Painting changes enormously in the 16 e century. The church and nobility are no longer the only clients, resulting in funny paintings about everyday life. The new buyers are the citizens and they laugh at shit and pee humor, partying peasants and brothel scenes. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen is showing this revolutionary development in painting for the first time.
When you walk into the large exhibition space with the huge high ceiling, you may feel a little lost. But fear not, once you walk to the center of the room, it's over. Here is the eye-catcher of the exhibition:The Harvestman by Hieronymus Bosch. To the left and right of this triptych are a few partitions that divide the space and on which prints and paintings are hung. These created rooms are divided into themes, including lust, greed and stupidity, and by artist.
Just do it
The biggest stars of this exhibition are Jheronimus Bosch (circa 1450 – 1516) and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (circa 1526/1530 – 1569). Bosch is one of the early pioneers in genre themes, in other words subjects from everyday life. But where with Bosch the world is still full of fears, there is always something to laugh about with Breugel, according to his contemporaries.
Until about 1500, the church was the most important client for works of art, with the elite as a close second. This resulted in paintings with Biblical themes for the churches and portraits of rich people for their palaces. Scenes from everyday life have appeared in prints for a century, but mostly in the form of noble couples enjoying themselves with dancing or playing cards.
Hieronymus Bosch was one of the first to paint ordinary people who seem to do everyday things. You look at peasants, maids, peddlers, soldiers, whores, thieves and quacks. After Bosch, famous artists such as Lucas van Leyden (circa 1494 – 1533) and Quinten Massijs (circa 1466 – 1530) followed his example.
By Lucas van Leyden there are especially many prints to see with couples in love, inn scenes and fools who let themselves be tricked. By Quinten Massijs from Antwerp, on the other hand, there are large, painted works. He made fun of greedy figures who are preoccupied with money. He has depicted tax collectors, money counters and the like on the canvas in a caricature.
Interaction with viewer
In addition to paintings and prints with the same theme, matching objects from the same period are also on display. With the greedy money collectors and misers, for example, this is a money exchange. The last of this new period in art is Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who has become famous for his peasant festivals. Together the artists form the pinnacle in the depiction of daily life in the art of the 16 e century.
But why does attention shift from the sacred to everyday life around 1500? According to curator Friso Lammertse, this has not only to do with the rise of the Protestant faith and thus a new vision of man in his relationship to God and the world. “Painters like Lucas van Leyden and Pieter Bruegel want to be original, they really think about their art. Bruegel is also nationalist. He has been to Italy, has seen the works of important artists and wants to distinguish himself from the Italians. It is the first time that painters are so aware of the viewer and also play with the viewer's expectations. A good example is The Farmer and the Bird Nester by Pieter Bruegel. In this, the farmer laughs at the nest robber because he threatens to fall from the tree, while the farmer himself can step into the ditch at any moment. This action is really aimed at the viewer.”
The painters of everyday life in the 16 e century show a lot of flat entertainment. Farmers partying, couples making out, shitting, peeing and puking. “It's about two things here, namely stereotypes and humor,” says Lammertse. “The buyers of these paintings were citizens and they watch from a distance how the farmers are enjoying themselves with parties, drinks, sex and fights. Very different from the hard-working peasants we see in medieval images. There is no indication that this is intended to be moralistic, but we are not one hundred percent sure. There are no written sources from the 16 e century on the subject matter of these paintings. We think it is not a raised finger to the beholder but rather a mirror held up to them. Farmers, for example, were not the only ones who drank a lot. According to shocked foreigners, citizens' drinking was so bad that their wives had to do all the work because they themselves were constantly intoxicated.”
Poo and pee humor
But above all, humor is the most important thing in the paintings and prints, which distinguishes the works substantially from art from earlier periods. People just thought it was really funny, all that peeing, pooping, fighting and partying. This is apparent from, among other things, the irritated words of the philosopher Erasmus (1466-1536). He finds it outrageous that everyone laughs at jokes about saints, such as drunken apostles and the biblical Martha making a lewd gesture at Christ. This humor does change with time.
Lammertse:“Jheronimus Bosch also joked about monks, but this was not a criticism of the Catholic Church. Like carnival, it was just fun to poke fun at monks by depicting them drinking or making love. After Luther and the advent of Protestantism (from 1517), this was no longer possible without obligation. A monk who misbehaves takes on a political charge and then faces charges against the church.” Only for fun and humor they will no longer appear later in the century.
Bland humor is still good. People find it very funny to suddenly come face to face with a naked buttocks. But above all, the new clients, the citizens of the city, find it funny to laugh at others. Especially people they themselves are far removed from:farmers, beggars and stupid, old people in love. When civilians do appear in the paintings, they are depicted as caricatures like Massijs' money counters. To make it clear that this is a caricature, the figures not only have ugly heads, with pimples and big noses, they are also always dressed in medieval clothes to create distance with the fashionable citizen of the 16 e century.
Print trendsetter
All in all, the exhibition clearly shows how a major change is taking place in the theme of painting from Jheronimus Bosch onwards, whereby stereotypical figures display characteristics that citizens are supposed to lack and which they can laugh about. But they also hold up a norm-confirming mirror to the city dwellers. This genre art will be the breeding ground for the world famous painters of the golden age. Prints played an important role in this, as they ultimately ensured the rapid and wide dissemination and popularization of the subject. The popular prints by Lucas van Leyden, for example, were soon widely copied and imitated. These kinds of prints have put everyday subjects on the international map.
The dimensions of the works are also increasing. Small paintings depicting peasant life up to the larger than life and prominently depicted farmers and maids by Peter Aertsen in the middle of the century. For the first time in history, it is not the nobility or the clergy who look the spectators straight in the eye in this format, but ordinary, anonymous men and women.