(Mechelen c. 1510–1570)
The Mocking of Human Follies,
oil on canvas, 135 x 188 cm, framed

Provenance:
with the Trade, Milan, 1967;
Private collection, Switzerland, 1973 where bought by Gianni Cellé, Milan;
with Filippo Franco, Brussels, 1977 from whom purchased by the present owner, Flanders

Exhibited:
Florence, 5a Biennale Mostra Mercato Internazionale dell’ Antiquariato, 1967, p. 843;
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Jheronymus Bosch, 2001;
Mechelen, Museum Het Zotte Kunstkabinet, De Zotte Schilders, 2003;
Sint-Niklaas, Stedelijke Museum, Lof der Zotheid. Hekeling van de menselijke Zwijgershoek, 2006

Literature:
A. Wied, ‘Een onlangs ontdekt schilderij van Frans Verbeeck’ in Antiek, 1980, pp. 214-216;
P. Vandenbroeck,‘Het schildergeslacht Verbeeck. Voorlopige werkkataloog’, in Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1981, pp. 31-60; pp. 55-57, no. 14a;
I. Kockelbergh, The Fascinating Faces of Flanders through Art and Society, Antwerp, 1998, pp. 274-275, no. D68;
P. Vandenbroeck, ‘Hieronymous Bosch: The wisdom of the riddle’ in: Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Paintings and Drawings, Rotterdam-Amsterdam, 2001, pp. 100-193;
J. Op de Beeck,‘De Familie Verbeeck. Een raar schildergeslacht uit Mechelen’ in: De zotte schilders. Moraalridders van het penseel rond Bosch, Bruegel en Brouwer, Mechelen, 2003, pp. 88-93, no. 5

The present composition was published for the first time in 1980 and finally given its due attention because of its stunning quality and stylistic uniqueness and iconographic wealth and autonomy. The present painting can be comfortably placed alongside the works of the great masters Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hieronymous Bosch.

Alexander Wied who inspected the painting in the original writes:

‘This unusual painting has been published twice 1980 and 2003 (see literature) under the name of Frans Verbeeck. It was Paul Vandenbroeck who most extensively explored the Verbeeck family, first in his comprehensive essay from 1981 (see literature) and subsequently in further articles. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition De Zotte Schilders, in which Jan op de Beeck dedicated a chapter to the Verbeeck family and which also discusses The Mocking of Human Follies in detail, appeared in 2003 (see literature).

Alexander Wied explains that several painters named Frans or Jan Verbeeck lived in Mechelen. And in regard to the Verbeeck problem, Vandenbroeck (1981) points out: “The sources (1) clearly reveal that several painters named Frans Verbeeck, as well as several painters of the name of Jan (Hans) Verbeeck, lived in Mechelen in the 16th century, and all of them had a number of workshop collaborators. The texts also prove the existence of further artists belonging to the Verbeeck family, evidently a widely ramified dynasty of artists”.Vandenbroeck also compiled a provisional catalogue, which – apart from the drawings (which had partly already been discovered and published by Giorgio Faggin(2) ) – included sixteen paintings, which due to a high degree of compositional, stylistic, and iconographic similarities […] can be attributed to the ’Verbeeck group‘. Consequently, Vandenbroeck considered it ‘futile to speak of ’Frans’ or ‘Jan’ Verbeeck and attribute the works mentioned here to either of these two artists’.

Nevertheless, the present painting was published once again as a work by Frans Verbeeck in the exhibition catalogue De Zotte Schilders (2003), this time with the addition ‘de Oude’, which means that the composition was assigned to an ‘elder’ Frans Verbeeck. The catalogue divides the works up between two generations of the Verbeeck family and mentions altogether 33 paintings and 37 drawings, including those by the hand of workshop collaborators.(3)

Mechelen was the home of watercolour painting on canvas, which partly served as a substitute for expensive tapestries and partly offered itself as an inexpensive art market commodity. In his Schilderboeck (Haarlem, 1604), Karel van Mander reports in the context of Hans Bol’s biography that 150 such studios existed in Mechelen (which, by the way, he did not hold in particularly high esteem). Hans Bol and Lucas and Marten van Valckenborch came from this milieu; Brueghel had worked there for a short period of time on an altar commission; and, last but not least, the Mechelen was the native town of the Verbeeck family. The disadvantage of the technique of watercolour or tempera painting on canvas is its short durability, so that most of these works are now lost or have come down to us in bad condition, which mostly also holds true for the canvases by the Verbeeck group. But the present painting, which was largely executed in oil, is fortunately very well preserved.

About the painting:

This crowded scene, which seems incomprehensible at first sight, needs to be looked at in more detail. In an open landscape covered with green meadows, small figurines are being traded beneath a tall tree. Some of them, wearing caps and bells, are recognisable as fools. On the right-hand side of the composition is an inn, while the coast and ships appear on the left. The whole scenery is interspersed with merchants and buyers, all of whom are busy dealing with the tiny fools: fools en miniature (fantastic diminutions reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) are being offered for sale and purchased as if they were articles of trade. The absurdity of these transactions can only be interpreted as an allegory that appears to illustrate that human folly will always be circulating and is therefore inextinguishable. The painting is thus an allegorical satire of man’s follies.

The subject of the mocking of human follies and its unique and scenically elaborate visual translation deviates from the hitherto known themes of the Verbeeck group, mainly treating, as far as the works in question have survived, peasant weddings, the Temptation of Saint Anthony, and, in one example, an allegory of gluttony. The present composition, different from the Verbeecks’ commonly small-sized paintings on cloth, also stands out for its large scale and the employment of oil paint instead of tempera, which was otherwise used almost without exception. The painting’s iconography is highly complex and can be outlined here only roughly. A detailed analysis appears in the exhibition catalogue De Zotte Schilders (Mechelen, 2003) mentioned above.

Here are some of the principal scenes shown in the present composition:

In the foreground, several merchants are depicted sitting at a table and cradling some of the tiny fools, while a travelling vendor and his wife offer small fools for sale from a sack and baskets. The vendor is depicted harnessed like a horse, and on his forehead sits one of the little fools with a hammer – an allusion to the well-known ‘stone operation’. This surgical removal of a stone through the forehead was a subject that originated in the art of Hieronymus Bosch and was widespread in the 16th and 17th centuries in the form of numerous representations and variations. The motif’s message is quite simple: it is impossible to cure stupidity through surgery.(4)

In the left background appears another vendor, who sits under a tree, as well as a covered set of scales that is obviously used for weighing the fools, who are delivered by waggons and even by boat. In the right middle ground appears a man at a table selling fools, while another vendor offering fools is based next to the inn.

Inspirations and instructions for the numerous allusive and enigmatic details contained in the present composition can be found in the satirical rhymes of the Guild of Rhetoricians, the so-called ‘rederijkers’ (comparable to today’s carnival speakers), which made fun of vices and follies. The inscribed panels integrated in the present picture – unfortunately they are illegible – might quote short passages from such texts performed by the ‘rederijkers’.The clergy and Catholicism are also ridiculed here: the amorous couple at the right margin consists of a friar and a nun that seem to have escaped from their monastery and convent and now indulge in the folly of love. Left to the principal scene, a couple of pilgrims kneeling down in adoration in front of a couple of aged fools is just as peculiar. The female fool nurses a baby fool, feeding him some kind of mash.

Numerous further allusions to satirical texts, which cannot be listed here exhaustively for lack of space, can be found in the catalogue quoted above. Just one more example is the cage in the right background suspended above a group of dancers: it contains a fool hatching a large egg from which emerges a small fool. The motif refers to the proverb ‘men mag geen zot eieren laten uitbroeden’, which means that one should not allow fools to hatch eggs as they will only produce more fools.

A workshop replica reduced in size (102 x 158 cm, from the Hellberg Collection, Stockholm, 1938)(5) and in which several details have been left out was auctioned at Dorotheum, Vienna, on 16 October 2007 (lot 39, with colour illustration). In terms of quality it is inferior to the present composition, which certainly constitutes the prototype and can be regarded as a chef d’oeuvre by the principal master of this family of painters whose name was probably Frans Verbeeck.

As to its art historical (and chronological) classification, the Verbeeck work group fits in between Bosch and Brueghel. Because of its stylistic uniqueness and iconographic wealth and autonomy, the art of the Verbeeck family must be seen to be on an equal footing with that of these great masters. As Vandenbroeck emphasises, it is dependent neither on Bosch nor on Brueghel, contrary to that of Bosch’s followers Pieter Huys and Jan Mandyn. The Verbeecks thus created an imagery in its own right, which, due to its peculiarity, has no parallels in contemporary Netherlandish painting and which succeeds in surprising and astonishing us with figure types from Flemish folklore that have been brought to the brink of scurrility and caricature. This well-preserved painting exemplarily demonstrates a high quality that can otherwise only be guessed in the mostly ruined watercolours by the Verbeeck group.

We are grateful to Alexander Wied for his catalogue entry.

Notes:
1 Karel van Mander 1604, Emmanuel Neeffs 1876, and Hyacinthe Coninckx 1903 and 1909.
2 Giorgio T. Faggin, ‘Tra Bosch e Bruegel: Jan Verbeeck’, in: Critica d’Arte, no.108, 1970, pp. 53–65.
3 Jan Op de Beeck, ‘De Familie Verbeeck. Een raar schildersgeslacht uit Mechelen’, in: De Zotte Schilders, Malines, 2003, pp. 45–54; pp. 51–53.
4 See Koldeweij et al. 2001, p.149, with further literature.
5 In the catalogue-book Alte Gemälde aus der Sammlung Ivar Hellberg (Stockholm), Malmö, 1938, the name of Frans Verbeeck is already mentioned by Gustav Glück and Max J. Friedländer, the latter of whom wrote the preface.