Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

notes to pages 94–96 203
73. “Dus moetten de wyse met de botte haeren tyt passeeren,” quoted in Van
Eeghem 1943, p. 228, line 322.
74. Ibid., p. 228, lines 18–19. Formerly “nieces and nephews [nichten en neuen]”
had a broader meaning than they generally do now and could designate
even distant members of a family, as well as persons unrelated by blood
with whom one was on friendly terms; see Woordenboek 1882–1998, s.v.,
“Neef ” and “Nicht.” “Nieces and nephews” is used in another sixteenthcentury
tafelspel to describe the followers of a personification of Folly; see
Gibson 1992a, p. 36. In the play Begheirlijcke Lust, performed in Brussels
in 1578, Sot Begrijp (Foolish Understanding) says that he prizes his
nichtkens, or nieces (Hummelen 1968, no. 6 E 1; and printed in Houwaert
1579, see esp. p. 78).
75. Lucas D’Heere, “Een boerken van Buyten an een fraey steedsche Dochter,”
in De Heere-Waterschoot 1969, pp. 76–77, no. LXIV.
76. Kavaler 1999, p. 192, suggests that the lady “playfully dances” with the
peasant, which is also possible.
77. Briels 1980, p. 220; and Kavaler 1999, pp. 193–195.
78. For the first two pictures, see Wied 1990, pp. 145–146, cat. nos. 31, 32,
the later ill. in colorpl. 9. The third painting, formerly in the possession
of Count Valamara, Vicenza, was oªered by Rob Smeets, Milan, at the
Maastricht Art Fair in 1996; I am greatly indebted to Dr. Alexander Wied
for current information on these three pictures. Even before the appearance
of the third, Wied had suggested that the date 1577 fit into the
artist’s stylistic development.
79. For the identification of the figures in this composition, see Alexander
Wied, “Neues zu Lucas und Marten van Valckenborch,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen
Sammlungen in Wien 85–86 (1989–90): 9–23, esp. 9–14; Wied
1990, pp. 24–26; and Kavaler 1999, p. 194. A few years later, Ortelius
published an account of this tour: Itinerarium per nonnullas Galliae belgicae partes,
Abraham Ortelius et Ionnaes Viviani (Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1584).
80. Wied 1990, pp. 24–26. This identification is doubted by Kavaler 1999,
p. 324 n. 14.
81. For examples, see Wied 1990, cat. nos. 18, 23, 28, 29, passim.
82. Van Mander, in his life of the Valckenborch brothers, notes that Marten
and especially Lucas were accomplished players of the Duytsche pijp, a term
that is rendered in Van Mander-Miedema 1994–99, 1: fol. 260r ( p. 298)