

#138

The ship, moreover, was a favourite leit-motiv of didactic literature from the 14th century on. It was Paul Lafond who in 1914 [Lafond, 1914] first pointed out another possible source of this picture: The Narrenschiff… Among the woodcuts illustrating this edition is one showing a boat laden with six drunken fools. It is far from certain, however, that Bosch’s picture was painted after the publication of Brant’s Narrenschiff. (pp. 36-37)

Delevoy, 1960

Bosch

#140

The boat is being driven about aimlessly; forgetting duty, the steersman has abandoned his helm to take part in the passengers’ game around the cake. The picture’s basic theme is probably inspired by the last chapter but one of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools… [Brant, 1854, 104; de Tolnay, 1965, 26, Demonts, 1919, 6ff] (p. 26)

de Tolnay, 1965

#142

The origin of the theme can be found in contemporary literature. It is apparently earlier than Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, which was first published in 1494; the idea was already known in 1413, as it apparent from the poem ‘Blauwe Schuit’ by J. van Oestvoren [van Oestvoren, 1413], where a monk and a nun are mentioned in connexion with a ship of fools. However, Bosch’s boat is not blue, hence Bax calls the painting in the Louvre the ‘Lichte Schuit’, the bright ship. The theme of the ship itself is present in didactic literature from the fourteen century [Das Schiff der Flust, ca. 1360; Brant, 1854, LXff; Enklaar, 1933, 37, 145]. (p. 348)

de Tolnay, 1965

#147

And Sebastian Brant, in his Ship of Fools first printed in 1494 [Brant, 1962], devotes each chapter to the description of a different sort of folly, the absorption in which distracts men from Truth and the attainment of salvation. He imagines them all sailing in a fleet of ships, all adrift in the dark, foolishly given up to merrymaking and carnal delights, careless of ever getting into port. (p. 24)

Combe, 1957

Jérome Bosch

#148

Bosch may have borrowed the iconography of this painting from the woodcuts illustrating a work by Josse Bade, the Ship of Foolish Women, first printed in 1498, and evidently inspired by Brant’s Ship of Fools [Badius, 1498; Brant, 1494; “The Tree of Life”, 1502; Demonts, 1919, 1 ff.] (p. 24)

Combe, 1957

Jérome Bosch

#150

He again makes use of a crescent-bearing oriflamme, and the motley fool, perched on a spar with his cap, bells and bauble, is the twin brother of the mariners in Josse Bade’s work [Badius, 1498]. Each of the subsequent prints represents the folly of one or other senses and it has been suggested [Demonts, 1919, 1 ff] that Bosch, adopting this idea, depicted here the follies of ear and taste, and that the panel might well be one of the wings of a triptych illustrating the topic to a finish. (pp. 24-25)

Combe, 1957

Jérome Bosch

#189

Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch

Men meent de meesten terug te vinden in de bemanning van de Blauwe Schuit van Jacop van Oestvoren[van Oestvoren, 1413; Brant, 1962; Badius, 1498; Maeterlinck, 1907, 219; Gossart, 1907, 191; Demonts, 1919, 6 ff.; de Tolnay, 1937, 28, 64, note 65; van der Heyden, 1562; van der Heyden, 1559; Combe, 1946, 36, 66, note 128]… De nar en de naakte kerels ontbreken echter. Reeds bleek ons, dat vele leden van de bemanning, die volgens Jacops gedicht de Blauwe Schuit vullen moet, nooit tot het Brabantse Carnavalsgezelschap behoord zullen hebben, maar dat zij genoemd worden om de sfeer van losheid en dwaasheid weer te geven, welke de club nastreefde. Zij zijn geijkte typen, die voor de 15de-eeuwers zinnebeelden waren van het lichte en losse leven, en ook de sujetten van Bosch lijken zulke stereotiepe figuren. De vent „inden haselare, de nar met zijn marot, de zijn maag legende vraat, de man die de grote pollepel hanteert, zuster Lute en haar verlopen monnik, de jolige drinkebroer met de op een stok gestoken kan, de drank- en minlustige bagijn, de neergevallen dronkaard en de twee naakte boeven, die gaarne bij het nat zijn, zij allen waren voor van Akens tijdgenoten symbolen. Zo’n stelletje heeft men in werkelijkheid nooit te zamen gezien, evenmin als de bemanning van de Blauwe Schuit uit het gedicht, behalve dan wellicht in een schuit als die te Nijmegen of Bergen-op-Zoom, waarin men hen kan nagebootst en gehekeld hebben. Maar indien ooit echte fuifnummers in een schuit door een stad getrokken zijn, waren zij niet zulke symbolen als de pretmakers van Jeroen [Bax, 1949, 196:note 112]. (p. 194)

Bax, 1949

#225

Varende Luyden. Studiën over de middeleeuwsche groepen van onmaatschappelijken in de Nederlanden.

Gelukkig zijn wij met de kwestie, hoe men zich de zotten met bellen heeft voor te stellen. In de houtsneden, die Brant’s Narrenschiff illustreeren, zien wij bellen dragende narren in het traditioneele narrenpak met de ezelsooren, die wel een herinnering zijn aan het feest van den Ezelpaus [Neurdenburg, 1910, 51, note 2; Kalff, 1923, 240]. Dat dit kostuum ook door de Camavalsnarren gedragen werd, bewijst het schilderij van Bosch in het Louvre en een teekeningetje in een vijftiendeeeuwsch handschrift in de Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève te Parijs, dat volgens het bijschrift een „stultus stultissimus”, dus een prince des Sots voorstelt [Suchier & Birch-Hirschfeld, 1913, 303]. Ook het figuurtje op het titelblad van de oorspronkelijke uitgave van Le jeu du Prince des Sotz van 1512 vertoont een dergelijken nar [Gringore, 1512]. (p. 83)

Enklaar, 1937

#226

Een Hieronymus Bosch in het Rijksmuseum

Het motief van de ‘zottenschuit’ of ‘blauwschuit’ werd door Bosch nog verwerkt in ‘La barque bleue’ en ‘L’écaille voguant sur l’eau’ (volgens de gravures van Jerons Cock [van der Heyden, 1559; van der Heyden, 1562]) en vermoedelijk door hem ontleend aan het ‘Narrenschiff’ van den Straatsburger geleerde Sebastian Brandt, te Basel in 1494 verschenen [Brant, 1962]. (p. 77)

Jeltes, 1927

#231

Hieronymus Bosch and the thinking of the late Middle Ages.

The Ship of Fools in the Louvre has been rightly pointed out as an illustration to Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, the Ship of Fools, and to the Dutch popular conception of The Blue Barge. It too may once have formed part of a series of deadly sins and have signified greed and gluttony. (pp. 33-34)

Benesch, 1957

#233

Hieronymus Bosch and the thinking of the late Middle Ages.

Bosch has rather literally illustrated the German poem [Brant, 1944]. Brant uses proper names like Narbon and Naragun, transformed from Aragon, in allusion to the German word Narr, fool. Montflascun means Montefiascone in Italy in allusion to fiâscone, a big bottle of wine, a reference which the painter has not omitted. (p. 34)

Benesch, 1957

#234

Two men in the waters from Ship of Fools

We see clearly in the painting the ignorant swimmers and the fool who succeeded in climbing high but soon will fall. (p. 34)

Benesch, 1957

Hieronymus Bosch and the thinking of the late Middle Ages.

#264

La Nef des Fous de Jerôme serait dans la realite ime coquilletrop etroite pour contenir ses lunatiques passagers. Où a-t-on vu plus d’inconscience que dansde comportement des misérables réunis dans cet esquif, qui serait un parfait frontispicepour le livre de Brant [Brant, 1944]? Lequel de ces écervelés a induit lesautres à se confier à ce bateau minuscule, sans gouvernail ni voile? Le dieu de la folie les gardera-t-il jusqu’à leur retotirdans leur cambuse defaite, leur couvent anarchique, ou leurboutique poussiereuse perdue de desordre? (p. 1)

de Boschère, 1947

Jérôme Bosch

#393

Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001

Numerous moralizing and literary texts testify to this new ethic, in both the Low Countries and the regions adjoining them. The best known of these is Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff [Brant, 1944; Brant, 1962], to which we have already referred. Many art historians have linked Bosch’s panel in the Louvre with Brant’s book, chiefly noting the formal similarities – most notably, the fact that both feature a ship crewed by fools. Bosch scholarship has not, however, considered the actual content of Brant’s text, or the significance of the word ‘fool’. (p. 143)

Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Paintings and Drawings

#445

The presence of the fool has inevitably led many scholars to see a connection between the Louvre panel and Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools [Brant, 1944; Brant, 1962], whose great popularity is demonstrated by the six editions and numerous translations which appeared even during the author’s lifetime. Bosch might well have known Brant’s poem, but he need not have turned to it for inspiration, as the ship was one of the most beloved metaphors of the Middle Ages. A popular image was the Ship of the Church manned by prelates and the clergy, which brings its freight of Christian souls safely into the port of Heaven. ln Deguilleville’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, the Ship of Religion bears a mast symbolising the Crucifix, and contains castles representing the various monastic orders [de Diguleville, ca. 1330-1331 (Ship of Religion)]. (p. 41)

Gibson, 1973

#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

#491

Hieronymus Bosch c.1450-1516

A fool is seated in the rigging at the right. The presence of the fool has inevitably led by many scholars to see a connection between the Louvre panel and Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools whose great popularity is demonstrated by the six editions and numerous translations which appeared even during the author’s lifetime. (pp. 28-30)

Bosing, 1987

#526

Be that as it may, the entire picture is a riddle composed of ordinary everyday acts and gestures, and its source is not, as one might expect, Sebastian Brant’s satirical novel with the same title but a Netherlandish poem from 1413 [Brant, 1944; Brant, 1962]. (p. 66)

Linfert, 1989

#534

The complete paintings of Bosch

The motif of the ship of the pleasure-seekers was a very familiar one in the Flanders of the fifteenth century [Enklaar, 1933; Bax, 1949]: the blue boat, laden with a libertine party, was celebrated as early as 1413 in Jacob van Oestvoren’s poem De Blauwe Scuut [van Oestvoren, 1413]; it used to appear in the carnival parades of Brabant. and gave its name to a brotherhood found in several Dutch towns, devoted to feasting and merrymaking [Enklaar, 1933]. But Bosch’s boat is not painted blue. Moreover, Sebastian Brant’s satirical poem Narrenschiff was published in German and in Latin in 1494 [Brant, 1944; Brant, 1962]; the 1498 edition contains many engravings, in no way related. however, to Bosch’s painting, as claimed by Demonts and Combe [Demonts, 1919; Combe, 1946]; the highest expression of the theme is found in Erasmus Praise of Folly [Erasmus, 1913]. The connection with Brant’s work (Demonts), accepted at one point also by Tolnay [de Tolnay, 1937], would provide a date post quem, but the types of the friar, of the nun and of other characters appear to have been inspired by Oestvoren’s poem (Enklaar). (pp. 92-93)

Cinotti, 1966

#535

The complete paintings of Bosch

The panel may have been part of a diptych or triptych dedicated to the theme of folly [Demonts, 1919; de Tolnay, 1937]: represented here is the rudderless boat drifting perhaps towards fools’ paradise, Brant’s Narragonia [Brant, 1944; Brant, 1962]; Helene Adhémar [Adhémar, 1962] thinks it is the Ship of the Church, and on the point of being wrecked. Attempts have been made to interpret the painting in a psychoanalytic key by identifying the erotic symbols [Solier, 1961]; but the various elements are better explained in the climate of the period, as a satire on one of the seven sins or of the five senses. Represented here are ‘Gula’ and ‘Luxuria’; most of the characters are intent on food and drink- one has had too much and is vomiting over the boat’s side. (p. 93)

Cinotti, 1966

#655

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

…with its boatload of merrymakers, surrounded by drunkards and lovers. These are people in the flush of their lives, concerned with neither God nor his commandments. They have given themselves over to eating, drinking, swimming and lovemaking, and their most pressing concern seems to be the pie balanced on the head of one of the swimmers, which they are eager to get onto dry land in one piece. Death still seems a long way away. None of the figures realizes what Sebastian Brant declared in the prologue to his Stultifera Navis (Ship of Fools, 1497), namely that ‘In the ship, we are separated but three fingers’ breadth from death.’… Brant’s Ship of Fools must have been an important inspiration for Bosch’s boatload of carousers. Brant describes his encyclopaedic collection of prints and verses on human folly as a mirror in which everyone can (or ought to) recognize themselves [Brant, 1962, 58] (p. 325)

Ilsink et al., 2016

#663

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

A reprint of a sixteenth-century engraving which, according to an inscription, was made after an invention by Bosch, states above the image where a boat like this, full of good-for-nothings, is headed. The boat is named the Blau Schuyte (‘blue barge’), referring to a tradition of worldturned- upside-down festivities and literature; as if that were not enough, inscriptions in Latin, French and Dutch specify that the boat is heading ad perditionem (to perdition) [van Oestvoren, 1413; Pleij, 1983; Bass & Wyckoff, 2015, 158-163; Ilsink, 2013, 250-251].Many viewers of the Ship of Fools will also have made the association, lastly, with the story of the satirical ‘Sint Reynuut’ and his boat [van Leyden, ca. 1520-1530]. Reynuut – a contraction of the words rein uit, meaning wholly empty – is a fictional saint, the patron of all those whose drunkenness leaves them destitute. His shrine is located on the island of the same name, to which he sails on his ship the Quat Regement (Bad Government). The drunkards in Bosch’s painting are certainly devoted to this saint. Sebastian Brant pithily sums up the moral of all these images in his Ship of Fools: ‘Who takes his place on the ship of fools sails laughing and singing to hell.’ [Brant, 1500, fol. p. iiii, cap. 109] (p. 328)

Ilsink et al., 2016

#664

Man on his deathbed with a chest from Death and the Miser

‘Who dieth well, his grave’s the best/ The sinner’s death is never blest’ is another fine couplet from Brant’s Ship of Fools [Brant, 1962, 283]. It offers a nice introduction to the dilemma facing the protagonist of the right wing of the Wayfarer Triptych. A man sits up in bed, looking into the eyes of Death, who appears from behind the door. Death points an oversized arrow directly at him. It is time. The final hour has come. The question now is whether the dying man will grasp the bag held out to him by a demon from beneath the curtain of the bed. The answer to this question will determine the man’s fate: is it to be heaven or hell? An angel behind him tries to draw his attention to the image of a crucifix that appears in the window in the upper left corner. The rays of light that enter the room via the crucified Christ do not (yet) extend, however, as far as the dying man. The struggle between the angel and the devil, who has positioned himself on the canopy of the bed in the hope that the man will make the wrong choice, has not been settled. The wing encourages us to think about what we would do in the face of death: hold on or let go. (p. 328)

Ilsink et al., 2016

Hieronymus Bosch. Painter and Draughtsman

#721

Gehört das «Narrenschiff» von Hieronymus Bosch [Koldeweij, Vandenbroeck & Vermet, 2001] zur Flotte der Müßiggängerschiffe? Das Bild wurde 1914 zum erstenmal veröffentlicht [Lafond, 1914]. Man vermutete gleich, daß es irgendwie mit Brants berühmter Moralsatirezusammenhänge und nannte es «Narrenschiff» («La Nef des Fous») [Brant, 1494]. Erst seit kurzem ist bekannt, daß es nur ein Fragment eines Triptychonsist, zu dem weitere Teile gehören: das «Gula»-Fragment (New Haven), der «Tod des Geizigen» (Washington) und der «Hausierern (Rottedam). Es bildet eine Frühform des «Heuwagen»-Triptychons in Madrid, zuder allerdings die Mitteltafel fehlt [Hartau, 2001 (Suche nach Glück bei nahem Untergang)] (p. 162-163)

Hartau, 2002

“Narrenschiffe” um 1500

#722

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

#728