Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

80 rustic revels
hof van plaisance (“pleasure house” or “pleasure garden”) and speelhuys ( literally,
“playhouse”) suggest that they were indeed retreats, providing escape
for their owners from the workaday world of Antwerp. 16 But the
possession of one or more of these villas also demonstrated the wealth
and prestige of their owners. 17 Some of the wealthiest citizens of Antwerp
even acquired feudal seigneuries and titles with their country estates.
18 One was Antoon van Straelen, who for many years filled various
high o‹ces in the Antwerp city government, including that of burgomaster,
and as “prince” of the prestigious Violieren of Antwerp, organized
the famous landjuweel of 1561. He also became heer, or lord, of the
seigneuries of Merksem and Dambrugge when he purchased these two
“lovely villages near Antwerp,” as they are described by a contemporary,
Lodovico Guicciardini; an inscription on Van Straelen’s portrait medal
by Jacques Jonghelinck reads “Antoni A Straleus de Mercxem et Dambrugge.”
19 We do not know how much Van Straelen involved himself in
the daily operation of his estates, but it may be significant that when Plantin
published his Netherlandish translation of Charles Estienne’s famous
manual on farming, L’agriculture et maison rustique (Agriculture and the country
house), two years after its initial publication in Paris in 1564, he dedicated
it to Van Straelen, “Lord of Mercsem, etc., Knight.” 20
Another titled landowner was Hendrik van Berchem, who purchased
the seigneury of Berchem in 1555; in 1566 he subdivided a section of it,
some pastureland traditionally known as the Papenmoer (Priests’ Moor),
into lots on which wealthy Antwerpeners, including the gentlemanpainter
Cornelis van Dalem, could build their country houses. 21 Jacob
van Hencxthoven, a master of the mint and one of the evaluators of
Noirot’s picture collection, was heer of Hemiksem, a village not far south
of Antwerp. 22 It may well have been this fashion for buying up manorial
properties, incidentally, that inspired the Dutch theologian and
writer Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert to comment rather acidly about rich
commoners who strive to emulate the nobility, avid for titles and inventing
their own coats of arms. 23 The three Schetz brothers, Melchior, Balthazar,
and Caspar (or Gaspar), scions of a well-to-do Antwerp merchant fam-