Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

notes to pages 27–29 175
E. Roobaert, “Jan Walravens, alias Oomken, schilder en rederijker to Brussel,”
Bulletin, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts 3–4 (1961): 83–100. For mock
orders, commands, and oaths in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance,
especially in the Netherlands, see Pleij 1979, pp. 86–108. For a related
German example, which implies a resemblance between the fool or fools
and the viewer, see Gregory Davies and Alison Stewart, “Head of a Jester,”
Print Quarterly 19 (2002): 170–174.
95. Hüsken 1996, pp. 124–125. For the fool and his social function, see Verberckmoes
1999, pp. 20–23, who distinguishes between the moralizing
fool and the “fool for recreation.” For a similar distinction in ancient Rome
between humor used for blame and censure and employed purely for fun,
see Graf 1997, pp. 36–37.
chapter 2
Epigraphs: Aristotle, Poetics 5; quoted from Aristotle 1984, 2:2319 (1449a35–37);
and Joubert-Rocher 1980, p. 27 ( bk. 1, chap. 4).
1. Barolsky 1978. See, for example, his discussion of some paintings by Titian
and his workshop, Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time (London,
National Gallery) and Dosso Dossi’s so-called Bambocciata (Florence,
U‹zi), pp. 90–91, 166–171, and 190–195 respectively.
2. The Enchiridion of Erasmus, trans. and ed. Raymond Himelick (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1963), p. 90 (chap. 12). Erasmus refers to
Virgil, Aeneid 6:282–295. That devils could be a source of humor is evident
in an incident mentioned by Muylle 1984, p. 140, concerning a painting
over an altar dedicated to St. Anthony ( possibly a Temptation of St. Anthony,
perhaps by Pieter Huys, Jan Mandijn, or one of their followers; cf.
Fig. 9); in 1613 it was condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities as more
conducive to laughter than to devotion. Although, as Muylle reminds us,
this episode occurred in the wake of the Council of Trent with its stricter
definition of church art, it nevertheless suggests how such images might
have been received a generation or so earlier. As for Bosch, a bort (comic
subject) painted on canvas by Hieronymus Bosch is listed, along with a
Stone Operation (usually identified with the panel of this subject in the
Museo del Prado, Madrid), in the 1529 inventory of the estate of Philip
of Burgundy, bishop of Utrecht. See J. Sterck, Philips van Bourgondie (1465–
1524), bisschop van Utrecht als protagonist van de Renaissance, zijn leven en maecenaat
(Zutphen: De Walburg pers, 1980), pp. 225 and 248 respectively. For the