(Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 15) Barbara A. KamiÅ Ska - Pieter Bruegel The Elder - Religious Art For The Urban Community-Brill (2019)

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004408401_001

ii
Art and Material Culture in

Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Edited by
Sarah Blick
Laura D. Gelfand
VOLUME 15
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/amce

iii
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Religious Art for the Urban Community
By
Barbara A. Kaminska
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Cover illustration: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 114 × 155cm, Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM – Museumsverband).
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v
To my grandmother, Alicja Kaminska, and her nephew, Almar Miernik
⸪
Contents
Contents vii
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Figures xII
Introduction 1
1 Negotiating Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Antwerp: Pieter Bruegel’s

Tower of Babel 15
1 For “an Idel and Foolish Ostentation of Money”? The Tower of Babel
and the Ambiguities of Progress 16
2 Framing the Tower of Babel: Space, Conversation, People 32
3 Monopolies, Self-Interest, and the Common Good 55
4 Antwerp as an International “Community of Commerce” in Philip’s
1549 Joyous Entry 63
2 Conversion on Display: Imperial Politics, Religious Transformation, and

Socioeconomic Stability in Antwerp 73
1 Images of the Conversion of Saint Paul in Probate Inventories and the
Location of Works of Art 74
2 “Alzo tot onzer kennesse ghecommen es”: Habsburg Legislation and
the Culture of External Display in Antwerp 80
3 Defining Conversion in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries 90
4 Between Light and Darkness: Bruegel’s Conversion of Saint Paul and
Dutch Vernacular Theatre 93
5 Toward a New Model of Religiosity 106
3 “In Their Houses”: Domestic Space and Religious Practices in Mid-

Sixteenth-Century Antwerp 108
1 “Permissible even for sailors”? Lay Reading of the Bible and Spanish
Legislation in Antwerp 111
2 Theological Approaches to Religious Imagery in Private
Households 116
3 In “zyne huysen”: The Procession to Calvary, Ommegangen, and the
Relocation of Religious Practices 122
viii Contents
4 “Outside in the Woods”: The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist and
Hedge-Preaching in Antwerp 139
1 Picturing Conversations in Bruegel’s Sermon of Saint John the
Baptist 142
5 “If You Are without a Sin”: Religious and Artistic Discourse in Christ and
the Woman Taken in Adultery 151
1 Truth and Penitence in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery 152
2 Adultery, Idolatry, and Rhetorical Strategies of Bruegel’s Grisaille 172
6 Choosing “the Best Part”: Christian Death and Life in Bruegel’s Death of
the Virgin 187
1 “Sweet Sleep” and the Transition from Vita Activa to Vita Contemplativa
in Bruegel’s Grisaille 202
2 Artistry and Theological Truth in the Images of the Death of the
Virgin 204
Epilogue 212
Bibliography 217
Index 237
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments ix
Acknowledgments
This book takes as its subject an international community whose every mem-
ber contributed his or her knowledge, wealth, unique talents, and hospitality
to the collective prosperity. It was exactly this type of a community from which
I benefited while pursuing my research project, and without which its comple-
tion would never have been possible.
I owe my primary thanks to Mark Meadow, under whose supervision I com-
pleted my doctoral studies, which eventually led to this book. Mark’s intellec-
tual guidance, wise mentorship, and confidence in my abilities shaped me as a
scholar, while making this process gratifying and enjoyable. I have also greatly
benefited from the exceptional erudition, challenging questions, and enthusi-
asm of other faculty members at the University of California Santa Barbara,
especially Robert (Bob) Williams, Jeanette Peterson, Ann Adams, and Carole
Paul. I am deeply saddened that Bob, whose expertise was crucial for sharpen-
ing my understanding of Renaissance art theory, did not have the chance to see
this final product of my research.
However, the research presented in this book originated long before I left for
Santa Barbara. I am forever indebted to Professor Jerzy Axer, the most charis-
matic, knowledgeable, and bold humanist and academic I have ever met, who
generously encouraged me to continue my studies in the United States. I am
only beginning to discover all the wisdom Professor Axer shared with me, and
he remains the living proof that convivial conversations have a truly transfor-
mative power. I would also like to thank Antoni Ziemba, my mentor in the In-
stitute of Art History at the University of Warsaw, for nurturing my intellectual
curiosity and patiently advising me on my often too-long seminar papers. Im-
mediately before joining the Department of History of Art and Architecture at
UC Santa Barbara, generous funding from the Marie Curie European Doctorate
in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean allowed me to benefit
from Professor Bart Ramakers’s unrivaled expertise in early modern Dutch lit-
erature. The outcome of my research at the University of Groningen largely
informs the interpretations presented in this book.
At UC Santa Barbara, the Graduate Division and the Department of History
of Art and Architecture supported me financially. Herzog August Bibliothek
in Wolfenbüttel provided further funding and access to much of the primary
material discussed in this book. In Antwerp, Guido Marnef helped with ana-
lyzing nuances of the city’s history, while efforts by librarians and archivists
in the Ruusbroec Institute, Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Museum
Plantin Moretus, Rubenianum, and Felix Archive secured the efficiency and
x Acknowledgments
thoroughness of my primary research. I would like to extend my gratitude to

the staff in the Special Collections at the Leiden University and Royal Library
in The Hague.
At Sam Houston State University, I benefited immensely from my colleagues’
support and interest in this project. I would like to thank the Department of
Art for financial help in securing permissions for images published in this
book. Finally, I am deeply indebted to all the SHSU faculty with whom I had a
pleasure to work in the Faculty Writing Circles for their kindness, collective
perseverance, and sharing about the successes and difficulties of academic life.
This book would not have been possible without Laura Gelfand, and I am
hoping that one day I will have the chance to pay forward her wisdom and in-
spiration. The comments of the anonymous reviewer of my manuscript were
essential in shaping its final version, and helped me to address many difficult
questions about the organization and presentation of the material. I would
also like to thank my editor at Brill, Marcella Mulder, for patiently and kindly
guiding me through the publishing process. My gratitude also goes to all the
individuals who assisted me in securing image reproductions used in this pub-
lication.
At all stages of my research, I was fortunate to enjoy kindness and under-
standing from family and friends. My parents, Elzbieta and Piotr, have contin-
ued to support me in every possible way throughout the challenges that
inevitably come with moving across the Atlantic in pursuit of an academic
career. My brother’s family, relatives, and friends in Warsaw made my trips
back home worth every minute; I’m particularly grateful to my niece Zuzia for
reminding me, in deeds if not in words, that play is older than culture. Thanks
also to the friends whom I met at UC Santa Barbara and at the Herzog August
Library in Wolfenbüttel. I now think of the graduate school with nostalgia, and
I’m grateful for all the times when travels bring us together to again share con-
vivial conversations and laughter. Finally, I would like to thank my husband for
his support, without which I would not have been able to bring this project to
completion.
I have benefited from decades of research on the Northern Renaissance, to
which I strove to do justice in my annotations. But there’s one book that in-
spired me personally and professionally more than any other—and it’s not
mentioned in the bibliography. It was the first Polish edition of Heinrich Wölf-
flin’s Die klassische Kunst from 1931. The copy owned by my family bears a ded-
ication to my grandmother, Alicja Kaminska, written by her nephew Almar on
Christmas Eve of 1941. According to my grandmother, Almar was a talented
young violinist. But his career was cut short when in the spring of 1943 he was
killed in the streets of occupied Warsaw. This book is dedicated to him and to
Acknowledgments xi
my beloved grandmother, who not only unknowingly encouraged me to pur-

sue a career I first envisioned as a teenager, but embedded it with a sense of
gratitude and purpose.
xii Figures Figures
Figures
1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 114 × 155cm, Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsverband) 2
2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1567, oil on panel,
108 × 156cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsver-
band) 9
3 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Procession to Calvary, 1564, oil on panel,
124 × 170cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsver-
band) 10
4 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, 1601–1604, oil on
panel, 102 × 167.5cm, Cracow, National Museum/Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK
XII-a-619 (photo: Cracow, National Museum) 11
5 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1565, oil on
panel, 24.1 × 34.4cm, London, Courtauld Gallery (photo: The Courtauld
Gallery) 12
6 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Death of the Virgin, ca. 1564, oil on panel,
36 × 55cm, Banbury, Upton House (photo: National Trust Images) 13
7 Frans Floris, Awakening of the Arts, ca. 1560, oil on canvas, 162 × 239cm, Ponce,
Museo del Arte. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc. (photo: Ponce, Museo del
Arte) 17
8 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Gloomy Day, 1565, oil on panel, 118 × 163cm, Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsverband) 18
9 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Haymaking, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 161cm, The
Lobkowicz Collections, Lobkowicz Palace, Prague Castle, Czech Republic
(photo: Lobkowicz Collections) 18
10 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Harvesters, 1565, oil on panel, 118 × 161cm, New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919 (artwork in the public
d omain) 19
11 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Return of the Herd, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 159cm,
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsverband) 19
12 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 162cm,
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsverband) 20
13 Hieronymus Cock, View of the Coliseum, 1551, etching, 23.3 × 32.4cm, Amster-
dam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet (photo: Rijksmuseum, Amster-
dam) 30
14 Anonymous, Anvers au moyen âge, 1905, postcard (photo: author’s private
collection) 58
Figures xiii
15 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Triumphal Arch of the Genoese Nation, 1550, woodcut,
from Cornelius Grapheus, De seer schooner, triumphelijcke incompst (Antwerp:
Gillis van Diest, 1550), Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute (photo: Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles (2866–466)) 66
16 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Triumphal Arch of the City (Allegory of Trade), 1550,
woodcut, from Cornelius Grapheus, De seer schooner, triumphelijcke incompst
(Antwerp: Gillis van Diest, 1550), Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute (Getty
17 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Druon Antigon on the Groote Markt, 1550, woodcut,
Gillis van Diest, 1550), Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute (photo: Getty
18 Martin de Vos, Saint Paul and Silversmith Demetrius, ca. 1568, oil on panel,
125 × 198cm, Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts (© Royal Museums of
Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels / photo: J. Geleyns—Ro scan photo: J. Geleyns—
Art Photography) 104
19 Martin de Vos, Saint Paul on Malta, ca. 1568, 124 × 198cm, Paris, Louvre Museum
(photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY) 105
20 Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist
Mourning, ca. 1460, oil on panel, diptych, left panel: 180.3 × 93.8cm, right panel:
180.3 × 92.6cm, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson
Collection (photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art) 109
21 Pieter Aertsen, Meat Stall, ca. 1551, oil on panel, 115.6 × 168.9cm, North Carolina
Museum of Art, Raleigh, USA, purchased with funds from Wendell and Linda
Murphy and various donors (photo: Bridgeman Images) 124
22 Frans Hogenberg, Hedge-Preaching outside Antwerp, after 1570, engraving,
21 × 28.8cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet (photo: Rijksmu-
seum, Amsterdam) 141
23 Philips Galle, Portrait of Abraham Ortelius, 1572, engraving, 17.5 × 12.5cm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet (photo: Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam) 152
24 Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 16th
century, oil on panel, 75.9 × 55.9cm, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art,
John G. Johnson Collection (photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art) 154
25 Pieter Aertsen, Market Scene with Christ and the Adulterous Woman, ca. 1557–58,
oil on panel, 122 × 180cm, Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut (photo: © Städel
Museum—ARTOTHEK) 155
26 Pieter Aertsen, Market Scene with Christ and the Adulterous Woman, ca. 1559, oil
on panel, 123 × 179cm, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum (artwork in the public
domain) 156
xiv Figures
27 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Calumny of Apelles, ca. 1565–69, drawing,

20.2 × 30.6cm, London, British Museum (photo: London, British Museum) 160
28 Philips Galle after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Temperance, from the Virtues, ca.
1559–60, engraving, 24.4 × 31.2cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabi-
net (photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) 166
29 Maarten van Heemskerck, The Triumph of Envy, from the Vicissitudes of Human
Affairs, 1564, engraving, 21.8 × 29.5cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijkspren-
tenkabinet (photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) 170
30 Pieter Aertsen, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1553, oil on panel,
126 × 200cm, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (photo: Studio
Tromp, Rotterdam) 175
31 Philips Galle after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Death of the Virgin, 1574,
engraving, 31.5 × 42.4cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
(photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) 188
32 Hugo van der Goes, The Death of the Virgin, ca. 1480, oil on panel,
147.8 × 122.5cm, Bruges, Groeninge Museum (Lukas—Art in Flanders VZW
photo: Hugo Martens) 189
33 Martin Schongauer, The Death of the Virgin, ca. 1470–75, engraving,
25.5 × 16.8cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet (photo: Rijks-
museum, Amsterdam) 190
34 Albrecht Dürer, The Death of the Virgin, from The Life of the Virgin, 1511, wood-
cut, 44 × 30cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet (photo:
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) 191
35 Pieter Aertsen, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1552, oil on panel,
60.5 × 101cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: KHM—Museumsver-
band) 196
36 Lech Majewski, The Mill and the Cross, Angelus Silesius, 2011 (photo: © Lech
Majewski) 213
37 Gabriel Axel, Babette’s Feast, Danish Film Institute, 1987 (photo: © Peter
Gabriel) 214
Introduction
Introduction 1
Introduction
In a busy harbor, workers unload ships carrying bricks and wood and hand the
building materials over to their colleagues on land. Wheeled carts and cranes
transport the heavy cargo to a construction site amid a densely populated city.
There, using limestone and bricks, dozens of builders have already transformed
a crude solid rock into a monumental edifice closely resembling the Roman
Coliseum. Its polished façade is articulated with engaged columns and embel-
lished with shallow niches, dividing it into individual dwellings. Although the
construction of the tower has not yet been finished, its occupants seem to have
settled in quite pleasantly, chatting, cooking their meals over a fire, and drying
laundry outside, the hanging clothes a visual contrast to the balconies deco-
rated with flowers. The scale of the edifice, whose top reaches into the clouds,
the efficiency of the workers, and the comfort of the dwellers’ everyday life in-
spire nothing less than awe toward this successful community, united in its
audacious construction project.
However, the tower casts a long, dark shadow over the neighborhood to the
right, the harbor, and the wide river, which has enabled the import of neces-
sary building materials. The ominous shadow alerts viewers about the poten-
tial threat to this impressive and so far successful venture. This warning sign
must be taken seriously because what we are looking at is the tower of Babel,
as depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1563 (figure 1). Described in the bibli-
cal Book of Genesis, the project is never brought to completion, as “The Lord
scattered [the builders] from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build
the city” (Gen. 11:8).1 The seemingly thriving community in the painting is ac-
tually at the edge of dissolution, and their unfinished tower will soon crumble.
The disaster will be caused by the workers’ inability to communicate among
themselves and with their sovereign, King Nimrod, after God confuses their
tongues.
The fate of the community in the biblical land of Sennaar provided a wise
admonition for primary viewers of Bruegel’s painting, originally displayed in
the suburban villa of a wealthy Antwerp entrepreneur, Niclaes Jonghelinck.2
1 All biblical quotations come from the Douay-Rheims Bible.

2 The Tower of Babel in Vienna is one of the three known paintings with this theme by Bruegel.
The earliest version dates back to the 1550s; it was mentioned by Croatian miniaturist Giulio
Clovio in 1577. The painting, now lost, was made on ivory. S. A. Mansbach, “Pieter Bruegel’s
Towers of Babel,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 45 (1982): 46. The painting in the Museum
Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam is neither signed nor dated, and while its attribution
to Bruegel is broadly accepted, its date and provenance remain disputed. However, most

2 Introduction
Figure 1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 114 × 155cm, Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum
photo: KHM—Museumsverband
By the mid-sixteenth century, Antwerp had developed into an international

commercial metropolis, where merchants from all over Europe traded goods
imported to the harbor at the Scheldt and via inland routes. The city’s popula-
tion spiked to between 88,000 and 90,000 permanent citizens and 10,000 to
12,000 transient inhabitants.3 New neighborhoods—including the Leikwartier,
scholars agree that it is a late work, possibly made around 1568. Friso Lammertse, “The Tower
of Babel,” in Van Eyck to Bruegel. Dutch and Flemish Painting in the Collection of the Museum
Boymans-van Beuningen, ed.by Friso Lammerse (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van
Beuningen, 1994), cat. no. 95, p. 402. Mansbach has suggested that the Rotterdam panel was
“most likely” commissioned by Niclaes Jonghelinck. Mansbach, “Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of
Babel,” 49. The panel is significantly smaller than the Vienna version, measuring only
59.9 × 74.6cm.
3 Jan van Roey, “De Bevolking,” in Antwerpen, ed. Genootschap voor Antwerpsche Geschiedenis
(Antwerp: Mercurius, 1975), 96; Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground
Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis, 1550–1577 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), 5.
Introduction 3
where Jonghelinck’s villa was located—were created to accommodate an ever-

increasing number of residents. The architectural landscape of the city was
undergoing a profound transformation: the Town Hall, New Exchange, houses
of the trading nations, and new market squares were all built within just a few
decades of each other. Antwerp’s commercial success stimulated a cultural
one: the art market thrived and continued to attract craftsmen and artists from
across the Low Countries and abroad, and public spectacles such as joyous
entries, devotional processions, and theatrical competitions served as mani-
festations of the city’s artistic and mercantile prowess. The printing industry
flourished, for reasons addressed briefly by scholar-publisher Christophe Plan-
tin: “in my opinion, no town in the world provides more advantages for the
profession I wanted to pursue. It is easy to get there, one sees different coun-
tries get together at the market.”4 The dynamic publishing industry and the
presence of wealthy patrons attracted scholars and humanists who found in
Antwerp ideal conditions to pursue their studies despite the lack of a univer-
sity.
However, like the community depicted by Bruegel in The Tower of Babel,
Antwerp was enveloped in a shadow cast by, ironically, its successful growth.
Its dramatic demographic and economic expansion and ensuing diversifi
cation weakened social bonds and rendered ineffective membership in profes-
sional guilds and religious confraternities and other traditional mechanisms of
fostering loyalty toward fellow citizens and the city.5 Clearly, new mechanisms
were needed that would stimulate long-lasting bonds with the “imagined com-
munity” of Antwerp.6 But to whom did the citizens owe their loyalty in a peri-
od when the local and central government often had opposing views on the
city’s future? Was it at all possible to balance loyalties between the Spanish and
Brabant authorities?7
4 Quoted in Michael Limberger, “‘No town in the world provides more advantages’: Economies
of Agglomeration and the Golden Age of Antwerp,” in Urban Achievement in Early Modern
Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, ed. Patrick O’Brien (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 59.
5 An M. Kint, “The Community of Commerce: Social Relations in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp”
(PhD diss., Columbia University, 1995), passim.
6 On the concept of “imagined communities,” see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006).
7 A similar question was raised in the context of early modern festivals by Edward Muir in Ritual
in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 237–38. For a more
general discussion of identity formation in the Low Countries and the local population’s
loyalty toward the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty, see Steven Gunn, “War and Identity in the
Habsburg Netherlands, 1477–1559,” in Networks, Regions, and Nations: Shaping Identities in the
Low Countries, 1300–1600, ed. Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 151–72.
4 Introduction
It is in the context of these anxieties that the original viewers would have
approached Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel. The panel confronted them with
a question they could not dismiss: how to create and maintain a unified com-
munity that would accommodate a heterogeneous population, and thus allow
the metropolis to avoid the disaster experienced by the inhabitants of the bib-
lical land of Sennaar. The picture’s iconography, which situated the tower amid
a Brabant city on the banks of a wide, twisting river resembling the Scheldt,
strengthened the association between Antwerp and Babel. My initial descrip-
tion of the image could, in fact, just as well serve as a description of the me-
tropolis itself.
While offering a prudent lesson aimed at Antwerp’s financial and adminis-
trative elite, Bruegel’s Tower of Babel displayed several unusual characteristics
when compared to contemporaneous religious art. First, it depicted a relative-
ly rare subject, one that had previously been represented mostly in illuminated
manuscripts, illustrated Bibles, and individual prints. Bruegel transformed this
theme into an exceptionally large panel painting, measuring 114 × 155cm. Sec-
ond, he focused on the narrative qualities of the story, told through a copious
number of small scenes dispersed throughout the composition. And third, The
Tower of Babel was displayed in the semipublic domestic space of Jonghelinck’s
villa, most likely his dining room, and thus would have been the subject of the
curious scrutiny of his guests. Because of these characteristics—iconographic
innovation, compositional complexity, emphasis on the narrative, and design
for a domestic space—The Tower of Babel did not fit the traditional categories
of liturgical or devotional art. And yet, it was a religious painting. It continued
a long tradition of biblical exempla offered to individual and collective viewers
for their moral and spiritual edification, while inviting them to a conversation
about that moral lesson.
My interest in this type of mid-sixteenth-century religious imagery came
at a very opportune time. Recent years have significantly enriched our under-
standing of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s works. They are no longer trapped in
the binary opposition of a highly sophisticated, classicizing, and proto-ethno-
graphic art for a humanist audience, versus a moralizing admonition against
human folly presented through the lens of social satire.8 Another persisting
concept—the interpretation of Bruegel’s compositions as visually articulating
an anti-Spanish agenda, and directly targeting personages such as King Philip
II or Fernando Álvarez de Toledo—has also been fading. Bruegel scholarship
is now increasingly based on the idea that his pictures were open to different
8 Stephanie Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2016), 4.
Introduction 5
interpretations and were often deliberately ambiguous, which allowed—in

fact required—viewers to construct meanings for themselves. The conceptual
open-endedness of Bruegel’s works explains their compositional and icono-
graphic complexity, and the active reception process establishes them as con-
versation pieces. With studies by Mark Meadow, Todd Richardson, Claudia
Goldstein, and Stephanie Porras, there now appears to be widespread agree-
ment that one of the primary functions of Bruegel’s paintings was to inspire
discussion.9 Richardson and Goldstein in particular have argued convincingly
for a specific social and physical viewing context of Bruegel’s paintings. They
situate them within the tradition of the convivium, learned mealtime conver-
sations described by ancient and Renaissance authors, re-created as an actual,
real-life practice by sixteenth-century humanists, and adopted by the Antwerp
mercantile and administrative elite. In the mid-sixteenth century, the upper
classes used dinner parties as one of the most effective instruments of strength-
ening professional and social bonds. This process went hand in hand with the
increasing importance of the decoration of dining halls, which testified to the
status and wealth of the hosts and which offered a stimulus for conversations
among their guests. Visually stunning, Bruegel’s works were thus anything but
silent accessories of the lavish banquets for the cosmopolitan viewers.
If we consider the experience of Bruegel’s original viewership, any attempt
to associate his oeuvre with a specific political and religious agenda would be
anachronistic. This does not mean, of course, that Bruegel remained oblivious
to the social, political, and religious tensions of his day. His art was in every
sense a product of its urban environment and a specific historical moment—
and it must be noted here that, even though Bruegel moved to Brussels in 1563,
he continued to work for Antwerp patrons and remained deeply preoccupied
with the circumstances of the metropolis. In particular, as Ethan Matt Kavaler
showed near the end of the twentieth century, Bruegel’s pictures participated
in the broadly defined socioeconomic discourse that was of vital interest to the
urban elite.10
However fascinating, Kavaler’s book focuses, as do all of the above-men-
tioned studies, primarily on Bruegel’s secular paintings, and rarely references
the religious ones. And yet, not only are Bruegel’s religious pictures among his
9 Mark A. Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs” and the Practice of
Rhetoric (Zwolle: Waanders, 2002); Todd Richardson, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Art Discourse
in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands (Farnham: Ashgate, 2001); Claudia Goldstein, Pieter
Bruegel and the Culture of the Early Modern Dinner Party (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); and
Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination.
10 Ethan Matt Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
6 Introduction
most innovative compositions, but the period in which they were created was
one of the defining moments of early modern religiosity. Its most important
feature was arguably the opening of religion to debate—a debate that was no
longer restricted to the clergy and theologians, but in which laymen could par-
take as well. Bruegel’s open-ended biblical panels offered an excellent oppor-
tunity for engaging in such a discussion. This new approach to religion meant
that scriptural exempla could have been used, to a greater extent than ever
before, as a discursive commentary on contemporaneous sociopolitical issues.
My book thus builds on much of the discussion started by Kavaler to ultimate-
ly show that Bruegel’s biblical iconography accommodated socioeconomic
topics as effectively as his secular imagery.
Although I spend considerable time discussing early modern convivial trea-
tises, this book is not a study of dinner parties per se. Rather, I am interested in
the question of how the ritualized custom of mealtime conversations stimu-
lated the transformation of religious beliefs and practices, and how Bruegel’s
compositions facilitated this process. I approach the question of religious
transformation in a broader sense than the emergence of new denominations
within Christianity. From a historical perspective, the Protestant Reformation
overshadows other changes that occurred during the period. And, to be sure,
its impact on the lives of sixteenth-century Europeans cannot be overestimat-
ed. Nonetheless, we should not dismiss tendencies such as popular, nonsectar-
ian anticlerical sentiments, Erasmian criticism of selected Catholic practices,
and the spiritualism of the Family of Love, whose impact on the Netherlandish
elite is still much debated.11 Above all, the religiosity of Antwerp burghers was
highly eclectic and marked by curiosity and open-mindedness. They can be
described as “religious moderates,”12 who did not find it problematic to attend
both Catholic services and Protestant gatherings. Quite the contrary—for the
majority of the society, sermons of evangelical preachers supplemented rather
than replaced Catholic rites.13 This lax attitude toward confessional boundaries
also characterized much of the civic sociability among Antwerp’s learned and
affluent citizens, including Gillis Hooftman and Abraham Ortelius—important
11 On the Family of Love, see Alistair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge, UK: J. Clarke,
1981) and, more recently, Jason Harris, “The Religious Position of Abraham Ortelius,” in
The Low Countries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs, ed. Arie Gelderbloem, Jan de Jong,
and Marc van Vaeck (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 89–140.
12 Juliaan Woltjer, “Political Moderates and Religious Moderates in the Revolt of the
Netherlands,” in Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555–1585,
ed. Philip Benedict et al. (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,
1999), 185–200.
13 See e.g., Alastair Duke, Dissident Identities in the Early Modern Low Countries (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009).
Introduction 7
personages in chapters 2 and 6 of this book—who eagerly embraced the com-

pany of friends of different sectarian sympathies. Needless to say, this tolerant
approach to religious heterodoxy was not shared by the Spanish authorities.
Confessional eclecticism notwithstanding, there can be little doubt that one
aspect of the Protestant movement—the iconoclastic controversy—consider-
ably affected the conditions of image production in mid-sixteenth-century
Antwerp. After all, as Koenraad Jonckheere reminds us, “for most artists in
sixteenth-century Antwerp—including Bruegel—the debates and the Icono-
clasm challenged their core business, their income and their future.”14 While
there are almost no written records from the artists’ environment that docu-
ment this process, Jonckheere suggests that we can turn to pictures themselves
to see whether painters “implemented in their art some arguments raised by
the different factions.”15 Although I do not subscribe to the notion that
14 Koenraad Jonckheere, “An Allegory of Artistic Choice in Times of Trouble: Pieter Bruegel’s
Tower of Babel,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 64 (2014): 170. See also Koenraad
Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm: Experiments in Decorum, 1566–1585 (Brussels:
Mercatorfonds/New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), 44–83.
15 Jonckheere, “Allegory of Artistic Choice,” 170. The closest we can get to an artist’s written
response to the image controversy is the famous prologue to the second Apostle Play by
Willem van Haecht, the leading poet of the Antwerp chamber of rhetoric De Violieren
(The Gillyflowers). This chamber was incorporated with the Guild of Saint Luke, which
resulted in an overlap between Antwerp artists and Antwerp rhetoricians. The prologue
to the play, which was first performed in April 1564, stages a discussion between an
anonymous “Painter” and a character descriptively called “Ingenious and Blind.” As the
curtain opens and the prologue begins, viewers surprise the Painter who is busy adding
some final touches to the scenery. While he expresses his concern about the artistic
quality of the decoration and its symbolic significance for the play, he is approached by
Ingenious and Blind, who challenges his work by pointing out that “painted images [are]
forbidden by God. … they are all idols.” What follows is an exchange of exegetical
arguments about the proper understanding of the First Commandment and scriptural
instances when God himself commanded the creation of images such as the Brazen
Serpent, lavish decorations of Solomon’s Temple, and cherubs on the Ark of the Covenant.
The Painter claims that he himself is against the worship of images, but defends their
decorative value. As Ingenious and Blind—and it is not difficult to recognize this
character as a zealous Calvinist—remains unconvinced and argues for a fundamentalist
understanding of the Decalogue, the Painter points out that his fear of images is a
projection of his own weakness. If paintings are only material objects, why fear them as if
they were embedded with supernatural powers? Eventually the Painter adds to his
argument about the ornamental function of images by indicating that what Christ
forbade—in distinction from the Mosaic prohibition of images—was the cult of
mammon, which so many people practiced every day. On the prologue, see C. G. N. de
Vooys, “Apostelspelen in de Rederijkerstijd,” Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde 65, Series A (1928): 164–72; Keith Moxey, Pieter
Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of Reformation
(New York: Garland, 1977), 161–63; Elizabeth Honig, Painting and the Market in Early
8 Introduction
Bruegel’s compositions visually articulate art theory tied specifically to the

iconoclastic debate of his day, I believe that his iconographic and composi-
tional innovations testify to his attempt to develop a new type of religious im-
agery. His paintings offer a nonconfessional alternative to traditional
devotional and liturgical art in an effort to reach an affluent, sophisticated ur-
ban public who wished to discuss religion as much as they discussed other
topics, and who, as mentioned, remained moderate and open-minded in their
religious opinions. My interpretation of the impact of the Protestant image
controversy on mid-sixteenth-century art is thus much different than the old
“secularization paradigm,” according to which the threat against religious art
resulted in the artists’ turn toward nonreligious subjects and eventually led to
the development of new genres in Netherlandish painting. In fact, I will pro-
pose that Bruegel was looking for pictorial solutions that would preserve the
religious and ritualistic potential of biblical imagery; in reaching this goal, he
was aided by the convivial context of his pictures. In sum, this book is a study
of both production and reception, of Bruegel’s quest for a renewed idiom of
religious imagery and his viewers’ enjoyment of open-ended conversation
pieces. Focusing on six religious paintings by Bruegel, I follow the premise that
their iconographic, compositional, and functional novelty responded to the
interests, anxieties, and patterns of thought of his urban viewership.
Chapter 1 examines The Tower of Babel in the context of Antwerp’s mercan-
tile, demographic, and architectural expansion. I propose that both the ico-
nography and display of the panel were aimed at resolving tensions potentially
calamitous to the community. The convivium and villeggiatura provided intel-
lectual and spatial context for the reception of the painting and facilitated
strengthening of the social bonds among the members of Antwerp’s elite. Ulti-
mately the biblical story of hubris and the destruction of Babel, to which Ant-
werp was often likened, offered a visual argument about the precedence of
collective welfare over individual profit, consistent with the entrepreneurial
discourse of the period.
In chapter 2, I address another aspect of Antwerp’s demographic diversity:
the dissemination of Protestant doctrines and the presence of New Chris-
tians in the city. These two phenomena associated with the high number of
immigrant residents led the Spanish authorities to treat foreigners with in-
Modern Antwerp (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 27–29; Bart Ramakers,
“The Work of a Painter. Willem van Haecht’s Apostle Plays, 1563–1565,” in Understanding
Art in Antwerp: Classicising the Popular, Popularising the Classic (1540–1580), ed. Bart
Ramakers, (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 229–53; Barbara A. Kaminska, “Looking beyond Con
fessional Boundaries: Discourse of Religious Tolerance in Prints by Dirck Volkertsz.
Coornhert and Adriaan de Weert,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme
(Summer 2013): 105–6.
Introduction 9
Figure 2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1567, oil on panel,
108 × 156cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
creasing suspicion and hostility, which manifested itself in ordinances intend-

ed to secure the religious and political homogeneity of Antwerp. As I argue, it
became crucial for the metropolis to keep outer appearances of orthodoxy and
orthopraxy by means including pictorial decoration of domestic spaces. It is
in this context that I analyze Bruegel’s Conversion of Saint Paul (figure 2) as a
meditation on the nature of true conversion.
The research I present in chapters 1 and 2 demonstrates that the mid-
sixteenth-century Antwerp elite began to actively question the paradigm of
a uniformly Catholic society enforced by the Habsburgs, and no longer sub-
scribed to the notion that religious orthodoxy was a necessary precondition
for the creation of a harmonious community. From this it follows that Bruegel’s
contemporaries were eager to embrace a new model of religiosity, one discur-
sive rather than dogmatic in nature. I develop this idea in chapters 3 and 4, in
which I argue that in The Procession to Calvary (figure 3) and Sermon of Saint
John the Baptist (figure 4),16 Bruegel thematized religious and artistic shifts to-
16 At the time when this book went into production, I was unable to obtain permission to
publish the original image.
10 Introduction
Figure 3 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Procession to Calvary, 1564, oil on panel, 124 × 170cm,
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
ward discursivity. These chapters analyze religious practices in private houses

and open-air Protestant sermons as vehicles for the redefinition of religious
ritual, removed from the supervision of the Catholic Church. Having already
looked at the popularity and importance of convivia in chapter 1, in chapter 3
I focus more specifically on the theological and humanistic discourse on the
role of religious imagery in sixteenth-century domestic spaces. Analyzing the
emergence of images destined specifically for dining halls, I explore the cus-
tom of vernacular plays performed at banquets. These so-called table plays
often featured the exchange of gifts in the form of allegorical images and em-
blems, which were essential for an understanding of the play’s message, and
which, as I propose, developed in their viewers a habit of dinner conversations
stimulated by the paintings on display. Conversations on religious subjects are
visualized in the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, which, as we shall see in
chapter 4, confirms the participation of laymen in theological reflection.
While analyzing official documents, policies, and the power struggle be-
tween the Spanish authorities and their Netherlandish subjects, I find it
Introduction 11
Figure 4 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, 1601–1604, oil on
panel, 102 × 167.5cm, Cracow, National Museum/Czartoryski Museum, inv. MNK
XII-a-619
photo: Cracow, National Museum
important to simultaneously consider the human aspect of this troublesome

period in the history of the Low Countries. Charles V and Philip II genuinely
believed in the sin of religious dissidents and the necessity of defending the
Holy Catholic Church. Similarly, as proven by the Counter-Reformation efforts
of many priests, there was no shortage of clergy truly worried about the eternal
fate of lapsed Catholics. On the other side of the spectrum, we have people
such as the chronicler Marcus van Vaernewijck, profoundly perplexed by the
motives behind people’s support for the Protestants, and concerned about
what to do with those who “did not know that they were doing any evil, but on
the contrary believed that they were doing very well, seeking to hear God and
His word with so much attention and zeal.”17 Persecution of heretics was not
an abstract problem for the Netherlandish citizens discussed in this book—it
was an issue that applied to their neighbors, friends, and colleagues. As Judith
Pollmann reminds us, “as the number of heretics increased, more and more
people had become aware that heretics were neither witches nor monsters,
17 Quoted in Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 43.
12 Introduction
Figure 5 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1565, oil on
panel, 24.1 × 34.4cm, London, Courtauld Gallery
photo: The Courtauld Gallery
but ordinary people like themselves, often devout and charitable.”18 Many let-
ters and chronicles further prove that the increasingly hostile attitude of the
Spanish sovereigns toward foreign merchants and unorthodox Catholics was
a heartbreaking change for much of the Antwerp population, who took pride
in the cosmopolitan character of their metropolis. These religiously and politi-
cally moderate groups did not always have a very clear ideology, but they cer-
tainly had a strong emotional response to the dissolution of their community
caused by the harsh methods of the Spanish government.19
In chapters 5 and 6, I turn to two grisaille panels, Christ and the Woman
Taken in Adultery (figure 5) and The Death of the Virgin (figure 6), switching
from the collective viewing experience within the context of convivia to indi-
vidual reflection, for which these small pictures were better suited. I analyze
18 Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 67.

19 Juliaan Woltjer, “Public Opinion and the Persecution of Heretics in the Netherlands, 1550–
59,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in
Honour of Alastair Duke, ed. Andrew Spicer et al. (Leiden: Brill 2007), 104.
Introduction 13
Figure 6 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Death of the Virgin, ca. 1564, oil on panel, 36 × 55cm,
Banbury, Upton House
photo: National Trust Images
how Bruegel engages in these small compositions with both the Northern and
Southern artistic traditions, and with the contemporary visual culture of his
native Netherlands—including vernacular theatre—to show that this inter-
pictorial dialogue is fundamental to the renewing of the idiom of religious
images meant for private meditation. In Christ and the Woman Taken in Adul-
tery, a number of complex compositional strategies facilitate the use of the
panel as a stimulus for viewers to think about their own sins. Such a reflection
again would have been grounded in the contemporary political and religious
tensions in the metropolis. Furthermore, the biblical story of the adulterous
woman could have been interpreted in the context of the iconoclastic contro-
versy, which added urgency to Bruegel’s quest for a new type of meditative im-
age. In The Death of the Virgin, the artist examines another religious and visual
tradition, ars moriendi, emphasizing its elaborate customs and social dimen-
sion. As the grisaille juxtaposes the quiet death of Mary with the commotion
among the attendants at her bedside, it asks viewers to consider what is it that
Christians truly need for a blessed death—and a blessed life. The small panel
14 Introduction
thus participated in the sixteenth-century transformation of religious culture

of death, while its reception in the humanist circle of Abraham Ortelius posi-
tioned it within artistic discourse as well.
The grisailles discussed in chapters 5 and 6 demonstrate that, by offering his
learned viewers complex religious pictures, Bruegel succeeded in preserving
the tradition of compositions intended for private meditation. But despite the
intimate nature of their usage and reception, these pictures were firmly
grounded in the contemporary sociopolitical and confessional circumstances.
Overall, as I argue throughout this book, Bruegel’s project to renew the picto-
rial idiom of biblical imagery was founded upon the premise that in a period
marked by a profound economic, cultural, and religious transformation, visual
arts had the potential to be an instrument in negotiating values critical to
maintaining a harmonious society. While the paintings analyzed in the first
four chapters were doubtlessly approached as exciting conversation pieces,
those conversations would have been dedicated to grave subjects and played
an important role in achieving social cohesion. Although our knowledge of the
exact style and content of the debates in the lavishly decorated rooms of Jong-
helinck’s and his colleagues’ residences remains incomplete, I hope that in
their open-mindedness they would have appreciated the interpretations pro-
posed in this book.
Negotiating Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Antwerp 15
Chapter 1
Negotiating Entrepreneurship in Early Modern

Antwerp: Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel
According to Lodovico Guicciardini’s Description of the Low Countries (1567),

among the most fascinating traits of sixteenth-century Antwerp was its cosmo-
politanism. Thanks to the thousands of foreign merchants settled in the city,
one could learn the customs and manners of many different nations without
traveling far.1 By contrast, in a letter to King Philip II dated February 29, 1568,
Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the 3rd Duke of Alba, described Antwerp as “a
Babylon, a confusion and receptacle of all sects indifferently” and as “the town
most frequented by pernicious people.”2 A similar sentiment was expressed
by a Catholic monk, Brother Cornelis, who complained that innumerable for-
eigners and heretics had transformed Antwerp into “the great Babylon.”3 These
diverging opinions reveal that in the mid-sixteenth century, Antwerp’s diver-
sity had an ambivalent value. Its most dangerous implication was the increas-
ing number of religious dissenters who no longer adhered to the Catholicism
enforced by the Habsburgs across their dominion. The ensuing unfavorable
comparison to Babylon emphasized the turmoil in which the Low Countries
found themselves.4 The Spanish government was of the firm opinion that the
only remedy to this seditious environment was relentless persecution of Prot-
estant communities and New Christians, lest they be secret Judaizers. On the
other hand, publishers, scholars, and entrepreneurs living in the city—among
them Christophe Plantin, Abraham Ortelius, and Gillis Hooftman—and many
members of the magistrate advocated, through their words and deeds, a new,
heterogeneous identity for Antwerp. Confessional differences, they argued,
were of secondary importance when compared to the economic and cultural
potential brought to the metropolis by all of the immigrants.
In this and the next chapter, I explore the role of domestic decoration, in
particular religious paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in negotiating a
1 Lodovico Guicciardini, Beschryvinghe van alle de Nederlanden, anderssins ghenoemt Neder-

Duytslatndt (Amsterdam: Willem Jansz, 1612). Reprint: Beschryving van Antwerpen door
Lodovico Guicciardini (1612) (Tienen: Ripova, 1995), 87–88.
2 Epistolario del III Duque de Alba, Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, ed. Jacopo Stuart Fitz
(Madrid: Tecnos, 1952), vol. 2, 34.
3 Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands: 1544–1569
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 145.
4 Babylon is synonymous with Babel, which means “confusion” (Gen. 11:9).

16 Chapter 1
broadly understood diversity in sixteenth-century Antwerp. I am interested in

the question of how the iconography and display of works of art helped to
maintain a harmonious community during some of the most fascinating and
politically significant decades in the history of the Low Countries, and how
their subjects contributed to the religious and socioeconomic transformation
of Antwerp. Two large-scale narrative panels, the 1563 Tower of Babel and the
1567 Conversion of Saint Paul, actively shaped the entrepreneurial and religious
discourses of the period, but rather than providing straightforward answers to
the community’s troubling questions, they invited their viewers to self-reflec-
tion and conversation. Displayed in prestigious semipublic spaces in the resi-
dences of prominent Antwerp burghers, the panels would have sparked
convivial discussions and served as instruments of collectors’ self-fashioning.
Those functions were possible thanks to Bruegel’s renewal of religious imag-
ery: his paintings neither supported liturgy nor activated personal devotional
practices, but rather fell into the category of conversation pieces or, as we can
call them alternatively, discursive exempla. The painted stories of the tower of
Babel and Saint Paul’s conversion followed the well-known tradition of depic-
tions of Bible stories that taught the viewers morally commendable (or con-
demnable) behaviors. However, the complexity of Bruegel’s compositions
defied the usual straightforwardness of exempla used in visual arts and ephem-
eral events. They thus counted upon their viewers’ familiarity with the conven-
tions of the genre, but adapted it to a more discussion-oriented Renaissance
culture. In the Low Countries, where open and public religious debate was im-
possible, Bruegel’s paintings offered the unique opportunity of sparking such
debate in the privacy of the domestic setting.
1 For “an Idel and Foolish Ostentation of Money”? The Tower of Babel
and the Ambiguities of Progress
The Tower of Babel was one of several paintings pledged to the treasury of Ant-
werp on February 21, 1566 for a total of sixteen thousand guldens by merchant-
banker Niclaes Jonghelinck, on behalf of his friend and business partner,
Daniel de Bruyne. The inventory of Jonghelinck’s possessions kept at his subur-
ban villa, ’t Goed ter Beken (The Estate by the Stream), just south of Antwerp,
listed one painting by Albrecht Dürer; an extensive collection of works by
Frans Floris—the cycle of ten panels of The Labors of Hercules, seven allegories
of the liberal arts, The Awakening of the Arts (figure 7), The Judgment of Paris
(initially misidentified in the inventory as The Judgment of Solomon, with this
Figure 7 Frans Floris, Awakening of the Arts, ca. 1560, oil on canvas, 162 × 239cm, Ponce,
Museo del Arte. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.
photo: Ponce, Museo del Arte
title crossed out in the original document), Banquet of the Gods, and The Three
Theological Virtues—and sixteen works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, including,
in addition to The Tower of Babel, the series of the Months (figures 8–12) and
The Procession to Calvary.
The Tower of Babel, signed and dated 1563, depicts a rare iconographic sub-
ject, derived from Genesis 11 and Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities. The bib-
lical chapter, which explains the linguistic diversity of the world, tells the story
of a postdiluvian kingdom in the land of Sennaar. Its inhabitants, credited
with the invention of bricks and slime (mud-based mortar), decided “to make
a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven … and make [their]
name famous before [they were] scattered abroad into all lands” (Gen. 11:4).
This initially successful project came to an end when God, displeased with the
builders’ audacity, confused their speech. The sudden inability of people to
communicate with each other put the construction to an end, after which “the
Lord scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build
the city. And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the
18 Chapter 1
Figure 8 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Gloomy Day, 1565, oil on panel, 118 × 163cm, Vienna,
Figure 9 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Haymaking, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 161cm, The Lobkow-
icz Collections, Lobkowicz Palace, Prague Castle, Czech Republic
photo: Lobkowicz Collections
Figure 10 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Harvesters, 1565, oil on panel, 118 × 161cm, New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919
artwork in the public domain
Figure 11 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Return of the Herd, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 159cm, Vienna,
20 Chapter 1
Figure 12 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 162cm,
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
language of the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scat-
tered them abroad upon the face of all countries” (Gen. 11:8–9). Flavius Jose-
phus’s more detailed narrative blames the king of Sennaar (or Shinar), the
giant Nimrod, for conceiving the tower as a shelter against the deluge, should
it happen once more despite God’s promise never to flood the earth again. The
destruction of the unfinished work was thus a punishment for Nimrod’s lack
of faith and vainglorious confidence in his own knowledge and his subjects’
skills.5
5 Flavius Josephus’s text was immensely popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
with dozens of editions published across Europe. I consulted the following: Flavij Josephi des
Vermaerden Joetschen Hystorie scrivers twintich boecken (Antwerp: Symon Cock, 1552), fol. 9v,
col. B. For the standard English translation, see Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, vol. 1.4.2–3,
in Josephus, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958–65),
55–57.
The unusual circumstances in which the inventory of Jonghelinck’s pos-

sessions was compiled rendered it different from the more common probate
inventories. Unlike the majority of notaries responsible for the preparation
of such documents, the appraiser of the estate did not specify where in the
house the paintings were hung.6 The sheer scale of The Tower of Babel, which
measures 114 × 155cm, its iconographic novelty and compositional complexity,
certainly establish it as a “status object,” an expensive work that would have
been displayed to a discriminating audience in a semipublic rather than pri-
vate space inside Jonghelinck’s suburban residence. The panel’s dimensions
render it almost identical in size to the five surviving paintings of the cycle of
the Months, each of which is approximately 117 × 162cm.
Scarce but nonetheless convincing evidence about patterns in the display of
works of art in domestic spaces in the early modern period suggests that im-
ages of the same size and format were often hung together, allowing for their
symmetrical alignment.7 In the case of the Months, scholars have argued con-
vincingly that the series was displayed in the villa’s dining hall.8 The display of
The Tower of Babel in the same space is highly probable, not only because of its
very similar size, but also, more importantly, because of the iconography and
functions of the Months and the Tower, both of which would have been con
sidered particularly decorous choices for an eetkamer of a prosperous entre-
preneur. The six panels of the Months visually articulated the agricultural
prosperity of the Brabant countryside and showcased the production of the
6 We do not know the layout of Jonghelinck’s residence, nor that of any other contemporaneous
suburban villa in the region. However, Charles Estienne’s contemporaneous treatise on villa
architecture gives us an idea of how an ideal recreational country estate would have looked.
Interestingly, while inventories of urban houses rarely mention a separate dining hall,
Estienne’s treatise lists the eetplaats or eetkamer as virtually the most important space: it
determined the location of other rooms such as the kitchen, master bedroom, and guest
rooms. Kaerle Stevens (Charles Estienne), De Landtvvin ende hoeue (Antwerp: Plantyn, 1566),
21–24.
7 Ernst Gombrich, “Pictures for the Home,” in E. H. Gombrich, The Uses of Images: Studies in the
Social Function of Art and Visual Communication (London: Phaidon, 1999), 108–34.
8 Iain Buchanan, “The Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: II. The ‘Months’ by Pieter Bruegel the
Elder,” The Burlington Magazine 132 (1990): 541–50; Claudia Goldstein, “Keeping Up
Appearances: the Social Significance of Domestic Decoration in Antwerp, 1508–1600” (PhD
diss., Columbia University, 2003); Walter S. Gibson, Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 107; Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel. For a brief sum-
mary of the collecting and display of Bruegel’s works, see also Amy Orrock, “Homo ludens:
Pieter Bruegel’s Children’s Games and the Humanist Educators,” Journal of Historians of
Netherlandish Art 4, no. 2 (Summer 2012), <http://www.jhna.org/index.php/past-issues/
volume-4-issue-2/157-homo-ludens>.
22 Chapter 1
food being consumed by Jonghelinck’s guests, while the theme of the changing
seasons alluded to the suburban location of the residence.9
However, nourishing the body was only one purpose of the banquets that
Jonghelinck hosted. Their second, and arguably more important function was
nourishing the mind and soul through convivial conversations often occa-
sioned by paintings.10 The story of the tower of Babel forms an absolute an-
tithesis of this objective: one of its central themes is the miscommunication
resulting from the confusion of tongues, which eventually led to the fall of a
once-successful kingdom. While the narrative exemplifies the dangers of the
lack of communication, Bruegel’s composition facilitates a learned conversa-
tion. Similarly, the biblical account moves from the unity of languages to their
separation, whereas convivium helps to overcome the differences inherent in
a diversified community in order to create a harmonious society founded upon
Christian values. In fact, in A Feast of Many Courses, Erasmus mentions Babel
as a metaphor for confusion, which can occur at a banquet among guests of
very different personalities, preferences, and tastes. However, a capable host
would know how to remedy such a situation, as one of the functions of the
convivium was bringing together people of diverging opinions and disposi-
tions.11 Bruegel’s Tower warns its viewers about the potentially catastrophic
consequences of confusion and miscommunication, and applies this admoni-
tion to the action portrayed: the building of the city and the tower by dozens of
9 Buchanan, “Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: II,” 549; Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appear

ances,” 50–51; and Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 49–50.
10 The connection between dining customs and innovative religious paintings from the
1550s and 1560s, more specifically those by Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer, was
first made by Günter Irmscher. Irmscher proposed that this type of image, combining
market scenes and biblical stories, was acquired by merchants and city officials for the
purpose of moral edification, which would ultimately have had a beneficial impact on
their professional relations and transactions. The paintings exhorted “the feasting dinner
company to temperantia in both bodily and spiritual terms, and, beyond this, to behavior
likely to lead to the general good in both economic and political matters.” Günter Irmscher,
“Ministrae voluptatum: Stoicizing Ethics in the Market and Kitchen Scenes of Pieter
Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 229. Margaret Sullivan extends the
potential clientele of those works to “humanists, or humanists in their aspirations.”
Sullivan further argues that the size and horizontal format of Aertsen’s kitchen and
market scenes made them very well suited to their location in dining halls and viewing by
a group of friends gathered for a meal. Margaret Sullivan, “Aertsen’s Kitchen and Market
Scenes: Audience and Innovation in Northern Art,” The Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 255. The
interest in the relationship between Bruegel’s paintings and dinner parties has also been
thoroughly explored in Claudia Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, and Todd Richardson, Pieter
Bruegel.
11 Desiderius Erasmus, A Feast of Many Courses, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 40, trans.
Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 803.
skilled, specialized workers, from whom the initiator of the project, King Nim-
rod, distances himself. This connection between the Old Testament narrative
and the symposiac tradition is confirmed by the inclusion of Nimrod and the
story from Genesis 11 in another sixteenth-century convivial treatise among
topics of potential conversations at the dining table.12
Comparisons of Antwerp to Babel, such as the unfavorable ones in the let-
ters of Duke of Alba and Brother Cornelis, established a link between the me-
tropolis and the biblical story for the original viewers of Bruegel’s panel.13 The
composition further strengthens this association, as several of its elements
resemble Antwerp and its surroundings.14 The city in the painting is situated
amid vast flatlands with a wide, twisting river to the right, which extends up to
the horizon, just like the Scheldt. The city itself is a well-developed, large, and
densely populated community, whose architecture spans the domestic and the
public, the secular and the sacred, and is stylistically that of the late medieval
and early modern Brabant. It is surrounded by walls with a tall, majestic gate
to the left, which can be associated with the Gate of Saint George, and an agri-
12 Franciscus Philelphus, Conviviorum Francisci Philelphi (Cologne: Gymnicus, 1537), 139–40.

13 A similar comparison was made by a Ghent rhetorician and historian, Marcus van
Vaernewijck, in his chronicle Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick
in Ghendt, 1566–1568, which was, however, not intended for publication, and was
discovered, edited, and published only in the late nineteenth century. Van Vaernewijck
accuses the three contemporary sects—Lutheran, Anabaptist, and Calvinist—of hubris
as each believes that they possess the truth. Their preachers compete with each other in
disseminating their doctrines, creating confusion throughout the entire country. They
resemble the builders of the tower of Babel because “Babel means confusion,” but also
because they exhibit the same foolish pride as the inhabitants of Sennaar by believing
that their edifice—their particular church—would please God the most. Marcus van
Vaernewijck, Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt, 1566–
1568, ed. Ferdinand vander Haeghen (Ghent: Annoot-Braeckman, 1872–81), 255. Van
Vaernewijck also argues that there is a connection between the dissemination of Protes
tantism, Calvinist preaching in particular, and iconoclasm. The physical destruction of
works of art and religious sites is a direct and inevitable consequence of sectarian discord
and confusion among Christians. Thus, while the confusion of tongues and the ensuing
disintegration of Babel was a punishment sent by God, the destruction of images was a
disaster brought upon the Low Countries by the citizens themselves.
14 The affinity between the tower of Babel, as depicted by Bruegel, and Antwerp has been
widely recognized by scholars. See, most recently as of this writing, Margaret D. Carroll,
“The Conceits of Empire: Bruegel’s Ice-Skating outside St. George’s Gate in Antwerp and
Tower of Babel,” in Margaret D. Carroll, Painting and Politics in Northern Europe: Van Eyck,
Bruegel, Rubens, and Their Contemporaries (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2008), 64–87; and Joanna Woodall, “Lost in Translation? Thinking about Classical
and Vernacular Art in Antwerp, 1540–1580,” in Understanding Art in Antwerp. Classicising
the Popular, Popularising the Classic (1540–1580), ed. Bart Ramakers (Leuven: Peeters, 2011),
1–24.
24 Chapter 1
cultural belt beyond the fortifications similar to the one where Niclaes Jonghe-
linck owned a villa. The tower is being built next to the harbor—virtually the
only location where it can be built. The direct access to the river and the ease of
water transport allow for the import of all the necessary building materials. The
harbor is bustling with activity, with several ships arriving or already moored,
some workers carrying their loads onto land and others transporting materials
further toward the tower. The harbor obviously provides employment for the
inhabitants of Sennaar and plays a crucial role in the life of the entire commu-
nity. The composition privileges the overpowering tower, obscuring any other
work or business that may be going on in the city proper. All of the city’s activ-
ity seems to be concentrated in the harbor and on the construction site, where
specialized workers with clearly divided tasks process the building materials.
This type of complete reliance on the harbor was certainly true of Antwerp. It
was its transformation from a city dependent primarily on the annual fair into
“a permanent international entrepôt” that secured its position as the capital of
commerce north of the Alps.15 Conversely, the blockage of the Scheldt by the
Spaniards in the late 1570s had disastrous consequences for the city, which has
never since regained its sixteenth-century glory.
The Tower of Babel was Pieter Bruegel’s pictorial response to Antwerp’s di-
versity and cosmopolitanism, which had resulted in unprecedented territorial
growth.16 Within roughly twenty years, Antwerp expanded and changed enor-
mously. While its architectural metamorphosis was a point of pride for the lo-
cals and elicited awe from travelers and chroniclers, the cost of all the
investments was sorely felt by the citizens. Projects such as the new fortifica-
tions raised doubts about whether they were “builte with very great expense
for an idel and foolish ostentation of money” only.17 The building boom also
intensified the pauperization of the lower classes and enrichment of a selected
group of entrepreneurs and city officials, the gap between whom was projected
by the transformation of the city’s urban landscape. Would Antwerp citizenry,
then, like the builders of the tower of Babel, be punished for its audacious pur-
suits? This question, with which Bruegel confronts his viewers, is not an easy
one to answer, but one place to start would be sixteenth-century exegeses of
Genesis 11. Contemporary theologians, from Catholic authors to Luther to Cal-
15 Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 3.

16 Charlotte Houghton argues convincingly that the anxiety caused by the territorial growth
of Antwerp and the ensuing land speculation is one of the themes of Pieter Aertsen’s
Meat Stall. “This Was Tomorrow: Pieter Aertsen’s ‘Meat Stall‘ as Contemporary Art,” Art
Bulletin 86, no. 2 (2004): 277–300.
17 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Of the vanitie and uncertaintie of artes and
sciences, ed. Catherine M. Dunn (Northridge: California State University, 1974), 88.
vin, agreed (remarkably) that the act of building the city and the tower in Sen-
naar was not a sin in itself.18 The ensuing question about the actual nature of
the people’s transgression is more complicated: as Martin Luther observed, the
biblical chapter “does not indicate clearly wherein the sin of the builders of the
tower of Babel consisted.”19
Ever since Augustine wrote The City of God, the foundational Christian text
for the interpretation of Genesis 11, authors have followed two alternative exe-
getical traditions. They were based on the translation of the word enantion,
used in the Greek text of the Old Testament, which can mean either “against”
or “before.” The king and his subjects would have conceived the tower either as
an act of rebellion against God and a challenge to his act of creation or as an
act of piety, an attempt to establish a dwelling most pleasing to God in its close
proximity to heaven. The first interpretation was popularized by Augustine
himself, Adam Sasbout (a Catholic preacher immensely popular in the Low
Countries), and, surprisingly enough, John Calvin; the second was favored by
Martin Luther. Still, both sides agreed that the story of Babel is ultimately one
of hubris. If the builders rebelled against God, it was because they foolishly
believed they could surpass his creation. If they wanted to gain God’s favor, it
was because they naïvely relied on their own judgment and deeds instead of
trusting his grace.20 God thus punished them for their pride and vainglory,
their desire to “make their name famous” before they were “scattered abroad
into all lands.” If we follow this theological tradition, Antwerp’s ambitious pur-
suits per se were hardly sinful. What could potentially lead to sin was the mo-
tivation behind them: were Antwerp’s citizens only seeking their own fame
and profit or developing their community for the well-being of everyone, while
18 Adam Sasbout and Pieter van Utrecht, Devote ende seer gheestelycke sermoonen (Leiden:
Mathyszoon, 1567), fol. iij r–iij v; Martin Luther, Sermons on Genesis, in Luther’s Works, ed.
Jaroslav Pelikan, vol. 2 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955), 210–27; John Calvin, Commentaries on
the First Book of Moses, Called Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1948),
323–32.
19 Luther, Sermons on Genesis, 214.
20 Martin Luther’s interpretation of Genesis 11 is firmly grounded in his doctrine of Werk
heiligkeit, the righteousness of works. According to Luther, any Christian who believes
that his own good works can guarantee him salvation commits blasphemy, as humankind
is saved by Christ alone, his grace alone, and faith alone (Solus Christus, Sola Gratia, Sola
Fide). Focusing on the verse “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower” (Gen. 11:4),
Luther emphasized the self-seeking ambition of the builders, which defied the purpose of
the tower as a place of worship. In Luther’s exegesis, the very act of building the tower
belongs to the category of adiaphora, things morally neutral in their substance, neither
mandated nor forbidden by God, which gain an ethical value by their usage.
26 Chapter 1
remaining faithful to Christian values? This was exactly the question that fu-
eled the local discourse of entrepreneurship, as discussed in more detail below.
Renaissance Antwerp was a city erected by people who traveled there from
“all lands.” As was customary across early modern Europe, each trading nation
that was established in the city built its own house, the commercial equivalent
of an embassy. Among the most famous examples of such structures are the
Hessenhuis, also known as Coophuys (1563), the seat of merchants from cen-
tral Germany, and the Groot Oosterhuys (Oosterlingehuis; ca. 1560) of the Han-
seatic merchants, both modeled after urban Italian palazzi. In addition to the
nations’ headquarters, Antwerp’s commercial growth required the construc-
tion of storage areas, warehouses, a weighing house, and new specialized mar-
ket squares. Other buildings projected Antwerp’s mercantile and cultural
prowess even more powerfully, becoming the loci of civic pride for the local
population and the envy of travelers. In 1531, the municipality gained the Nieu-
we Beurs (New Exchange), a large, centrally located multifunctional building
whose architecture combined the inner courtyard of an urban palazzo with
Brabantine Gothic and mudejar details. Even the design of the Exchange, the
most important trading venue in the metropolis, reflected the international-
ism of Antwerp’s commerce. Its location also highlighted the city’s dynamic
financial and spatial expansion: rather than being situated near the Grote
Markt, the traditional business district, it was built near the Meir, which al-
lowed for a smoother flow of traffic.21
A similar combination of different architectural sources characterized the
new City Hall, built between 1561 and 1565. Located on the western side of the
Grote Markt, its majestic structure overshadowed the guild houses surround-
ing the square. Cornelis Floris and Willem van den Broeck, to whom the design
is attributed, adapted the late Gothic stepped-gable structure in the protruding
central segment of the façade, and flanked it with Renaissance wings. These
three stylistically disparate parts are unified by the use of superimposed clas-
sical order: as in a palazzo, the lower story is rusticated, with the second and
third stories articulated by Doric and Ionian pilasters, respectively. The Corin-
thian order is used in a gable crowning the façade. These abundant references
to contemporary Italian architecture would have been recognized not only
by merchants from the Apenine Peninsula, but also by artists, scholars, and
21 Piet Lombaerde, “Antwerp in Its Golden Age: ‘One of the Largest Cities in the Low
Countries’ and ‘One of the Best Fortified in Europe,” in Urban Achievement in Early
Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, ed. Patrick O’Brien
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 108.
humanists familiar with architectural treatises published in the Low Coun-

tries, especially Sebastiano Serlio’s Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospetiva.
Civic pride expressed through these Italian models was complemented by
visual imagery specific to Antwerp and universal symbols of good government.
The original sculptural decoration of the façade included personifications of
Justice to the left and Prudence to the right, with coats of arms of the Province
of Brabant, Antwerp, and the Kingdom of Spain around them. City Hall’s icon-
ographic program was completed by twin sculptures of ichthyocentaurs, sym-
bolizing the metropolis’s dominion over the international sea trade—the
foundation of its prosperity. These centaurine sea-gods framed the likeness of
Silvius Brabo, the legendary Roman founder of Antwerp, which in 1587 was
replaced by a statue of the Virgin Mary. For Guicciardini, the new City Hall was
a “symbol of republican self-awareness”; however, it also projected the interde-
pendence of the city’s commercial prosperity and the political order of Bra-
bant, which guaranteed the security of trade.22
The magnificence of the city notwithstanding, the mid-sixteenth-century
processes of Antwerp’s demographic and territorial expansion weakened so-
cial bonds among citizens and challenged traditional mechanisms of fostering
loyalties toward the entire community.23 Identification with one’s parish,
neighborhood, and guild no longer translated into allegiance toward the city as
a distinct social, cultural, and political organism with shared interests. Under
these circumstances, it became crucial for Antwerp to develop alternative
mechanisms for overcoming tensions between citizens caused by differences
in wealth, status, profession, origin, and confessional identity.24 One such
strategy was the rhetoric of public spectacles, which focused on trade as the
basis of the shared well-being, good fortune, and harmony of the entire popu-
lation.25 This emphasis on mercantile success, to which everyone contributed
and from which everyone benefited, contrasted with Martin Luther’s
22 For a detailed discussion of the City Hall, see Holm Bevers, Das Rathaus von Antwerpen,
1561–1565: Architektur und Figurenprogramm (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1986), 70–79.
23 Kint, “The Community of Commerce,” passim.
24 Kint, “Community of Commerce,” passim.
25 Kint, “Community of Commerce,” passim. An Kint indicates two other mechanisms used
by Antwerp to stimulate loyalty toward the city (275–89). First, citizenship came with
privileges and benefits not available for temporary residents, which encouraged the
inhabitants to register as citizens, which, in turn, increased their sense of responsibility
for the community. Second, complex local juridical systems required the participation of
different social groups, and thus prevented—at least in theory—the privileging of the
interests of one group over another. Citizenship was also required for registration in any
guild; hence, performance of any profession required at least a formal identification with
the city as a whole. Woodall, “Lost in Translation,” 7.
28 Chapter 1
interpretation of Genesis 11 when he wrote that “where the languages dif-

fer … no commerce develops.”26
Public festivities engaged the entire community: their preparation required
the collaboration of dozens of artists and craftsmen, and participation was
mandatory for all citizens. But while these multisensory spectacles appealed to
burghers from all social strata, only the educated would have understood the
complex allegorical imagery addressing the city’s anxieties and ambitions. This
was, however, precisely the group responsible for making important decisions
affecting the whole community. Thus, convivia of the same elite group can be
similarly understood as another strategy embraced to strengthen the commu-
nity and resolve its inner conflicts.
Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, whose subject matter is particularly well
suited for activating a mealtime conversation, employs a variety of composi-
tional strategies that further facilitated its convivial function. Bruegel chose to
show the narrative moment of the story when the construction is still progress-
ing smoothly: nothing in the image hints at the forthcoming catastrophe.27 In-
tended to remain a project in progress, the tower has already become an
integral part of the city, and some of the city’s residents have established their
dwellings in the finished sections of the edifice. Meanwhile, the community
continues to work on ameliorating the still-unfinished parts.28
26 Luther, Sermons on Genesis, 214.

27 While Margaret Sullivan also emphasizes this focus on the construction process itself,
other scholars point to possible visual clues hinting at the tower’s eventual destruction.
These include the instability of the tower’s base, the lack of workers’ efficiency, and their
inability to overcome the forces of nature, exemplified by the crude rock formation they
are transforming into the edifice. However, none of these observations is corroborated by
the painting itself. The organic bedrock of the tower provides a very strong foundation; all
the builders are diligently pursuing their tasks, with the possible exception of only three
resting figures to the left of a small stream slightly to the left from the center of the
composition, behind Nimrod and his entourage; and finally, a majority of the rough rock
formation has been already successfully transformed into the tower, while what still
remains provides convenient paths for the constructors. For this differing interpretation,
see Mansbach, “Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel,” 47–48; Ulrike B. Wegener, Die Faszination
des Maßlosen. Der Turmbau zu Babel von Pieter Bruegel bis Athanasius Kircher (Hildesheim:
Georg Olms, 1995), 28; Joanna Morra, “Utopia Lost: Allegory, Ruins, and Pieter Bruegel’s
Towers of Babel,” Art History 30 (2007): 204, 209; Carroll, “Conceits of Empire,” 80, 85; and
Margaret Sullivan, Bruegel and the Creative Process, 1559–1563 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010),
193.
28 The Rotterdam version of The Tower of Babel can be regarded as an even more optimistic
interpretation of the biblical story. Two-thirds of the tower has already been completed,
and dozens of workers are busy finishing the upper stories. The painted structure almost
touches the upper edge of the panel, creating an impression that it truly reaches heaven.
While the tower is situated next to a harbor, there is no city around it, and Nimrod and his
The only worrisome element of the composition is the architectural model

of the tower itself, which is based on the Roman Coliseum.29 Once a tour de
force of Roman engineering and architecture, the Amphitheatre had since be-
come a disillusioning reminder of the vanity of human endeavors, and how
time would eventually devour everything. A widely known etching from the
series of Roman ruins designed and published by Hieronymus Cock in 1550
captures this ambiguity well (figure 13). Cock decided to show the Coliseum
from the southwest, an angle that highlights the enormous scale of the build-
ing while contrasting its well-preserved four sections with its ruined ones,
overgrown with grass and plants that were slowly eroding the structure. The
feeling of melancholy intensifies as the viewer notices four minute figures
walking away from the site.30
entourage are missing. This slight modification of the iconography has prompted
Mansbach to suggest that the Rotterdam Tower of Babel shows “the greatness and power
of human productivity made possible in the absence of a tyrant’s hubristic will.… Bruegel
has provided a visual metaphor mankind in a state of grace. Babel has been remedied.”
Mansbach, “Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel,” 49. It is intriguing to consider Mansbach’s
suggestion that this later panel was also commissioned by Niclaes Jonghelinck, and even
if we were to reject this theory, there can be little doubt that it was painted for someone
among the mercantile and administrative elite of Antwerp.
29 The affinity between the tower and the Coliseum has been long established by scholars.
However, recent research offers a more nuanced interpretation of architectural references
introduced by Bruegel. According to Stephanie Porras, Bruegel combines the ancient
Roman structure with Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, whose “successive Romanesque
and Gothic fortifications and abbey arise from a coastal granite outcropping,” and even
incorporates local rural construction methods in the structure of the tower. Porras, Pieter
Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 71–73. Koenraade Jonckheere also recognizes the
combination of classical and local elements in Bruegel’s tower that “is not an antique
structure in Brabantine town” but rather “an explicitly local edifice modeled after an
antique prototype [in which] Bruegel even introduced a Romanesque alternative for the
‘classical orders’ as pilasters on the abutments.” Jonckheere, “Allegory of Artistic Choice,”
170. See also my essay “‘Come, let us make a city and a tower:’ Pieter Bruegel the Elder and
the Creation of a Harmonious Community in Mid-Sixteenth Century Antwerp,” Journal
of Historians of Netherlandish Art 6, no. 2 (Summer 2014), <https://jhna.org/articles/
come-let-us-make-a-city-and-a-tower-pieter-bruegel-the-elder-tower-of-babel-creation-
harmonious-community-antwerp/>.
30 In the Renaissance, the Coliseum also symbolized human hubris. A devotional procession
in Antwerp in 1561 introduced its image alongside Egyptian obelisks, Greek and Roman
statues, triumphal arches, and the Tower of Babel on the float of Vain Glory. In 1564,
Maarten van Heemskerck depicted these processional wagons in a print series, Vicissitudes
of Human Affairs, engraved by Cornelis Cort and published by Hieronymus Cock. Jonck
heere extrapolates these associations with hubris on religious art, and situates Bruegel’s
panel within the contemporaneous debate about the role and necessity of religious art
and architecture, the nature of manmade objects, and veneration of images. Jonckheere,
“Allegory of Artistic Choice,” 151–76.
30 Chapter 1
Figure 13 Hieronymus Cock, View of the Coliseum, 1551, etching, 23.3 × 32.4cm, Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The lack of any other, more immediate signs of the disaster in The Tower of
Babel preconditions the painting to be used in convivial conversations on how
to sustain a prosperous community by providing a discursive space within
which a positive resolution is possible. Bruegel suspends the biblical narrative
and creates a temporal paradox: viewers know how the story of the tower of
Babel ends, but they confront it in a moment when they can briefly forget
about the catastrophic ending of the project.31 Imitating the design of the
31 A similar interpretation has been suggested by Edward Wouk, who emphasizes that “the
moment Bruegel represents … is one of optimistic construction. Pride might inevitably
precede a fall, but in this image we glimpse Babel’s possibility before, or unhindered by,
the confusion of tongues.” Edward Wouk, Frans Floris (1519/20–1570): Imagining a Northern
Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 377.
Coliseum and juxtaposing it with the thriving construction, Bruegel visualizes

a disaster that is both inevitable and avoidable.32
This suspension of narrative is in fact necessary for the panel to function
as a discursive exemplum: if Bruegel had decided to depict, like artists be-
fore him, the destruction of the tower, the painting would have remained a
straightforward warning against not only human hubris, but also human au-
dacity and entrepreneurial spirit. Instead, Bruegel offers a composition that
invites its viewers to contemplate what the biblical community could have
done differently to remain a prosperous kingdom and, consequently, what
Antwerp should do to avoid a similar catastrophe. He invites his viewers to
join the Old Testament constructors and engage in the process of building a
community—which can be understood metaphorically as participating in a
conversation about its future—by placing three chisels and a hammer on a
large limestone in the foreground, whose corner is protruding into the viewer’s
space. The tools, turned toward the viewer, are the same as those used by the
nearby masons. Creating such a place for a viewer within the composition is a
common strategy in Bruegel’s oeuvre, notably in his paintings for dining halls:
for instance, the Peasant Wedding Banquet is spatially organized in such a way
that an empty chair and plates look as if they were prepared for whomever is
standing in front of the panel.33
The same limestone bears the artist’s signature, which imitates carving in
stone. Bruegel places himself on the construction site, identifies with the work-
ers, and partakes in their collaborative efforts. If Babel represents Antwerp,
Bruegel makes through this gesture a very important statement about the role
of a painter: he is profoundly preoccupied by the affairs of the metropolis, and
contributes to its success by providing the elite residents with discursive paint-
ings that invite them to self-reflection.34
32 While similarly Porras argues that since “the tower evokes the ruin of the Colosseum … we
are watching a ruin come into being,” she maintains—like the scholars cited above—that
the outside and the inside of the structure do not align and thus, it is doomed for a
physical collapse. Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 73.
33 The chair as a repoussoir device is also used in Petrus Christus’s Death of the Virgin (1457–
1467, San Diego, Timken Museum of Art). Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 89–90.
34 In 1563, Pieter Bruegel was living in Brussels, but frequently worked for Antwerp patrons,
and the socioeconomic and religious life of the metropolis continued to inform his
compositions. Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 30.
32 Chapter 1
2 Framing the Tower of Babel: Space, Conversation, People
The Tower of Babel’s display was central to its function as a discursive biblical
exemplum. The panel’s location in the dining hall of Niclaes Jonghelinck’s sub-
urban residence positions it at the intersection of three phenomena, each of
which is necessary to explore in order to understand the composition. First,
Ter Beken was built and decorated at the peak of local interest in recreational
villas, which manifested itself both through a building boom and a publishing
boom of texts praising the advantages of life in the countryside and providing
practical advice on running such an estate. Considering the lack of informa-
tion on the actual layout of Jonghelinck’s residence, this body of literature pro-
vides crucial information on what his house might have looked like and, more
importantly, the lifestyle stimulated by its architecture. Contemporary treatis-
es designated the dining hall as the heart of the suburban house, one around
which all other rooms should be arranged, and as the focal point of all the ac-
tivities. This centrality of the eetkamer translates into the importance of the
convivium, the second phenomenon which frames the analysis of The Tower of
Babel. The revival of the symposiac tradition in the sixteenth century encom-
passed, among other things, paraphrases of ancient tracts, original Neo-Latin
colloquia and vernacular manuals, and epistolary and poetic documentation.
It is to this body of literature that we will turn to learn about how conversa-
tions held in Antwerp’s houses in the mid sixteenth century might have sound-
ed. Such inquiry leads to another question: what do we know about the people
who participated in the convivial debates conducted in front of Bruegel’s
paintings? This network of entrepreneurs and officials is the third component
we need to consider when approaching The Tower of Babel.
A fortunate overlap of a few different factors created in mid-sixteenth-cen-
tury Antwerp “an optimal climate in which the phenomenon of the villa rusti-
ca would find its niche.”35 Thanks to the flourishing economy, a significant
percentage of the local population could afford a country retreat. Foreign mer-
chants, especially Italians, brought with them not only financial but also cul-
tural capital, and thus contributed to the popularization of villeggiatura in the
Low Countries, which was strengthened by the ongoing artistic, intellectual,
and economic exchanges between the North and the South. The Renaissance
developed new, more positive attitudes toward nature—as long as, of course,
it was civilized nature. We see this, for instance, in Erasmus’s Convivium Reli-
giosum, in which plants and herbs are endowed with symbolic meaning and
35 Roland Baetens, “Culture and Power: Italian and Local Influences on the Villa Rustica in
the Antwerp Region (16th–18th century),” Antwerp Design Sciences Cahiers 3, no. 1–2
(2001): 24.
discussion about them is incorporated meaningfully into religious reflection

stimulated by scriptural passages and biblical paintings on display inside the
villa. As a result, in the mid-sixteenth century we observe the development of
several recreational areas around Antwerp: Leikwartier, Berchem, Deurne,
Borgerhout, Zurenborg, Merksem, Hoboken, and Wilrijk.36 Many of these
neighborhoods have preserved to this day their residential, suburban charac-
ter, despite having been incorporated into the city itself. The popularity of
speelhoven or speelhuizen (recreational villas) also testifies to a certain social
mobility enjoyed by citizens wealthy enough to purchase property outside the
city, as it sometimes came with a title, practically allowing an affluent entre-
preneur to move into the ranks of lower nobility.37 This was the case for Gaspar
Schetz, who became Seigneur of Grobbendock, and Jacob van Hencxthoven,
Heer of Hemiksem.38 But even without this formal change in status, villa own-
ership was a significant source of social prestige.
Little is known about the decoration of suburban villas. The inventory of
Jonghelinck’s possessions thus gives us a rare glimpse into their interiors—
rare, but not unique. Inventories of other suburban houses consistently men-
tion paintings, and sometimes sculptures; in the case of Michiel van der
Heyden’s Crauwels, we also learn that the estate housed a large collection of
books.39 But while the interest in villas’ decoration is absent from contempo-
rarily published literature on country retreats, their other aspects were dis-
cussed broadly in poetry and treatises available in Antwerp. Classical poems by
Cato, Varro, Virgil, and Columella convinced the owners of the villas about the
superiority of living in the countryside and allowed them to identify them-
selves with classical humanist tradition; treatises by Vitruvius, Leon Battista
Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio, and Hans Vredeman de Vries introduced them to the
ideal villa architecture. However, the true bestseller among contemporary villa
literature was a tract by Charles Estienne (Dutch: Kaerl Stevens), L’agriculture
36 Alexandra Onuf further attributes this interest in the rural surroundings of Antwerp—
known as the Antwerpse Vrijheid—to the increasing congestion and property shortage
within the city proper. Alexandra Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints in the Early Modern
Netherlands (London: Routledge, 2018), 64–65.
37 On the status and lineage of lower and great nobility in the Low Countries in the mid-
sixteenth century, see, for instance, Henk van Nierop, “The Nobility and the Revolt of the
Netherlands: between Church and King, and Protestantism and Privileges,” in Reformation,
Revolt, and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555–1585, ed. Philip Benedict
(Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999), 83–98. On the
social mobility of Antwerp merchants see also Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints, 66–67.
38 Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 165.
39 Jan Muylle, “Het genot van de locus amoenus. De villa rustica rondom Antwerpen en het
topografische landschap circa 1545–1585,” Stadsgeschiedenis 4 (2009), 127.
34 Chapter 1
et maison rustique, first published in Paris in 1554.40 Eleven years later, Chris-
tophe Plantin decided to publish its original French edition in Antwerp, fol-
lowed in only one year by a Dutch translation; both editions enjoyed great
popularity for more than a decade.41 Plantin himself owned a speelhuis in Pa-
penmoer, a recreational district created by Hendrik van Berchem from his sei-
gneury in the late 1550s and 1560s. As Plantin’s correspondence with his
humanist friends indicates, the property was as much a place for socializing as
it was for “solitary, restorative repose.”42
The Dutch translation of L’agriculture was dedicated to Antoon van Strael-
en, the mayor of Antwerp and an owner of a villa in Merksem. In the intro
duction, Plantin observed that it was a book much sought after by Antwerp
burghers, who turned to it for advice on how to manage a suburban estate.43
Interestingly, while the text draws upon Greek and Roman traditions, accord-
ing to Plantin’s introduction, Estienne did not rely solely on established sourc-
es; rather, he consulted country estates’ managers so that readers could learn
from their experience. Although the addressees of De Landtwinninge ende
oeve seem to be owners of speelhoven, the treatise’s advice is more consistent
H
with the self-sufficient villa rustica than the entertainment-oriented villa sub-
urbana. When Estienne distinguishes among three types of country houses—
a small, pleasant retreat, a large, “princely” estate, and an income-generating
residence—he underlines that he is interested in the last type. Indeed, the text
provides detailed information such as when and how to plant different vegeta-
bles; what herbs, plants, and trees should be grown side by side; which farming
animals are a good investment; how to process meat; and how to remedy some
diseases common to livestock and fruit trees. This practical view of the villa
would have appealed to open-minded, profit-seeking entrepreneurs who were
40 For an informative discussion of the ideal villa by Alberti (whose layout differs from the
one suggested by Estienne), see Lucy Schlüter, Niet alleen: Een kunsthistorisch-ethische
plaatsbepaling van tuin en woning in het “Convivium Religiosum” van Erasmus (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 68–69.
41 Charles Estienne, L’agriculture et maison rustique (Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1565);
Kaerle Stevens (Charles Estienne), De Landtwinninge ende Hoeve van M. Kaerle Stevens,
Doctoor in de Medecijne. Uut de Fransoysche Sprake in de Nederduytsche overgheset
(Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1566). See the discussion of the treatise in Onuf, The “Small
Landscape” Prints, 77–79.
42 Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints, 73.
43 Stevens, De Landtwinninge ende Hoeve, fol. A ij recto. Plantin associates the Netherlandish
interest in villeggiatura specifically with Antwerp by dedicating the publication to van
Straelen and stating explicitly in the introduction that many of the metropolis’s native
citizens “buyten hen [Antwerpen] hen speelhoven hebben.”
involved in several simultaneous business ventures.44 Many wealthy urbanites

indeed purchased existing castles and farms, which, in addition to becoming
places of recreation, continued to operate as agricultural enterprises. However,
in the case of the newly established, considerably smaller speelhoven, this was
not possible. The goal of those new neighborhoods was to create sites of bu-
colic relaxation. To that end, when Gilbert van Schoonbeke became the man-
ager of the Leikwartier where Jonghelinck’s villa would later be situated, he
gave the owners instructions regarding the spatial arrangement of the proper-
ty—for instance, they were required to plant a tree every twenty feet in front of
their newly built speelhof.
Estienne’s treatise also provides some informative insights about an optimal
layout of a villa, which in turn gives us an idea about the life of its residents.45
The author recommends a smaller house instead of a large, lavish one, which
would only require constant repairs.46 He names as central features the kitch-
en, dining room, basement, and storage for locally grown produce, all other
types of food, and wine. The kitchen should be connected to both the main
living quarters of the landlord and his family (located in a partially separated
building) and the servants’ quarters; the house should also include as many
guest rooms as possible.47
Clearly, despite the pragmatic orientation of De Landtwinninge ende Hoeve,
the ideal owner of an ideal villa would generously welcome visitors to his com-
fortable mansion, provide them with places to rest, and share his wine and
food at dinner parties. He would also invite them to stroll in a lustgaert situated
between the main house and the agricultural and farming part of the estate.
Estienne recommends that the landlord enjoy hunting, drinking, and banquet-
ing in moderation and instead dedicate more time to philosophical reflection,
to which a quiet existence outside the city is so conducive, and which would
result in moral self-improvement.48 The emphasis on moderation echoes the
message of Erasmus’s feast colloquia and the fictive and real pictorial decora-
tion of contemporary dining halls.
44 Still, as Onuf suggests, one should consider speelhuizen “an expedient surrogate for actual
full-time rural life.” Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints, 67–72, 84.
45 Jan Muylle, who has correlated the phenomenon of suburban villas with the emergence
of topographic landscape, has identified two mid-sixteenth-century drawings—one of
them attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder—of countryside estates in the vicinity of
Antwerp. Unfortunately, neither of these drawings includes any suggestion as to the
layout of depicted villas. Muylle, “Het genot van locus amoenus,” 120–22.
46 Stevens, De Landtwinninge ende Hoeve, 19.
47 Stevens, De Landtwinninge ende Hoeve, 22.
48 The tract included a Dutch translation and original Latin text of the opening verses of
Horace’s Beatus ille, the ultimate praise of the countryside life. Stevens, De Landtwinninge
ende Hoeve, 30–31.
36 Chapter 1
There are two implications of this admonition to temperance. First, since

Antiquity, a country estate had been understood as a microcosm of a state.
Whoever managed his land well was considered a wise and honorable citizen,
administrator, general, politician. Second, the Antwerp mercantile class was
expected to remain humble and prudent and to aim for the good of the entire
community rather than recklessly pursuing their own profit or enjoying lives of
dissolute pleasure. This praise of suburban life and farming reached its climax
in the 1561 haagspel, a theatrical contest that followed the famous Antwerp
landjuweel. Several of the plays written by rhetoricians (rederijkers) for this oc-
casion underlined the reliance of nobility and merchants on the labor of peas-
ants, and the interdependence of the city and its rural surroundings. The
emphasis on this mutually beneficial relationship helped, in turn, to lift the
speelhoven “from the stature of mere suburban vacation spots to the lofty emi-
nence of godly estates of honor and virtue.”49
Although it may seem that merchants would have been seeking respite in
the country from their daily obligations in the city, in many ways the stay at the
suburban villa was an extension of their urban existence. Otium—virtuous rest
associated with suburban life—was in that case not necessarily a complete
negation of the business activities of the city, the negotium.50 In the country-
side, too, it was a landowner’s duty to improve the community around him and
take care of the local population. In addition, convivia hosted in the speelhoven
were essential for strengthening the professional networks on which entrepre-
neurs relied in their business transactions. The banquets also provided oppor-
tunities for philosophical and religious edification. This brings us back to the
moral improvement offered by villa life.51
The suburban location was considered essential to creating the right atmo-
sphere for a friendly intellectual exchange during a shared meal. The two share
the principle of decorum: as Raffaello Borghini observed in Il Riposo (1584),
a dialogue on religious art set in a villa near Florence, “gravitas is left in town,
and the familiarity of our practice here is such that many things that in the city
would be unsaid are very appropriate here.”52 Since interlocutors spoke more
freely, they could also present diverse points of view without trespassing
49 Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints, 83.

50 On the definition of those terms as applied to Jonghelinck’s villa, see Wouk, Frans Floris,
354.
51 For the discussion of suburban villas around Antwerp in the context of classical and
Christian ethics, see also Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints, 73–76.
52 Raffaello Borghini, Il Riposo, ed. Lloyd H. Ellis Jr. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2007), 57.
against any norms of cultured conversation. This allowed for a multidimen-

sional discussion that did not require reaching a consensus. Quite the contrary:
ancient and early modern authors agreed that a conversation in which every-
one presented the same opinion was boring and should be avoided.53
The discursive mode and relaxed atmosphere of convivial conversations did
not diminish their intellectual gravity, social significance, and cultural poten-
tial. A convivium was a serious affair, a ritual that successfully complement-
ed—and sometimes competed with—the more traditional church and state
ceremonies. The revived interest in symposia stimulated the growth of litera-
ture dedicated to these mealtime gatherings’ history and explaining the rules
governing them, written by scholars such as Franciscus Philelphus, Janus Cor-
narius, Johannes Gulielmus Stuckius, and Petrus Toletanus.54 These authors
had educational and professional backgrounds in fields ranging from philology
and theology to diplomacy and even medicine. They pursued their studies at
Italian courts and universities and polished their skills through prodigious cor-
respondence with fellow humanists of the res publica literaria. This exposure
to a variety of customs and intellectual traditions contributed to their unsur-
passed erudition; their convivial treatises were true encyclopedias of classical
and humanistic learning. Furthermore, these texts advocate firmly that con-
vivia have always been essential for establishing communities and for marking
rites of passage of individuals and groups; indeed, that “nothing happens in
public or in private … in religious or profane life, without a meal.”55
Three volumes of Stuckius’s Antiquitates Conviviales provide the most ex-
tensive list of different types of convivia, which he defines, following Cicero
and Plutarch, as an amicable and joyous, but at the same time serious meeting
that fosters communion among people gathered for discussion over wine.
Stuckius then describes, among others, symposia for different times of day,
53 Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 69.

54 Philelphus, Conviviorum Francisci Philelphi; Janus (Johannes) Cornarius, De conviviorum
veterum Graecorum, et hoc tempore Germanorum ritibus, moribus ac sermonibus (Basel:
Joannis Oporini, 1548); Johannes Gulielmus Stuckius, Antiquitates Conviviales (Zurich:
Christophorus Froschoverus, 1582); and Petrus Ciacconius Toletanus, De Triclinio: sive De
modo conviviandi apud priscos Romanos et de conviviorum aparatu (Geneva: Officina
Sanctandreana, 1590). Although Toletanus (Pedro Chacón) died in Rome in 1581, I was not
able to locate an earlier edition of the treatise than this postmortem one. Convivial tracts
listed here usually had at least a few editions published across Renaissance Europe, often
in the cities with strong commercial and cultural ties to Antwerp, such as Augsburg,
Cologne, and Basel. Cornarius’s tract also included Latin translations of Plato’s and
Xenophon’s dialogues with commentary.
55 Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table-Talk in the Renaissance (Cam
bridge, UK: Polity, 1991), 37.
38 Chapter 1
different countries, and different historical circumstances; for people of differ-

ent ages, estates, and professions; for public and private occasions (cultivated
among family members and friends); and for both funerals and wedding feasts.
He also discusses sacred and profane symposia, as well as the type organized in
a country setting (a convivium rusticum). Despite different settings and occa-
sions, the purpose of all of these mealtime gatherings was the same: to estab-
lish communion and friendship among their participants, which would
translate into social harmony on a more universal level. According to Stuckius,
the convivium rusticum, so popular among the ancients, had been rapidly
gaining popularity among contemporary Germans—and we may add to this
group the Dutch. And rightly so, because those symposia provide ample op-
portunities for edifying entertainment, with their location allowing for more
lighthearted conversation and relaxed behavior than in the city. In fact, the
author wrote, life in the countryside rendered convivia rustica an absolute ne-
cessity, as they were a wonderful form of relaxation after the physical work of
the farm, and they facilitated celebration of the fruits of one’s labor and thanks-
giving to God. God himself gave people an example of such a practice when he
rested after the sixth day of creation. The evocation of Genesis aligns with
Stuckius’s and other authors’ conviction about the divine origin of convivia:
when God commanded Adam and Eve to dine together and enjoy the bounti-
ful fruits of the earth, with the sole exception of the fruit from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil.56 Hence, Stuckius argued, the convivium was
one of the first and principal laws given to humankind, and one that could
remedy the sinful state in which they lived because of Adam and Eve’s viola-
tion of God’s only interdiction.
We encounter the same understanding of the convivium as an instrument
for overcoming vice and developing feelings of charity and strengthening
friendship in the spirit of God’s love in Cornarius’s De conviviorum veterum
Graecorum. This treatise included Latin paraphrases of works by Plato and Xe-
nophon, presented as examples from which contemporary Germans could
learn to improve their own dining habits. The classical and the local banquet
traditions were complimentary for Cornarius, who further cited numerous Old
and New Testament examples of feasts. Those led him to the firm belief in the
divine provenance of symposia and, ultimately, the vision of the convivium as
a religious ritual. A detailed summary of different rites that accompany a
communal meal—purification, ablution, the blessing of the table, standard-
ized greetings and farewells, recommended forms of entertainment—strength-
ened that ritualistic dimension. As much as Cornarius wished for the
56 Stuckius, Antiquitates Conviviales, n.p.

improvement of dining habits among his contemporaries, he acknowledged

that they had the commendable practice of beginning and concluding their
edifying mealtime gatherings with songs giving thanks to God.
The importance of convivial literature extended beyond the advice it pro-
vided on the ritual of dining and the praise of its merit. Like real-life meals,
convivial literature fostered the development of international humanistic net-
works. The 1537 Cologne edition of Franciscus Philelphus’s Conviviorum libri
duo features introductions, dedicatory letters, and commentaries written by
different scholars, including Juan Luis Vives.57 Although Vives never wrote a
convivial tract, his attention to dining habits speaks of his great interest in the
subject. He accentuates Philelphus’s erudition and his skill in imitating the an-
cients, whose wisdom he sees as key to the book, where the convivium be-
comes an instrument of achieving full human dignity and living a virtuous life.
Philelphus’s treatise combines two traditions of convivial literature: an en-
cyclopedic compendium and imaginary dialogue, perhaps best exemplified, as
we shall see later, by Erasmus’s symposiac texts. Philelphus first focuses on the
history and theory of the convivium and subsequently moves to other topics
that would typically have been discussed among interlocutors. They are de-
rived from the Old and New Testament, Greco-Roman and Egyptian Antiquity,
Christian and pagan philosophy and theology, different branches of human
learning, including the natural world, and abstract concepts such as virtues
and vices. Subjects recommended for convivial conversations by other authors
are equally copious, ranging from those taken from pagan scholars and Juda-
ic-Hellenistic philosophers to church fathers and Christian theologians. The
treatise thus fulfills one of the main objectives of humanism in its ambition to
integrate the ancient Christian traditions; thanks to its comprehensive scope,
it was a true compendium of Renaissance knowledge. Readers of symposiac
treatises—and participants in convivia—were expected to learn moral lessons
through the exempla provided by Philelphus and others. That acquisition of
wisdom would ultimately have beneficial effects for the entire community. To
cite an example particularly relevant to Bruegel’s painting, Philelphus intro-
duces the story of Nimrod and the tower of Babel as a warning against tyranny
and a reflection on the natural and divine order of the universe that translates
into an admonition to self-knowledge and moderation.
The convivial theory is very clear about the pragmatic outcome of sympo-
siac customs, enhanced by their ritualistic and religious character. Thus, while
57 Juan Luis Vives, “Ioannis Lodovici Vvivis valentine Praelectio in Convivia Francisci Phi
lelphi,” in Franciscus Philelphus, Conviviorum Francisci Philelphi libri II (Cologne: Gym
nicus, 1537), n.p.
40 Chapter 1
learned Neo-Latin treatises might at first seem unfit for the lifestyle of the Ant
werp mercantile and administrative elite, the ideas they popularized perfectly
matched the objectives of creating a successful community and strengthening
professional and amical bonds.58 Their appeal as instruments of social har-
mony was enhanced by their ability to integrate certain period tendencies that
would otherwise have been at odds. For instance, conversations at a table were
expected to wander with no predetermined direction and no expectation of a
uniform conclusion, with the primary rule being that participants would shift
constantly between different topics and registers. On the other hand, the meal
gathering was highly structured, from the invitation to the farewell. This coex-
istence of freedom and constraint is reflective of the Renaissance’s fascination
with copiousness and its skepticism toward singular truths as imposed by the
scholastic tradition. Convivial tradition also offered a remedy to contemporary
struggles between different confessional, intellectual, and sociopolitical be-
liefs. Across Europe, these clashes often took a violent turn; by contrast, the
convivium provided “representatives of conflicting tendencies” with an oppor-
tunity “to have their say, without necessarily trying to resolve differences.”59
Indeed, as Michel Jeanneret reminds us in his seminal work on Renaissance
conviviality, the Latin convivere means simply “to live together,” from which it
follows that “meals establish confraternity of speech, manners and thoughts.”60
But banquets also establish a collective, ritualized experience of religion and
integrate it with all facets of social human existence. In the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries, banquets produced and enacted the normative standards
of social interaction, which allowed for “living together” harmoniously, for
strengthening the bonds among the guests of a convivium who, at the indi-
vidual level, were provided with a unique opportunity for self-cultivation.
Thus, the early modern interest in convivia can be ascribed to a number of
factors: their open-ended, discursive nature, promotion of eristic skills, intel-
lectual freedom, and diversity, strengthening of professional and humanistic
networks, and connection to one of the quintessential experiences of the an-
cients. But symposia also owed the success of their revival to the crisis of ritual
in the sixteenth century: although the number and splendor of state and
58 Stuckius’s and Toletanus’s treatises were published in the last two decades of the sixteenth
century, but their remarks about convivia are relevant to the customs of the mid-
sixteenth-century Antwerp elite; they mark the climax of the symposiac revival and, as
Todd Richardson observes in reference to Stuckius, “the book itself and the breadth of its
content across professional, social and economic class … speak to the availability and
demand for literature on the subject.” Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 67.
59 Jeanneret, Feast of Words, 175.
church ceremonies in that period exceeded even the Burgundian pomp, many
of them came to be regarded as what Erasmus nicknamed ceremoniolae and
Michael Screech gracefully translated as “trivial little ritual nonsenses.”61 For
humanists, Protestants, and Protestantizing Catholics, convivia offered a more
authentic and morally edifying experience. This transformation of ritualistic
acts informed the iconography and function of paintings such as Bruegel’s Pro-
cession to Calvary and Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, discussed in chapters 3
and 4, which epitomize the relocation of religious practices from the public,
transparent realm supervised by the clergy to the semiprivate domestic setting
belonging primarily to laymen.
While the humanistic compendia of convivial customs are an invaluable
source of information on how such banquet gatherings should ideally look,
a more obscure text from the early seventeenth century provides more direct
evidence of the popularity of convivia among the Netherlandish elite. Around
1621, the Reverend Simon Ruytinck, a Ghent native and, at the time, an elder of
the Dutch Church in London, prepared a short text, Acte Aengaende de Mael-
tyden der Liefde, offering a historical and practical introduction to the conviv-
ium.62 By setting out guidelines and explaining the origins of the Christian
agape, Ruytinck intended to persuade the consistory to celebrate a conviv-
ial gathering four times a year.63 The book’s two main sections and fourteen
chapters, some of which consist of only one sentence, explain the purpose
and the genesis of the convivium and provide practical advice as to how to
organize them. Ruytinck follows other convivial writers in their synthesis of
Judeo-Christian and pagan traditions when praising all the benefits of a mael-
tyd der liefde. For Christians, this custom revived the way of life of the apostles,
who were “breaking bread from house to house, [and] took their meat with
gladness and simplicity of the heart; praising God, and having favour in all the
people” (Acts 2:46–47). Other examples readers were directed to consider were
festive meals marking important events in the Old Testament, e.g., the banquet
of the children of Job, and that of Joseph and his brothers, as well as mealtime
61 Michael Screech, Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly (London: Duckworth, 1980), 119. For a dis
cussion of the crisis of ritual, see Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe; and Thomas M.
Greene, “Ritual and Text in the Renaissance,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/
Revue Canadienne de Littéreture Comparée (June/September 1991): 17–34.
62 Simon’s father, Jan, was the secretary of the city of Ghent; the family thus belonged to the
social and intellectual elite of the city.
63 London, Guildhall Library MS 10.055, ff. 132r.–134r. For the transcription and discussion of
the manuscript, see Ole Peter Grell, “Calvinist Agape or Godly Dining Club? An Example
of the Revival of an Early Christian Tradition within the Dutch Exile Community in
London during the Early Seventeenth Century,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis
68 (1988): 36–45.
42 Chapter 1
gatherings described by Philon and Tertullian, and, surprisingly enough, Mar-

tin Luther’s Table Talk.
Like other humanists and theologians, Ruytinck associates the convivium
with the virtues of temperance (Matigheid) and gladness (Vreught); the former
teaches gratitude for God’s gifts, the latter inspires edifying conversation. The
meals were to be organized once every quarter by three out of the twelve mem-
bers of the church’s consistory, to be given in a private house, as inns were both
too expensive and inappropriate, and to last from seven until ten o’clock at
night. The dishes served “should not taste nor savour of luxuriousness,” since
participants were to enjoy first and foremost an edifying theological discus-
sion, focused on a question chosen by one of the elders and announced on
Sunday before the banquet.64 If anyone arrived late, he was to pay a fine to be
given to charity—a ruling that gives a curious twist to the belief that convivia
engender pious and charitable behavior. By implementing these rules, maelty-
den der liefde gained the ritualistic qualities of repetitiveness and collective-
ness: they were to become fixed ceremonies in the congregation’s calendar and
involve all the elders over the course of a year. In accordance with the Calvinist
vision of ministry and the consistory’s responsibility for the congregation,
none of its members was given a privileged position or left out. A properly or-
ganized maeltyd der liefde would strengthen the brotherhood among the elders
and help them to remember all of God’s blessings that they had received. Their
spiritual growth, in turn, would be beneficial for the entire congregation in
their charge.
We do not know whether the Dutch exiles ever gathered for the meal envi-
sioned by Simon Ruytinck. However, as we shall see in chapter 2, the minister
was connected to the Antwerp circle of Gillis Hooftman, whose dining hall
provides one of the best-documented examples of domestic decoration in-
tended to spark convivial conversation. Moreover, as in the whole convivial
tradition, Ruytinck’s maeltyd der liefde represented one crucial mechanism of
civic sociability in the early modern world, the disgenootschap, or community
of a table.65 This convivial model was cultivated by different types of profes-
sional and civic societies (guilds and chambers of rhetoric) and governmental
and religious bodies (magistrates and confraternities), often indicative not
64 Grell, “Calvinist Agape,” 38, 42.

65 Paul Vandenbroeck, “Stadcultuur: Tussen Bovengrondse Eenheid en Onderhuidse Strijd,”
in Stad in Vlaanderen: Cultuur en maatschappij, 1477–1787, ed. Jan van der Stock (Brussels:
Gemeentekrediet, 1991), 78. The second mechanism distinguished by Vandenbroeck,
confraternity (broederschap), brought burghers together by focusing on a religious cult,
which inspired both individual and collective sanctification.
only of a member’s profession, but also his social status, as in the case of pres-
tigious militias. All of these groups frequently used informal meal gatherings
as a symbolic, ritualistic means of creating community and thereby fostering
social loyalties. This strengthened hierarchies within civic bodies, which trans-
lated into the social order on a macroscale.66 Indeed, the predilection of these
groups for disgenootschap confirms Stuckius’s belief that all important events
in life are accompanied by a meal.
In reaching the goal of living together in harmony, the Renaissance con-
vivium integrated the classical Greco-Roman symposia with Judeo-Christian
heritage. Both cultures ascribed special significance to mealtime gatherings as
either modeled after the banquets of gods or instituted by God. In The Godly
Feast, Erasmus reminds his readers: “truly if a meal was something holy to
pagans, much more should it be sacred to Christians, for whom it represents
in a way that hallowed Last Supper which the Lord Jesus took with his dis-
ciples” (“sacrosancti convivii, quod Dominus Iesus postremum egit cum suis
discipulis”).67 The Godly Feast, one of his six so-called feast colloquia, provides
the most explicit example of how religious imagery could have been incor-
porated into learned conversations while religion itself became a subject dis-
cussed freely in the domestic space.68 None of the nine interlocutors in the
colloquium is a priest or a theologian. As one of them convinces the host, the
scriptural reflection would be “permissible even for sailors … provided there
is no rash attempt at formal definition.”69 As the guests sit down to a meal
after they “feast the eyes, refresh the nostrils, restore the soul”70 in the gardens
66 Vandenbroeck, “Stadscultuur,” 78.

67 Desiderius Erasmus, The Godly Feast (Convivium religiosum), in Collected Works of Eras
mus, vol. 39: Colloquies, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997), 182.
68 Erasmus’s convivia include The Profane Feast, The Godly Feast, The Poetic Feast, The Fabu
lous Feast, The Sober Feast, and A Feast of Many Courses. Another genre closely related to
convivial literature was treatises on nutrition, which commented on healthy dining
habits. Some of the most prominent texts in this group include Charles Estienne’s De
Nutrimentis, ad Bayillyum (Paris: Stephanus, 1550); Ioannis Valuerdi Hamuscensis’ De
animi et corporis sanitate tuenda libellus (Paris: Charles Estienne, 1552); and the immensely
popular De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine by Bartolomeo Platina, published in Venice in
1474. Several Latin editions soon followed the first edition in Italy and to the North of the
Alps, and the text was promptly translated into vernacular languages, including a German
edition printed by Steiner in Augsburg in 1542: Von der eerlichen, zimlichen, auch erlaubten
Woust des leibss.
69 Erasmus, Godly Feast, 184. Laymen’s access to the scripture and its interpretation remained
one of the most fervently debated issues in the sixteenth-century Netherlands. See
chapter 2 for further discussion of this topic.
70 Erasmus, Godly Feast, 178.
44 Chapter 1
and among the works of art displayed in the villa, they turn to several scrip-
tural passages to discuss Christian liberty and inner freedom. The diversity
of their amicable exchange enriches the interlocutors. Finding a correct an-
swer is of secondary importance here: the event’s host, Eusebius, reassures
one of his friends that he will “please us even by making a mistake, for thus
you’ll give us opportunity of finding the answer.”71 It is the very opportunity
of exchanging the model of the one-way type of religious instruction followed
by the Catholic Church for an informal conversation with no right or wrong
answers that is of primary importance for Erasmus. Unlike listening to a ser-
mon or reciting prayers, a conversation requires reflection—and thorough
knowledge of the Bible. Thus, while promoting religious convivia, The Godly
Feast more fundamentally promotes scriptural literacy. Still, Erasmus declares
through the words of another character, Chrysoglottus, that it does so not to
undermine the practices of the Roman Catholic Church: “I don’t condemn the
rites and sacraments of the church; on the contrary, I approve of them most
emphatically.”72 Rather, the convivium is meant to strengthen one’s faith and
to steer one toward a more pious, truly Christian way of living. Such an ap-
proach is consistent with the patterns of late medieval religiosity in the Low
Countries. While modern scholars tend to think about collective rituals and
individual devotional practices as opposites, there is no indication that con-
temporary laymen and laywomen perceived them as such.73 They seem to have
been a part of the same continuum, simply providing more diversified oppor-
tunities for spiritual growth.
The efficacy of the “equally learned and devout”74 conversation described
by Erasmus is proven by Eusebius’s postconvivial errands. As the guests leave
the villa, the host hurries to attend to a dying friend whose soul may be in dan-
ger, and to end a quarrel between two men in a neighboring village. Biblical
reflection, Erasmus suggests, is fundamental for imitating Christ through
deeds. But the conclusion of The Godly Feast also both confirms the advantages
of life in the countryside—an existence particularly conducive to moral self-
improvement—and reminds landowners of their responsibility to the local

72 Erasmus, Godly Feast, 196. We can find similar sentiment on the other side of the debate.
For instance, the anonymous evangelical author of a popular Summa der godliker scrift
uren (1523) advised parents to take their children to church on holy days, and to teach
them “to hear mass.” Duke, Dissident Identities, 87.
73 Guido Marnef and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, “Civic Religion: Gemeenschap, Identiteit en
Religieuze Vernieuwing,” in Gouden Eeuwen, Stad en Samenleving in de Lage Landen (1100–
1600), ed. Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Bruno Blondé, and Marc Boone (Ghent: Academia,
2016), 179.
population. The colloquium is especially relevant to the experience of the

Antwerp elite, and Niclaes Jonghelinck in particular. Biblical paintings in his
collection would have been used to spark a religious discussion, while books
such as Charles Estienne’s Landtwinninge ende Hoeve, in all likelihood included
in Jonghelinck’s library, reminded him about the obligations that came along
with a suburban villa.
The imaginary painting collection of Eusebius—which becomes the focus
of the guests’ conversation—conforms to the rule of decorum, with the ico-
nography of the works of art corresponding to the functions of specific rooms.
In the library is a gallery of famous men who provide historical examples of
virtuous behavior in different realms of life; large maps of different regions and
a globe, which complement the historical examples with geographical knowl-
edge; and an image of the Transfiguration. Three galleries above the loggias are
covered with narrative frescoes dedicated to the life of Christ and the founda-
tion of the church, which conclude with the depiction of the Pentecost and the
first sermon of Saint Peter. Each scene is accompanied by an inscription en-
hancing the didactic value of the specific wall painting and suggesting the use-
fulness of visual arts in religious instruction. The decoration of the galleries
follows the tradition of depicting Old Testament episodes that foreshadow
events in the New Testament, with corresponding scenes represented on the
opposite wall. With the addition of sculpted busts of popes and Caesars, the
interior represents the blending of Christian and pagan heritage, offering a
combination hardly surprising for Erasmus.
Among the rooms introduced by Eusebius to his guests is the one in which
they dine. The lower parts of the walls are covered with painted flowers blend-
ing with the garden outside, resulting in the illusion that one is enjoying one’s
meal al fresco. Images above follow the biblical and classical iconography of
works of art displayed in other rooms, but are focused more specifically on the
examples of feasts. These include the Last Supper, the ultimate example of a
Christian meal. The Last Supper was, naturally, a preferred subject for the dec-
oration of refectories, with such iconic examples as Andrea del Castagno’s
fresco in Sant’Apollonia in Florence, and Leonardo da Vinci’s in Santa Maria
delle Grazie. The depiction of this scene in a secular domestic setting epito-
mizes the transformation of sixteenth-century religiosity in Northern Europe.
It marks the greater emphasis on spiritual practices in the private sphere,
outside of the direct supervision of the church, the elevation of the house as a
space appropriate for rites mimicking the experience of Christ and his apos-
tles, and the introduction of the convivium as an important, dignified form of
ritual with the potential to transform its participants. Other paintings in the
room—Herod’s Feast, The Rich Man and Lazarus, Antony and Cleopatra,
46 Chapter 1
Alexander the Great Killing Cleitus, and The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs—
admonish against drunkenness and gluttony.75 These serve as counterexam-
ples of the convivium, which, as Eusebius tells Timotheus, is a
custom [that] has much to recommend it, because by means of it one

can avoid foolish yarns and enjoy profitable conversation. I disagree em-
phatically with those who think a dinner party isn’t enjoyable unless it
overflows with silly, bawdy stories and rings with dirty songs.… Truly en-
joyable conversations are those that are always pleasant to have held or
heard and always delightful to recall, not those that soon cause one to be
ashamed and conscience-stricken.76
The paintings in Eusebius’s villa are distributed decorously among rooms and
are often iconographically sophisticated, providing a perfect example of an
ideal villa’s interior. But it is their incorporation into the conversation that es-
tablishes Convivium Religiosum as a groundbreaking portrayal of the history of
religious imagery in a domestic setting. Eusebius and Timotheus engage in a
lively dialogue about the images on display, in which they comment on their
iconography and subjects (“Here Christ keeps the Last Supper with his chosen
disciples. Here Herod celebrates his birthday with a fatal feast”); their function
and meaning (“These examples warn us to be temperate at feasts and deter us
from drunkenness and extravagance”); and their artistic merit (“A work worthy
of Apelles, so help me!”)77 While I agree with Claudia Goldstein that “the prac-
tice of using images to activate discussion was quite common in the early mod-
ern period, and was a staple of ancient oratory”—and works of art described in
The Godly Feast certainly support this statement—the predominance of the
religious genre sets Eusebius’s paintings apart from other examples. Biblical
paintings are introduced as subjects of learned conversation and reflection,
not only on a special occasion like the described luncheon, but on an everyday
basis; when Eusebius gives a tour of the galleries, he tells his friends: “Here
I stroll sometimes, conversing with myself and meditating upon that inex-
pressible purpose of God by which he willed to restore the human race through
his Son. Sometimes my wife, or a friend pleased by sacred subjects, keeps me
75 It is certainly possible to think about the imaginary painting of Lapiths and Centaurs as a
metatextual allusion to Lucian’s Carousal of the Lapiths, which was a travesty of classical
symposia. Lucian, “The Carousal of the Lapiths,” in The Works, trans. A. M. Harmon
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961). For a discussion of Lucian’s collo
quium, see Jeanneret, Feast of Words, 151–53.
company.”78 Religious art in the domestic setting no longer serves a traditional

devotional purpose; rather, it has become an active stimulus for a discourse
on religion in the same way the scriptural passages chosen by Eusebius spark
discussion at the dining table. By approaching biblical paintings as conver
sation pieces comparable in their function to biblical excerpts, Erasmus has
significantly elevated the status of pictorial representation, especially in the
context of the early modern humanistic preference for the Word over the
Image.79
Eusebius’s mention of his wife’s keeping him company is illustrative of yet
another aspect of the early modern convivium. For the ancients, the participa-
tion of women in learned conversations would have been unthinkable. How-
ever, Erasmus’s symposiac dialogues and his spiritual and pastoral works all
mention women as potentially partaking in convivia, as they could contribute
to the discussions and even teach men. But the most extensive commentary on
the role of women in the convivium comes from none else than Juan Luis
Vives:
There are certain little things that can strengthen or weaken love, which
the wife should notice in her husband so that she may adapt herself to his
temperament and his wishes.… Know what kind of foods he likes, how he
likes them prepared and with what seasoning, and which one he dislikes.
Does he like his food highly seasoned or bland, hot or cold; this kind of
meat, fish and drink, or some other; what hour does he prefer, what table-
cloths and napkins, tables, trays, plates, bowls, kettles, salt cellars, cups;
how does he like the table set; what guests does he prefer, what type of
conversation [quos adhiberi convivas, quales collocutiones]? Then you
must please him in the way you make the bed: the cushions, blankets,
bedspread, sheets and pillows you should use. The same goes for chairs,
benches, furnishing and all kinds of domestic appurtenances, which are
entrusted and delegated to woman. These are little things in themselves,
as I said, but of great importance to human beings, whose emotions are
aroused not by the size of things but by their evaluation of them.80

79 Todd Richardson offers a similar, but more cautious conclusion about Erasmus’s Con
vivium Religiosum: “the paintings, as much as the conversation, offer the viewers oppor
tunities for self-cultivation.” Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 74.
80 Juan Luis Vives, De institutione feminae Christianae, trans. C. Fantazzi and C. Matheeusen,
vol. 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 79.
48 Chapter 1
The relegation of the details of domestic decoration and dining paraphernalia

to a woman was commonplace in contemporary literature—we can find the
same advice in Alberti, Erasmus, and Estienne—but Vives’s emphasis on a
wife’s knowledge of her husband’s dining habits was not. His admonition that
an ideal wife should know her husband’s preferred company at the dining ta-
ble, and the topics and registers of his conversation suggests, first, that a wom-
an was not only involved in the practical aspects of running the household, but
also partook in the intellectual and social life of the family, and thus needed a
certain level of education herself, and, second, that she was partially respon-
sible for organizing dinner parties on her husband’s behalf. Her attention to
the banquet’s setting was of no small importance—Vives’s smooth transition
from the description of dining utensils to the subjects explored in convivia and
back to the “domestic appurtenances” indicates that the conspicuous display
framing a dinner party contributed to its success.
Not surprisingly, when Antwerp mint master and art collector Jan Noirot
declared bankruptcy and fled his house, his wife, Hester van Eeckeren, dis-
closed in her testimony that when they first faced financial troubles, she was
responsible for picking those among the dining props that could be sold with-
out harming the family’s reputation and for keeping others that would help the
couple continue to maintain the appearance of wealth and prosperity.81 Simi-
larly, Antwerp officials mention in their letters that they attended some impor-
tant meal gatherings together with their wives, who most likely would have
been present during discussions of sociopolitical, economic, and religious is-
sues.82
These examples demonstrate that the convivial literature and customs of
the sixteenth-century Antwerp elite were very much related. Erasmus’s Con-
vivium Religiosum was inspired by actual dinner parties, which he, Thomas
More, and Antwerp’s registrar, Pieter Gillis, attended at the residence of Jeroen
Busleyden in Mechelen. Busleyden was a lawyer trained in Leuven and Padua,
who in 1506 assumed the office of an ecclesiastic councilor to the Great Coun-
cil of Mechelen, but whose most important legacy was the founding of the
Collegium Trilingue at the University in Leuven—and perhaps his
instrumental role in creating an international network of scholars by gener-
ously providing them with nourishing meals and conversation at his house.83
81 Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 7.

82 Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 75
83 Eusebius’s villa is also similar to the residence of Johann van Botzheim, canon of Con
stance, whose hospitality Erasmus enjoyed in September 1522. The description of
Botzheim’s residence in a letter from February 1523 offers one of the best insights into
Hof van Busleyden, completed in 1508, included a stoove, a richly decorated

space designed specifically for convivia. The room was furnished with a table
and “three dozen small footstools,” a rather surprising number considering
that the room could only seat about twelve people.84 The intimate space pro-
vided a better setting than the adjacent large dining hall for conversation in a
small circle, helping to achieve the sense of relaxed familiarity sought in sym-
posia. But, as Erasmus and More emphasized in their correspondence, more
than anything else it was the decoration that contributed to the creation of the
right atmosphere for debates.85
The largest of Busleyden’s wall paintings showcased the banquet and pun-
ishment of Tantalus, the feast of Balthazar, the Fall of Phaeton, and, most like-
ly, Demades and Dionysius.86 These main scenes were complemented by the
depiction of the story of an early Roman hero, Gaius Mucius Scaevola, images
of Venus and Diana, putti, grisaille Muses, and Busleyden’s coat of arms. While
the preference here seems to have been subjects related directly to the experi-
ence of dining, the overall iconography was certainly not limited to mytholo
gical or biblical examples of famous feasts.87 This thematic diversity set
Erasmus’s approach to visual arts in general, and the function of paintings in domestic
spaces in particular. Erasmus, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 9: The Correspondence of
Erasmus: Letters 1252–1355 (1522–1523) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), Letter
1342. The letter is discussed briefly in Erwin Panofsky, “Erasmus and the Visual Arts,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969), 206. Lucy Schlüter suggests
other possible models: residences of Thomas More and John Colet in England, Pieter
Gillis in Antwerp, and Johannes Froben in Basel. Schlüter, Niet alleen, 66.
84 Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 20.
85 Hof van Busleyden reopened after an extensive renovation in 2018, and the stoove is now
accessible. While the wall paintings have been only partially preserved and reconstructed,
the physical layout of Busleyden’s semipublic rooms helps visitors to grasp how convivia
would have looked. The small stoove is adjacent to the large and lavish dining room, and
its entrance is located at the end of this main hall. Thus, designated for the use of an
intimate circle of friends at the end of the meal, the stoove would not have been
immediately accessible upon entering the main eetkamer.
86 Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 20–21.
87 In her excellent discussion of Busleyden’s stoove, Claudia Goldstein underlines that the
Tantalus and Balthazar paintings focus on the banquets rather than the ensuing punish
ments. Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 21. These two stories are examples of overindulgence,
conforming to one of the functions of dining halls’ decoration described by Erasmus in
The Godly Feast (205): they “warn us to be temperate at feasts and deter us from drunken
ness and extravagance.” However, like The Tower of Babel, they also address hubris, which
many contemporary authors indicate as a ubiquitous vice in the Low Countries. The style
and composition of these two images helped to remind visitors that they too might be
guilty of the sin of pride, as painted tables, dining paraphernalia, and servants appear to
protrude into the viewers’ space. While blurring the boundaries between the painted and
the real space was a common trait of paintings displayed in dining halls (examples being
50 Chapter 1
precedence for the decoration of Niclaes Jonghelinck’s villa, in which Bruegel’s

series of the Months, showcasing the production of food consumed by guests
at the table, and Floris’s Banquet of the Gods shared the space with the biblical
narratives of The Tower of Babel and The Procession to Calvary. Similarly, Jan
Noirot’s eetcamerken and salon were embellished by both wall and panel paint-
ings, whose iconography ranged from religious subjects and portraits to genre
scenes and landscapes.88
The interior of Hof van Busleyden left a long-lasting impression on its visi-
tors. More wrote three epigrams in which he compared the architecture of the
residence to the works of Daedalus, the paintings to those by Apelles, and the
sculptures to the perfection achieved by Myron, Lysippus, and Praxiteles.89
The poems also included the curious information that each object in Busley-
den’s collection was accompanied by a distich, none now extant, but which
More compared consistently to the work of Virgil.90 While this epideictic invo-
cation of the Ancients strengthens the connection between the humanists and
classical culture, More believed that the art of his contemporaries had in fact
surpassed that of the Greeks and Romans; it followed, then, that Renaissance
symposia had the potential to outdo their classical models.
The early-sixteenth-century dinner parties at Hof van Busleyden served as
an indirect model, mediated by Erasmus and More, for meal gatherings en-
joyed by the Antwerp elite in the 1550s and 1560s.91 Of course, these two types
of gatherings and their specific goals differed: whereas the former fostered the
development of an international humanist network, the latter strengthened
professional, commercial bonds for the sake of the community and offered op-
portunities for moral edification.92 The correspondence of Antwerp officials
provides ample evidence of the significance of meal gatherings for the social,
religious, economic, and political life of the metropolis. In February 1566, the
Bruegel’s depictions of peasant wedding feasts and Martin de Vos’s series of Saint Paul for
Gillis Hooftman), what set apart the decoration of Hof van Busleyden is its negative
overtone: illusionistic devices merged together excessive, hubristic banquets and intel
lectual convivia, inviting the participants in the latter to self-reflection as to whether they
remained modest in all their pursuits.
88 Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appearances,” 259, and Pieter Bruegel, 58–59.
89 Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appearances,” 29.
90 In their reception of paintings, beholders would be thus encouraged to switch between
text and image, experiencing an emblematic mode of looking/reading avant la lettre.
91 Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appearances,” 40. On the connection between Erasmus’s The
Godly Feast and dinner parties at Hof van Busleyeden and the fictional and real pictorial
decoration of dining halls, see also J. Bruyn, Over het voortleven der middeleeuwen. Rede
(Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1961), 14–15.
92 Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appearances,” 27–40, and Pieter Bruegel, 13–36.
city’s pensionary, Jan Gillis, wrote a letter addressed to mayor Lancelot van Ur-
sel describing a dinner party to which he had gone a few days earlier at the
house of one of the city’s secretaries. During the party, attended by both city
officials and their wives, Gillis discussed several matters concerning the new-
est legal developments in Antwerp and the region. His agenda included re-
quests from Brabant towns for help with the new religious laws implemented
by the Spanish Inquisition (Gillis, whose self-censorship is not surprising, did
not give any further details regarding either the laws or the request); mer-
chants’ complaints about a recently published edict that caused them signifi-
cant financial troubles; and their forthcoming meeting with the city council
regarding that ordinance. The addressee of the message had not always been a
dependable correspondent: in a letter sent to Gillis a few weeks earlier, van
Ursel had apologized for not having responded in time as he had been busy
attending several wedding feasts. While the letter included some humorous
remarks about the benefits of marriage for their newlywed colleagues and ad-
vice that some of the others should follow in their footsteps, van Ursel also re-
minded Gillis that they needed to discuss the implementation of the edicts of
the Council of Trent, and promised to tell Gillis about a banquet at which the
Prince of Orange had been present, but only when they met in person, as those
matters should not be put down on paper.93 The excerpts of officials’ letters
prove that in mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp, dinner gatherings offered the
opportunity to solve problems in the community. Thus, rather than under-
standing them strictly as social recreations, they should also be viewed as one
of the mechanisms through which the community negotiated the conditions
of its existence.
A few decades before Jan Gillis and Lancelot van Ursel would meet with
their colleagues for these banquets, another local official—the city secretary
Pieter Gillis—was praised in a poem by no less than Erasmus himself. Epithala-
mium Petri Aegidii celebrated the marriage of Gillis to Cornelia Sandren, while
also—if not primarily—serving as a eulogy of Antwerp and a tribute to the
friendship of Erasmus and Gillis with Jeroen Busleyden, the host of memo-
rable dinners in Mechelen. The final version of Epithalamium was published
alongside the first Antwerp edition of Convivium Religiosum in 1567 as a part of
Familiarum colloquiorum formulae.94 The appearance of these two texts side
93 Floris Prims, “De Briefwisseling tusschen Antwerpsch Magistraat en Gedeputeerden uit

den tijd van Margarita van Parma en voornamelijk uit de Jaren 1565–66,” Bijdragen tot de
Geschiedenis 16 (1924–25): 461, 474–76. See also Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, 75–76.
94 Desiderius Erasmus, Familiarum colloquiorum formulae (Antwerp: Christophe Plantin,
1567).
52 Chapter 1
by side links the ideal literary model of symposia to the local history and cul-
ture, embodied in the illustrious Pieter Gillis, and presents convivia to their
readers as deeply relevant, if not native, to the metropolis. As we have seen,
the city officials of the later generation appear to have agreed with this idea.95
In all likelihood, they would have shared the table with merchants and collec-
tors such as Jan Noirot, Aernout Pels, and the owner of The Tower of Babel and
’t Goed ter Beken, Niclaes Jonghelinck.
Considering his importance for Antwerp and the Low Countries, literature
on Jonghelinck is surprisingly scarce. We know that he was born in 1517 as the
second son of Anna Gramaye and Peter Jonghelinck, a metalist and the mint
master of Brabant.96 Peter’s post at the mint was assumed in 1560 by Niclaes’s
older brother, Thomas, while the youngest son, Jacques (1530–1606), became
the warden in 1572. Jacques also followed in his father’s footsteps as a crafts-
man, a sculptor, a designer of seals, and a metalist. After training in the early
1550s in Milan with Leone Leoni, Jacques settled in Antwerp to work for such
diverse and distinguished patrons as the Governess Margaret of Parma; King
Philip II; Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, the bishop of Arras; Fernan-
do Álvarez de Toledo, the infamous 3rd Duke of Alba; Antoon van Stralen, the
mayor of Antwerp, to whom Plantin dedicated the first Dutch edition of De
Landtwinninge ende Hoeve; Hans Franckaert, the merchant friend with whom,
according to Karel van Mander, Bruegel sneaked into peasant weddings in the
countryside; and finally, Niclaes himself.97
95 The local magistraat was composed of twenty members: interior and exterior burgomaster,
two treasurers, and sixteen aldermen. All the seats were reserved for members of the
nobility. However, as both sixteenth-century authors and modern historians have pointed
out, the influence of the magistraat was relatively limited, and it was really the most
affluent merchants who had the greatest impact on life in the city.
96 See Carl van de Velde, Frans Floris (1519/20–1570): leven en werken (Brussels: Paleis der Aca
demiën, 1965), 114, 117; Iain Buchanan, “The Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: I: ‘Bacchus
and the Planets’ by Jacques Jongelinck.” The Burlington Magazine 132 (1990): 102–4, and,
most recently, Wouk, Frans Floris, 331–35.
97 Compared to the scarcity of literature on Niclaes Jonghelinck, the life and work of Jacques
has been fairly well researched. See articles by Luc Smolderen: “Une médaille inédite de
Jean Franckaert, ami de Bruegel l’Ancien, par Jacques Jonghelinck,” Revue Belge de
Numismatique et de Sigillographie 113 (1967): 81–86; “La statue du duc d’Albe à Anvers par
Jacques Jonghelinck (1571),” Académie Royale de Belgique: Mémoires de la Classe Des
Beaux-Arts: Collection in-80, 2nd series, 14 (1972), fasc. 1; “Jonghelinck en Italie,” Revue Belge
de Numismatique et de Sigillographie, 130 (1984): 119–39; and the monograph Jacques
Jonghelinck. Sculpteur, médailleur et graveur de sceaux (1530–1606) (Louvain-la-Neuve.
Départment d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art. Séminaire de Numismatique Marcel Hoc,
1996). See also Buchanan, “Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: I,” 102–13.
Niclaes’s career was no less impressive than those of his two brothers. Start-
ing in 1551, he worked as a tax collector in Zeeland and Brabant; this lucrative
post allowed him, three years later, to purchase from his brother Thomas the
suburban estate ’t Goed ter Beken, situated to the south of the city, between
Berchem and Wilrijk, in the parish of Sint Joris. In the years to come, he deco-
rated the interior of the villa with paintings by Pieter Bruegel, Frans Floris,
Albrecht Dürer, and other artists whose names are unfortunately not men-
tioned in the 1566 inventory. As Edward Wouk has pointed out, while Jonghe-
linck “built on established trends in Antwerp collecting,” the decoration of his
villa was unprecedented.98 He commissioned arguably the region’s two most
celebrated painters to design and paint site-specific images with complimen-
tary iconography and stylistic idioms. This act of “social entrepreneurship” set
him apart both from the middle class, who focused on images painted for the
market, and the old aristocracy, who favored luxury arts such as tapestries.99
Despite this ostensible affluence, when Niclaes died in 1570, he left behind
significant debts—a situation which was, as a matter of fact, not uncommon
among contemporary entrepreneurs. Those debts were generated by Niclaes’s
involvement in city lotteries throughout the 1560s, for which he put up his art
collection and urban house at Kipdorp, Sphera Mundi, as collateral. Because
one of his most important creditors was Philip II, many paintings owned by
him ended up in the hands of the Habsburgs.
Even with our limited knowledge of the history of the Jonghelinck family,
there can be no doubt that they belonged to the elite of the city and were root-
ed firmly in Antwerp’s mercantile and artistic worlds while cultivating connec-
tions to both the Spanish and Brabant governments. The list of acquaintances,
business partners, and patrons of Niclaes and Jacques includes the names
of the same people for whom Pieter Bruegel worked throughout his career,
and officials who, like Antoon van Stralen, successfully reconciled their posts
with the metropolis’s interest in cultural and architectural development. Of
particular importance are the family’s ties to the Antwerp Mint. In the decade
98 Wouk, Frans Floris, 333.

99 Wouk, Frans Floris, 333. Niclaes Jonghelinck’s importance as a patron of art was further
established by the translation of Floris’s Labors of Hercules and The Liberal Arts into print
cycles engraved by Cornelis Cort and published by Hieronymus Cock in 1563 and 1565,
respectively. The Labors of Hercules opened with a dedicatory Latin poem composed by
Domenicus Lampsonius, which praised Jonghelinck’s suburban residence while empha
sizing that Floris’s art should not be confined to its premises. With the Labors of Hercules,
Lampsonius continues, Northern Europe had “snatched the palm” from Italy; in his poem,
then, Jonghelinck becomes an instrumental figure in the longstanding competition
between Italian and Northern European art. Wouk, Frans Floris, 352.
54 Chapter 1
after Thomas Jonghelinck’s appointment as the mint master, this office was
held by Jan Noirot, an eventually bankrupt owner of five paintings by Brue-
gel.100 Another close family friend appointed as the mint’s warden in 1572 was
Jacques Hencxthoven, who in the 1560s partnered with Niclaes in organizing
the lotteries and later acted, together with Jacques Jonghelinck, as coexecutor
of Niclaes’s will.101 While active as a spice merchant, Hencxthoven also became
involved in local military affairs. He advised Philip II on the matter of supplying
the Spanish troops stationed in the Low Countries and was made responsible,
in 1567, for the construction of the Citadel and, in 1569, the new fortifications.102
Hencxthoven did not go into these enterprises unprepared. In the 1550s, he
collaborated with Gilbert van Schoonbeke (1519–1556), the wealthiest and
most influential real-estate agent in sixteenth-century Antwerp.103 The impor-
tance of the ensuing connection between Niclaes Jonghelinck and Gilbert van
Schoonbeke cannot be overestimated in the context of The Tower of Babel. Al-
though van Schoonbeke had been dead for seven years before the painting was
finished and displayed in the dining hall of Ter Beken, his ambivalent legacy
continued to inform the Antwerp discourse of entrepreneurship as much as
his vast building projects transformed the urban landscape of the city.104
Among all the members of Jonghelinck’s social circle, van Schoonbeke was cer-
tainly the most powerful—and colorful—figure. His career epitomizes the
tension between private profit and common good, the two concepts that were
central to the early modern entrepreneurial discourse in the Low Countries. As
these concepts also provide crucial context for the understanding of Bruegel’s
Tower of Babel, with its juxtaposition of the collaborative efforts of the workers
and the aloofness of King Nimrod, it is worthwhile to look at van Schoonbeke’s
biography in some detail.
100 Jan Noirot owned two paintings of Peasant Wedding (one on panel, one on canvas), two
Peasant Kermises (both on canvas), and a winter scene on canvas. Goldstein, “Keeping Up
Appearances,” 259.
101 Smolderen, Jacques Jonghelinck, 8; Smolderen, “Waradin de la Monnaie,” 84.
102 Smolderen, “Waradin de la Monnaie,” 83–84.
103 The collaboration between Hencxthoven and van Schoonbeke has been suggested by
Smolderen in “Waradin de la Monnaie,” 83.
104 For a succinct and informative overview of Gilbert van Schoonbeke’s activities and
controversies surrounding his undertakings, see Houghton, “This Was Tomorrow”: 286–
87.
3 Monopolies, Self-Interest, and the Common Good
The career of Gilbert van Schoonbeke was unprecedented: despite having no

family inheritance, he became one of the wealthiest and most influential citi-
zens of sixteenth-century Antwerp. While the scope of his ventures was vast,
he focused primarily on the real-estate sector and construction. In the late
1540s, van Schoonbeke supervised two major architectural projects in the city,
the new Stadswaag (weighing house) and the Vrijdagmarkt (a market square
designated specifically for auctioning used goods, still operative today, and still
on Fridays). He also held the lease of terrain south of Antwerp, the so-called
Leikwartier, where a few years later Niclaes Jonghelinck would build his subur-
ban residence. Even though he was only officially a manager of these sites, he
did not hesitate to use his position for private profit. In the vicinity of Stads
waag and Vrijdagmarkt, van Schoonbeke created parcels sought after by mer-
chants, who appreciated the convenience of a location so close to their
businesses. In Leikwartier, he designed a representational avenue, Margravelei,
and divided the land into smaller plots intended for recreational residences;
each person buying one of these properties signed a contract obliging them to
build a house that would function as a villa or a country retreat, and to plant a
tree every twenty feet around the house.105 This clause indicates that, financial
profit notwithstanding, van Schoonbeke was genuinely interested in propagat-
ing picturesque country retreats, which can be confirmed by the mention of “a
canvas painting of a country house” in the probate inventory of his posses-
sions.106 Created in 1547, by around 1570 the Markgravelei neighborhood al-
ready had more than one hundred speelhoven.107
Van Schoonbeke’s successful management of the Stadswaag, Vrijdagmarkt,
and Leikwartier in the late 1540s encouraged the city to put him in charge of
four projects between 1549 and 1553. He was made responsible for auctioning
the majority of the communal grounds put on sale in the period, the creation
of the Tapissierspand (a market place designated for selling tapestries), and
the supervision, alongside the exterior burgomaster, Michiel van der Heyden,
of the construction of the new city walls. His fourth and most controversial
project was the development of Nieuwstad, incorporated into the city in 1542
as its thirteenth ward. Van Schoonbeke’s plan for this new neighborhood
105 Stadsarchief Antwerpen (SAA), IB 2179, 216. Cited in Hugo Soly, Urbanisme en kapitalisme
te Antwerpen in de 16de eeuw: de stedebouwkundige en industriële ondernemingen van
Gilbert van Schoonbeke (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet van België, 1977), 187.
106 Muylle, “Het genot van de locus amoenus,” 133.
107 Muylle, “Het genot van de locus amoenus,” 117.
56 Chapter 1
focused on commercial buildings such as storage spaces, warehouses, and

breweries, with a relatively smaller number of residential parcels, intended
only for entrepreneurs who would own businesses in the area.
The van Schoonbeke fortune was growing, but so was the hostility against
him among Antwerp burghers. The magistrate repeatedly received official
complaints against him.108 Van Schoonbeke was often accused of corruption
and of spending public money on his private transactions, as well as selling
plots of land without officially sharing any of the profit with the city.109 On
February 27, 1544, the Vierschaar (city tribunal) tried three men accused of as-
saulting and nearly killing him.
Gilbert van Schoonbeke was well aware of the hostility surrounding him. In
1548, four years after nearly losing his life, he complained in a letter to Govern-
ess Mary of Hungary that many people were working to his disadvantage.110
And yet, he seemed to remain immune to this ubiquitous criticism, and his
only attempt to improve his reputation was giving money to charity, a behavior
expected from all affluent citizens (and even in that he was rather inconsis
tent).111 But things changed in 1554, when a particularly audacious—not to
mention greedy—contract signed by van Schoonbeke and pensionary Jacob
Maes, representing the magistrate, brought Antwerp to the brink of civil war.
108 Génard, “Index der Gebodboeken,” 225–26.

109 Soly, Urbanisme en kapitalisme, 441–43.
110 SAA, IB 2189, nr 21. Cited in Soly, Urbanisme en kapitalisme, 442.
111 Gilbert van Schoonbeke, and later his sister and daughter, were among the benefactors of
Maagdenhuis, an orphanage and school for girls, now transformed into a museum. Ed.
Geudens, Van Schoonbeke en het Maagdenhuis van Antwerpen (Antwerp: Drukkerij L. Dela
Montagne, 1889). An in situ placard praises van Schoonbeke’s support of the poor in the
city: “Ex donatione haeredum D. Gilberti de Schoonbeck, fundo hoc. pauperib. huius
urbis pro parte legato, Ioan. Godev. A Grave, Petrus Stevens, Carolus Batkin, Phillipus le
Roy, Petr. De Haze, Guil. F., Petr. Janss de Bisthove, huic urbi ab eleemosynis, de consensus
camerae S. Spirit. hunc Parthenona novo hoc aedificio ampliarunt, annis supra CIC IC
CXXXXXIV, ET XXXV.” This provision stands in a stark contrast to another transaction in
which van Schoonbeke was involved in the early 1550s, and which, as Houghton has
demonstrated, Aertsen alluded to in his Meat Stall. The sign to the right of the composition
reads: “hier achter is erve te coope tersto(n)t metter roeye(n) elck syn gerief oft teenemale
154” (“behind here are 154 rods of land for sale immediately, either by the rod or all at
once, according to your convenience”). This can be correlated with a very specific land
transfer that was processed in Antwerp in the autumn of 1551. On September 30, the
sisters in charge of St. Elizabeth Gasthuis were forced to transfer to the city, at a very low
price of 20 guilders per rod, 675 rods of ground belonging to this charitable institution.
The plot was acquired for the new building of the Crossbowmen Guild (Schuttershoven),
but ultimately proved too large for that purpose. Thus, one-fifth of the property—154½
rods—was sold to Gilbert van Schoonbeke, who benefited personally from the commer
cialization of the area. Houghton, “This Was Tomorrow”: 285–87, 298.
The contract pertained to the Nieuwstad, which van Schoonbeke envisioned

essentially as the city’s only supplier of beer. Under his supervision, the district
was equipped with an innovative system of water pumps intended to make
the breweries more efficient. For this project to be successful, van Schoonbeke
needed the support of Maes, a city clerk responsible for regulating water sup-
plies in Antwerp. In addition to limiting the production of beer to the Nieuw-
stad, the contract signed by the two men prohibited the import of beer from
other Brabant towns.
This damaging attempt at the monopolization of the beer industry could
not have come at a worse time. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, Antwerp’s
financial condition was declining due to the construction of new city walls,
which put an unprecedented burden on the citizens. Corruption, embezzle-
ment of funds designated for the fortifications, and the sheer cost of the proj-
ect resulted in the continuous increase of existing taxes and the introduction
of new ones, while the demolition of houses to make way for the new walls led
to a housing shortage and skyrocketing rents. Van Schoonbeke was one of the
supervisors of the project and a member of the Fortificatiekas, a committee
established to manage the funds for the walls, which soon became known for
the mismanagement of the money entrusted to them.112
Under these circumstances, the brewery scheme became the proverbial
drop that spilled the cup. The events that followed were recounted meticu-
lously a decade later by Lodovico Guicciardini and, somewhat surprisingly,
commemorated on a brightly colored postcard published in 1905 as a part of
the Belgian series Anvers au moyen âge (figure 14). The lithograph shows an
extravagantly dressed man sitting in a melancholic pose on a bench covered
with a threaded luxurious fabric, accompanied by two no less wealthy—but
far less distraught—gentlemen and a couple of soldiers, who look outside on
the Grote Markt. Above the man is one of the sumptuous houses surrounding
the market, Maison Hydraulique, complemented by the prominent coat of
arms of Antwerp for viewers to easily identify the place. The caption on the top
112 An investigation eventually instigated by the city revealed that Michiel van der Heyden
moved some of the workers from the construction site to his newly acquired plot in
Zurenborg, where, like many of his colleagues, he was building a villa, for which he used
some of the materials acquired by the city for the fortifications. Early in the course of the
investigation, it became evident that the scale of embezzlement was too vast—it involved
too many of the city’s officials—to be pursued and revealed to the public, as it would
bring down the local government and potentially lead to the intervention of Spanish
troops or, at the very least, the strengthening of Habsburg power in the region. Hugo Soly,
“Fortificaties, belastingen en corruptie te Antwerpen in het middel der 16de eeuw,” Bij
dragen tot de Geschiedenis 53 (1970): 191–210.
58 Chapter 1
Figure 14 Anonymous, Anvers au moyen âge, 1905, postcard

photo: author’s private c ollection
of the lithograph explains: “Devant le peuple excité, Gilbert van Schoonbeke et

l’échevin Jacques Maes se refugient à l’Hôtel de Ville” (“Gilbert van Schoonbeke
and the alderman Jacques Maes seek refuge in the city hall from the agitated
people”). In a decorously entrepreneurial fashion, the postcard not only popu-
larizes local history, but also advertises a meat bouillon with a picture of a jar
described as “Véritable Extrait de Viande LIEBIG” at the bottom.
The scene illustrated on the postcard took place in July 1554 and was count-
ed by Guicciardini among the three most significant events in Antwerp’s con-
temporary history (although he magnanimously omitted any names from his
description). The agreement over the Nieuwstad breweries increased the exist-
ing hostility against the magistrate, resulting in a large crowd of ghemeynen
volcke arriving at the Grote Markt, threatening de Heeren—members of the
aristocracy—gathered in the Town Hall.113 Amid the gathering, someone
spread a rumor that Spanish troops would arrive in the evening to plunder the
city and rape women while the men were engaged in battle. According to Guic-
ciardini, this unsubstantiated rumor caused the situation to spiral out of con-
trol, so that a violent revolt against the magistrate could have not been ruled
out. The Low Countries certainly had a long history of uprisings against their
sovereigns and city councils, which only increased the threat of a rebellion in
Antwerp. The magistrate seemed not to know how to regain control or placate
the crowd; it was instead the vrome borghers—pious burghers, whom we can
understand as the urban middle and upper classes—who restored peace in the
community.114 Citizens themselves took control of particular districts, denying
passage in the direction of the Grote Markt to anyone who was armed. But, as
Guicciardini emphasizes, the pious burghers also managed to persuade their
poorer fellow citizens that the conflict was destructive for der gantscher Ge
meynten—the whole community—and that it would worsen their own situa-
tion as well. Guicciardini’s narrative clearly articulates the sense of collective
responsibility and identity that characterized sixteenth-century Antwerp in
spite of the distinction between three social strata (Heeren, borghers, ghe
meynen volcke). The text confirms its identity as the mercantile city, in which,
unlike in Brussels, the nobility had limited power compared to the influence of
the merchants. In July 1554, it was thanks to the mediation of the vrome
113 Guicciardini, Beschryving van Antwerpen, 65–66. Ghemeynen volcke, the common folk,
should be understood as lower-class and lower-middle-class craftsmen, small-scale
merchants, and unfree workers. It was this group that the contract between van Schoon
beke and the city affected the most.
114 Guicciardini, Beschryving van Antwerpen, 66.
60 Chapter 1
borghers that the armed rioters eventually left the Grote Markt without harm-
ing anyone in the besieged Town Hall.
Minor unrest continued for several months, despite the annulment of the
contract between Maes and van Schoonbeke and the adoption of new plans
for both the Nieuwstad and the production and distribution of beer in Ant-
werp. According to the edict issued on December 5, 1554, 25 percent of the
revenue from the Nieuwstad breweries was due to the city and two of the
breweries, in Cronnenborg and Schuttershoven, were to be relocated. Under
regulated excise, beer could again be imported from Mechelen, Leuven, and
Hoegaarden. The newly established excise office at the Grote Markt was put in
charge of preventing any potential fraud.115
Beyond those immediate measures, the Habsburg government introduced
antimonopolization laws in the Low Countries, published in 1555 by Simon
Cock; these were followed by a more comprehensive discussion of the issue of
monopolies by Ioos de Danhoudere in the same year.116 The overall goal of
both texts was to define monopoly in trade and artisanal production so that no
one could claim ignorance when committing this crime, to warn against its
grave consequences, and to outline possible punishments. The volume pub-
lished by Cock was a collection of orders by Charles V for the entire Habsburg
Empire, in which he forbade monopolization in favor of diversifying produc-
tion and trade, the two main branches of economy. De Danhoudere further
defined the superficial lowering of prices for certain products as a type of mo-
nopolization of commerce, which would be punished appropriately. The se-
verity of penalties for any type of monopolization ranged from confiscation of
goods to even capital punishment, if the scale was vast and especially if it was
pursued under particularly strenuous circumstances such as drought, war, or
famine. The explanation of this uncompromising attitude was oriented toward
the collective welfare of the entire community. The regulations were meant to
protect the poor from hunger “so that they don’t starve to death.” Without
them, the document stated, the poor’s well-being would have been threatened
by those seeking “one’s own profit.”117
This juxtaposition of individual gain and the common good was
commonplace in mid-sixteenth-century economic discourse developed in
115 Génard, “Index der Gebodboeken,” 257.

116 Keyserlijke Statuten, Ordinantien, Costumen en Ghewoonten, ende bijsonder elcer Stadt
rechten, principalijk den Keyserlijcken landen aengaende (Antwerp: Symon Cock, 1555);
and Ioos de Danhoudere, Practycke ende handbouck in criminele zaeken (Antwerp: Hans
de Laet, 1555).
117 De Danhoudere, Practycke ende handbouck, fol. 245–46.
vernacular theatre, poetry, religious processions, and annual prognostications.

These prognostications promised peace and prosperity to the entire urban
population and to merchants in particular, as long as they followed Christian
values in their business transactions.118 Likewise, according to rhetoricians, an
ideal merchant was honest, educated, moderate, and someone who supported
charity and despised unscrupulous money speculation, but did not hesitate to
loan money to those who needed to establish credit, since this practice ulti-
mately helped to advance the local economy.119
The ideal merchant had his negative counterpart: greedy, overindulgent,
and driven by self-interest.120 These polar opposites reflected the contrast be-
tween eigenbaet and gemeynte welvaert, the private profit (or self-interest) and
the common good, introduced in the antimonopolization literature of the
1550s but truly ubiquitous in the following decade. The 1566 Dutch edition of
Hungarian humanist Johannes Sambucus’s emblem book included an exam-
ple juxtaposing eygen baet and ’t gemeyn profijt,121 while plays performed by
Antwerp and Brabant chambers of rhetoric at the 1561 landjuweel praised mer-
chants who were guided by brotherly love, sobriety, piety, and virtuous inspira-
tion but condemned those who engaged in risky ventures seeking their own
profit rather than the good of the community. Accordingly, the opening play by
De Violieren discussed “kooplieden, die rechtvaardig handelen” (“merchants,
who trade righteously”). Another one presented by their colleagues from Olijf
tak introduced Rechtvaardigheid (Righteousness) as a remedy for those mer-
chants who had forsaken gemeyn profijt and chosen eigen profijt instead.122
The discourse of entrepreneurship presented the fate of Antwerp and the
fate of its merchants as inextricably intertwined. The whole community de-
pended on the merchant class; many passages in Guicciardini’s Description of
the Low Countries confirm their sense of responsibility for the city, while ver-
nacular literature warns against calamities that could come upon the entire
population if entrepreneurs trespassed against Christian values and legal regu-
lations. Seeking one’s own gain was dangerous because it meant forsaking
one’s proper station, which resulted from a lack of self-knowledge and could
118 Kint, “Community of Commerce,” 349–55.

119 Kint, “Community of Commerce,” 363.
120 Matt Kavaler has convincingly argued that the mid-sixteenth-century discourse oscillated
between these two visions of merchants and analyzed Bruegel’s secular imagery as
actively participating in shaping this discourse. Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, passim.
121 Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 47. The same emblem was, as a matter of fact, already included in
the Latin edition published a year earlier than the vernacular one.
122 Floris Prims, “Het Landjuweel van 1561,” Antwerpiensia 14 (1941), esp. 21–23.
62 Chapter 1
disrupt order in a society where everyone had a clearly prescribed role.123 In

the end, pursuing eigen profijt was inspired by pride. The tower of Babel—the
ultimate story of hubris—was thus a more-than-appropriate exemplum to re-
call in this context. At the Brussels festival in 1562, rhetoricians cited it twice as
an example of the punished pride of those who forgot who they truly were; the
same message had appeared a year earlier in the devotional procession of the
Feast of Circumcision in Antwerp, where the tower was included in the wagon
representing Vain Glory as one of the human vices.124 According to the rhetori-
cians, the moral of the story of the tower of Babel was the necessity to adhere
to one’s position in society, which would lead to avoidance of hubris.
Considering the ubiquity and pertinence of entrepreneurial discourse in
mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp, as well as the ambivalent legacy of its officials,
has Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel cast Gilbert van Schoonbeke as Nimrod?125
Has he become the biblical giant who pursues his own fame and wealth while
alienating the community on which he relies? The painting is certainly ground-
ed in contemporary discussion of commerce and economic success, as well as
the distinction between common good and private gain. However, we should
not forget that there is no destruction in Bruegel’s image. If van Schoonbeke is
indeed Nimrod, the panel does not condemn his ventures unequivocally. Fur-
thermore, compositionally, The Tower of Babel privileges collaborative efforts
in the building of a city. The construction is going smoothly and the edifice is
nearly finished, thanks to the efforts of all the workers attending diligently to
their tasks, making the most of their professions. By contrast, Nimrod and his
entourage are withdrawing from the construction site; even though it was he
who had initially suggested making “a city and a tower, the top whereof may
reach to heaven” (Gen. 11:4), he was not responsible for the success of the ven-
ture. In the end, rather than focusing specifically on van Schoonbeke, Pieter
123 Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 62–98.

124 For the poems presented in 1562, see C. de Baere, “De Brusselse refereynen en liedekens van
1562,” Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde. Verslagen en mededelingen
(1948): 119–55. See also Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 64–65. For the 1561 procession, see
Ordinancie, Inhoudende de Poincten vanden Heylighen Besnijdenis Ommeganck der Stadt
van Antwerpen, gheschiet inden Jare M.D.LXI (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1561).
125 In addition, because of his activities as a developer, Gilbert van Schoonbeke owned
brickworks in Hemiksem that reduced his expenditures on bricks by as much as 25
percent. Michael Limberger, Sixteenth-Century Antwerp and Its Rural Surroundings: Social
and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450–ca. 1570),
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 132–36. In the Bible, the inhabitants of Sennaar are credited
with the invention of bricks, which allowed them to build the Tower. It is possible that for
some viewers, this detail would have strengthened the connection between van Schoon
beke and Bruegel’s Nimrod.
Bruegel followed the message conveyed in vernacular poetry, drama, and prog-
nostications, which all taught that in order for the community to thrive, its
members must respect the skills each person could contribute. There was cer-
tainly no lack of professional diversification in Antwerp to meet all of the city’s
needs, but while finding their niche, everyone would need to think about the
greater good of the entire political body.
This admonition was not limited to literary exempla. Roughly fifteen years
before Jonghelinck commissioned The Tower of Babel from Bruegel, it was Em-
peror Charles V himself who had to teach Antwerp’s population about the pre-
cedence of the community over the individual. This unlikely event occurred in
the context of the city’s manifestation of commercial prowess—circumstanc-
es not far from those that informed Bruegel’s panel—when it welcomed its
soon-to-be new sovereign, Crown Prince Philip.
4 Antwerp as an International “Community of Commerce” in Philip’s

1549 Joyous Entry
Following a tradition that had originated in 1356, upon his investiture in 1549,
Philip Habsburg signed the Blijde Inkomst constitutional document and then
traveled through Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille, Tournai, Arras, Cambrai, and fi-
nally Antwerp to participate in elaborate civic festivities organized in his hon-
or.126 These joyous entries functioned as “an efficacious ritual meant to produce
an abiding, affective relationship between the Prince and his subjects,” but also
126 There are two festival books describing Philip’s joyous entry into Antwerp: Cornelius
Grapheus, De seer wonderlijcke schooner Triumphelijcke Incompst (Antwerp: Pieter Coecke
van Aelst, 1550), and Juan Christobal Calvete de Estrella, El felicissimo viaje del muy alto y
muy poderoso principe don Phelippe (Antwerp: Martin Nucio, 1552). Twenty years later, the
event was also described thoroughly by Ludovico Guicciardini. For a scholarly discussion
of this entry, see Mark A. Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity in Philip II’s 1549 Antwerp
Blijde Incompst,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 49 (1998): 37–68; Stijn Bussels, “Van
Macht en Mensenwerk. Retorica als performatieve strategie in de Antwerpse intocht van
1549” (Ph.D. diss., Ghent University, 2005); and Stijn Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power:
The Triumphal Entry of Prince Philip of Spain into Antwerp (Amsterdam: Rodobi, 2012).
Literature on the tradition of joyous entries and public spectacles in the late medieval
and early modern Low Countries is abundant; see, for instance, Peter Arnade, Realms of
Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1996); Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the
Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1998) and essays in Nederlands
Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 49 (1998). See also chapter 3 of this book for a discussion of the
festival culture and its place in the patterns of civic sociability in Antwerp.
64 Chapter 1
one in which both sides of the contract regulated by the Blijde Inkomst could
negotiate their mutual expectations.127 The obligatory attendance and the
scale of the event, which required the collaboration of dozens of craftsmen
and artists, rendered Philip’s entry a truly communal event. Preparations did
not always go smoothly, as we learn from orders issued by the magistrate in
August and September 1549. Workers appear not to have been particularly
committed to their tasks, to the point that the city eventually threatened those
who left their workplaces with capital punishment. Girls chosen to perform in
tableaux vivants were similarly disobedient: the officials reminded them they
needed to be easily found before the spectacle, and to follow instructions as to
where they would be picked up. Streets and houses were to remain clean, no
one was to dry laundry along Philip’s route, and booths and shops had to be
removed, especially from the Grote Markt. Troubles did not cease with the en-
try itself, as the magistrate had to remind burghers to bring back the decora-
tions they had taken home with them.128
Antwerp’s greatest asset was, of course, its thriving economy, which the
community expected the sovereign to support and guard, including through
obeying the Blijde Inkomst. Accordingly, the ephemeral decorations along the
route of Philip’s entry simultaneously glorified local commerce and the
Habsburg dynasty. Among the erected triumphal arches, three deserve special
attention.
Spanish merchants welcomed Philip with an arch preceded by two Corin-
thian columns, whose pediments were inscribed with the word “España,” and
which were topped with Imperial crowns. The arch itself depicted military vic-
tories of Charles V and included side-by-side statues: one of the emperor and
his son and another of Octavian Augustus. By comparing the Habsburgs to the
ancient ruler admired for Pax Romana, Spanish merchants expressed the hope
that they would secure peace in the Low Countries, necessary for the success of
trade. The mythological reference continued at the top of the arch, decorated
with the Temple of Janus. The route between the columns and the arch was
flanked by statues of other Spanish rulers and seven personifications of the
virtues that should characterize a good government. Thus, while celebrating
their rulers, the Spaniards settled in Antwerp advocated the necessity of just
rule and visually articulated their expectation that the new King of Spain and
sovereign of the Low Countries would secure a stable trading environment.
127 Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity,” 37.

128 Génard, “Index der Gebodboeken,” 23–36.
The triumphal arches of the Florentine and Genoese trading nations both
praised the local commerce and prosperity and venerated arts and learning as
they contributed to their development—all within the framework of glorifica-
tion of the Habsburgs. Florentines focused on the praise on Tuscan art, includ-
ing images of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giotto, and Michelangelo, in an arch
“erected … in favor of the great Philip, son of the greatest emperor Charles the
Fifth,” as the inscription informed the viewer.129
The Genoese, whose trading nation was the largest among all of the Italians,
presented a particularly elaborate arch. They commissioned for the project
Frans Floris, who returned to the Low Countries from Italy about three years
earlier, and was aided with the design of its complex iconographic program by
an obscure poet, Stefano Ambrosio Schiappalaria.130 The Corinthian arch’s de-
scription in Cornelius Grapheus’s Triumphelijcke Incompst, one of the longest
in the entire book, mentions “menigerleye vremde schilderijen” (“many curi-
ous paintings”), which embellished both sides (figure 15). These included a vast
array of mythological gods and goddesses (Jupiter, Apollo, Pallas, Mars, Saturn,
Neptune), who offered gifts to Philip such as their protection and particular
talents. The prince and his father, represented in costumes all’antica and with
laurel crowns on their heads, were introduced as brave monarchs, whose jux-
taposition with the personifications of virtues and the works of Hercules fur-
ther ascribed them the most glorious characteristics of righteous rulers.
Imagery inside the arch paired the classical references with the message of
Catholic orthodoxy, pictured through Heretics on the Pyre, Belief Freed from the
Heretics, and Charles V Protecting Belief. However, the Genoese Arch made it
clear that this triumphal celebration of Habsburgs was tied strictly to the inter-
ests of the community. One of the inscriptions announced that the arch was
erected “tsijnder [Philip’s] eeren,” (“to his [Philip’s] glory”), but also “tot besun-
der gunsten, ende elckerlijcken gemeynder blijscapen” (“for particular benefit
and joy shared by all”). The intention to praise the sovereign was paired here
with the joy brought to the whole community, consistent with the goal of the
joyous entry. The lavish, multisensory, and ultimately thoroughly entertaining
spectacle was both meant to welcome and pay homage to the new ruler and to
foster a sense of community among the citizens. Ideally these two objectives
129 Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, 99.

130 For a detailed description of the arch and its importance for Floris’s career, see Wouk,
Frans Floris, 121–58.
66 Chapter 1
Figure 15 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Triumphal Arch of the Genoese Nation, 1550, woodcut,
Gillis van Diest, 1550), Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute
photo: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2866–466)
Figure 16 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Triumphal Arch of the City (Allegory of Trade), 1550, wood-
cut, from Cornelius Grapheus, De seer schooner, triumphelijcke incompst (Antwerp:
Gillis van Diest, 1550), Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2866–466)
68 Chapter 1
would lead to bonding the community and the sovereign, which in the case of
Antwerp and Philip never really happened.131
The emphasis of the trading nations’ contribution to Antwerp’s mercantile
and cultural prowess was reciprocated by the metropolis in a tableau vivant
dedicated to the theme of trade and sponsored by the city itself (figure 16). The
performance included personifications of Antwerp, Scaldis (Scheldt), Negotia-
tion, and Mercury alongside representations of the German, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, and English naties. But while these different decorations in the joy-
ous entry glorified the successful interdependence of the trading colonies and
the city and conveyed a message of hope for peace—a necessary precondition
for a thriving economy—the festivities also exposed a rupture in the optimis-
tic vision of common welfare, as well as the weakness of the rhetoric surround-
ing the precedence of gemeynte welvaert over eigen profijt. During preparations
for the entry, the Portuguese and English, and the Florentine and Genoese na-
ties engaged in a violent quarrel about their respective places in the horseback
procession, which formed an integral part of any joyeuse entrée. Typically, the
procession would be opened by city officials, followed by members of the trad-
ing nations, with those riding further behind being regarded as more presti-
gious. Each natie tried to secure its position by sending requests to the city over
a month in advance.132 Obviously, pleasing everyone by accommodating their
wishes was inherently impossible. While others accepted their assigned posi-
tions, the situation with the four mentioned naties escalated. Unable to resolve
the conflict, the desperate officials turned to Charles V for help, the only time
Charles became personally involved in the festivities for his son. The emperor
decided to ban the disobedient, self-centered naties from the procession al-
together, sparing only the English.133 The lesson must have been particularly
bitter for the Florentine and Genoese merchants, who had spared no effort and
131 Philip and Antwerp shared a mutual resentment, and while the 1549 joyous entry can be
regarded as successful in terms of bonding Antwerp citizens, it failed to bond the sover
eign with his subjects. Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity,” passim.
132 SAA, Privilegiekamer (PK), 627, 5 August 1549. Bussels discusses these requests at length
in Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, 5–54.
133 Bussels, “Van Macht en Mensenwerk,” 101, 104. English cloth merchants were most likely
too important for the Habsburgs to risk their resentment. Grapheus describes the incident
in the following words: “Maer mits dat tusschen de Portugaloysen ende de Engelsche,
ende desgelijcx tusschen de Florentijnen ende Geneuoysen, (onbegrepen altijts, wyen
van hen wij hier behooren voren oft na te noemene) sekeren twist geresen was aengaende
het voerrijden. So heft de K.M. [Koninklijke Majesteit] (om alle inconvenienten, die daer
wt hadden mogen volgen, te verhuedene) hen expresselijck doen verbieden mede inne te
commene.” Grapheus, De seer wonderlijcke, f. C verso.
expense in erecting their triumphal arches along the ceremonial route.134 But
ultimately it was a lesson in gemeynte welvaert for both the banned naties and
the entire community, who witnessed their humiliation. The burghers, native
and foreign, could see that putting their own interests first ultimately worked
to everyone’s disadvantage—a message that corresponds with Bruegel’s Tower
of Babel and the story’s more universal condemnation of hubris.
As for the sovereign himself, during the elaborate festivities in September
1549, Philip took three oaths, in which he promised to respect Antwerp’s his-
torical privileges and its charter and assumed the role of the city’s margrave.
In the context of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, the third oath is particularly inter-
esting. It was performed on September 11, the day after the entry itself, “in the
presence of the Chancellors of Brabant, the States of Antwerp and the entire
civic community.”135 Standing before the burghers and the local government at
the Grote Markt, in the heart of the city, Philip once again accepted the terms
of the Blijde Inkomst. But this time, there was one more curious addressee of
Philip’s oath: Druon Antigon, in the form of a seated, twenty-four-foot stat-
ue (figure 17).136 Antigon or Antigoon was the legendary giant who guarded
a bridge on the Scheldt and extracted tolls from passing ships. When a sailor
refused to pay, Antigon would cut off his right hand. But the giant eventually
met his match in a Roman soldier (or a prince—the sources are not clear),
Silvius Brabo. Brabo cut off both of Antigon’s hands and threw them into the
river. Antwerp, whose Dutch name “Antwerpen” derives, according to this leg-
end, from “hand werpen”—to throw hands—was founded at the spot formerly
guarded by the giant. No longer hindered by Antigon’s abhorrent tax-collect-
ing practices, the newly founded community could now benefit fully from the
excellent location and develop a thriving economy.137 The triumph over An-
tigon was a triumph over despotism and tyranny—qualities that Franciscus
Philelphus associated with Nimrod, the giant from the story of the tower of Ba-
bel.138 During the 1549 entry, the papier-mâché figure was seated in front of the
(temporary) Town Hall, whose façade was decorated with what was believed
to be the authentic shoulder bone of Antigon; Antwerp’s legendary past and
134 The nations banned from the horseback procession were still allowed to keep their ephe
meral decorations.
135 Guicciardini, Beschryvinghe van alle de Nederlanden, 73. For the English translation, see
Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity,” 61.
136 Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity,” 56. The head of the figure of Antigonus has survived
and is currently in the collection of the MAS Museum in Antwerp.
137 Meadow, “Ritual and Civic Identity,” 57.
138 Philelphus, Conviviorum Francisci Philelphi, 139–40.
70 Chapter 1
Figure 17 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Druon Antigon on the Groote Markt, 1550, woodcut, from
Cornelius Grapheus, De seer schooner, triumphelijcke incompst (Antwerp: Gillis
van Diest, 1550), Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute
photo: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2866–466)
contemporary civic identity became visually interwoven. During the oath-tak-

ing ceremony, Philip approached the giant, who “lowered his head … as if he
was submissively subservient,” and delivered a speech inscribed on the pedestal:
“I, one who says had acted violently at this place in earlier times, (though
I am still dangerous by virtue of the greatness of my body, my cruelty has
nonetheless diminished), gladly give way and hand myself (Oh mighty Prince
Philip) willingly over to your power.”139 In this interaction with Philip, Antigon
was not necessarily a completely negative figure: he embodied the strength
and ancient origins of Antwerp, but acknowledged Philip’s victory as the new
Silvius Brabo. The exchange was an ambivalent one: it pointed toward a poten-
tial conflict between Antwerp and its ruler, but also brought the promise of a
peaceful relationship, should Antigon keep his word to Philip.
The oath at the Grote Markt and Philip’s meeting with Antigon marked the
culmination of his entry into Antwerp—an entry that was focused primarily
on showcasing the commercial prowess of the community. Antigon’s tyranni-
cal practice admonished Philip that one of his main duties was to secure the
city’s economy. But, while the Habsburgs were the primary beneficiaries of
the metropolis’s wealth, their uncompromised Catholicism interfered with the
community’s financial interests. A number of edicts published in the mid-six-
teenth century against Antwerp’s New Christians and foreigners threatened
their residency in the city and the economy of both Antwerp and all of the Low
Countries, which was based on the symbiotic relationship of international
trading nations and local merchants. Suspicious of their faith and intentions
for settling in the city, the Habsburgs began to require certificates of Catholic
orthodoxy from all newcomers, and strove for a greater transparency of the
public sphere by introducing signs on façades with information about
the owner’s profession. In fact, when in September 1549 the city celebrated the
economic interdependence between naties and the city and beseeched Charles
and Philip to protect the trade, the community was in the middle of a crisis
caused by the emperor’s extraordinarily strict ordinance against the New
Christians. Its harsh language had little in common with the optimistic rheto-
ric of the joyous entry.
As we shall see in the next chapter, those legal documents and the increas-
ingly hostile attitude toward foreigners influenced the patterns of domestic
decoration as a strategy of maintaining the community’s Catholic appearance.
Thus, while The Tower of Babel stimulated the strengthening of social and pro-
fessional bonds among Antwerp burghers by advocating the precedence of the
139 Grapheus, De seer wonderlijke, LI r; for English translation, see Meadow, “Ritual and Civic
Identity,” 57–58.
72 Chapter 1
common good over private profit in business ventures, it was the images of
conversion that explicitly addressed the concerns about the religious and po-
litical orthodoxy of the city. As would be the case with Bruegel’s Conversion of
Saint Paul, they also asked the question of what conversion meant in this pe-
riod of profound confessional and demographic changes.
Conversion on Display 73
Chapter 2
Conversion on Display: Imperial Politics, Religious

Transformation, and Socioeconomic Stability in
Antwerp
Sixteenth-century Antwerp probate inventories register a curious phenom-

enon: nine such documents compiled between 1574 and 1583 mention paint-
ings of the conversion of Saint Paul, while before 1574, the same theme is
completely absent in similar records. During this single decade, these nine
images were found in houses differing in size and prestige of location; their
owners belonged both to the middle class and the elite, and represented dif-
ferent professions and trades. In four cases when the inventory also gives the
specific location of the painting in the house, they were always hung in ei-
ther the voorcamer (literally: front room) or the neercamer (lower room).1 Both
types of rooms were located on the ground floor and would have been the pri-
mary spaces frequented by visitors. As the neercamer was the best room in
the house, it typically contained the most precious works of art, making them
available to guests for a prolonged period of time.2 The social function of this
space is confirmed by the presence of musical instruments, while copies of the
Bible and prayer books listed in inventories indicate that the room would have
also served as a center of social and religious life for the family, relatives, and,
possibly, visitors. The decoration of neercameren was then paramount both to
the owners’ public self-fashioning and private rituals of the family. In the pe-
riod of religious transformation, such a dual significance sheds light on the
employment of biblical narratives in shaping new public and private religious
1 The specific location of the neercamer within a house is difficult to determine; sometimes it
stood on its own, in which case it would have been the first room one entered; larger houses
had separate small and large neercameren, in which the layout became more complicated. In
some cases, a neercamer was preceded by a voorcamer; in that case, the neercamer was still
the room in which one would receive visitors, but it was the decoration of the voorcamer that
was most immediately accessible to them.
2 Those types of spaces align with Erving Goffman’s theory of human behavior as a stage per-
formance, which John Loughman and John Montias adopted in their analysis of domestic
decoration in the Dutch Republic. Loughman and Montias considered the reception rooms
of the house as the “front stage areas where the owner presented his self-image” and distin-
guished them from more private “backstage” rooms. John Loughman and John Michael
Montias, Public and Private Spaces. Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses (Zwolle:
Waanders, 2000), 71.

74 Chapter 2
identities. In this chapter, we will see how the theme of the conversion of Saint
Paul specifically accommodated the Antwerp population’s individual and col-
lective confessional and spiritual needs.
1 Images of the Conversion of Saint Paul in Probate Inventories and

the Location of Works of Art
None of the nine inventories lists authors of paintings, but there is strong cir-
cumstantial evidence suggesting that the earliest mentioned painting of the
conversion of Saint Paul, from a 1574 inventory of the home of Michiel van
Bredesteyn, was in fact Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s version.3 A renowned sur-
geon and consummate collector, van Bredesteyn owned fifty-four paintings
(including a mythological scene by Frans Floris), which were distributed
among twenty-four rooms of his house, De Gulden Tonne, at Minderbroeder-
straat. The Conversion of Saint Paul was displayed in the neercamer, alongside
nine other paintings of various genres. The clerk recorded it as “een schilderye
van Paulus bekeeringe op panel in lijsten,” a description that, alone among the
paintings in the nine inventories, matches formal characteristics of Bruegel’s
image. Van Bredesteyn’s esteemed profession, the prestigious location of his
opulent residence, and the ownership of Floris’s composition bring him into
the circle of collectors such as Niclaes Jonghelinck, Jan Noirot, and Aernout
Pels, all of whom were confirmed owners of Bruegel’s paintings. Finally, van
Bredesteyn’s inventory lists new types of paintings associated with the Ant-
werp School, such as market scenes and landscapes. Thus, he had the money
and status that would have allowed him to commission a large panel from one
of the most famous local painters, something that, as we can judge from the
types of images he collected, he would have been very much interested in do-
ing.
Three other collectors, in whose cases we know the specific locations of
paintings, hung their depictions of the conversion of Saint Paul in the cleyn
voercamer, cleyn neercamere, and voorcamer aen de strate. In the first case, our
knowledge about the owner is very limited: the painting is listed in the 1583 in-
ventory of Lucia Roelants, married to Toussaint Giot of unknown profession.4
The couple lived in a house with eleven rooms and decorated with fourteen
3 SAA, PK, 465f 52r–61v. Van Bredesteyn was registered as a member of the surgeons’ guild in
1559. A. van Schevensten, “Naamlijsten van Antwerpsche geneesheeren, chirurgijns, enz. op-
gemaakt uit de voornaamest fondsen van het Stadsarchief,” Antwerpsch Archievenblad 7 (1932),
136.
4 SAA, PK, 1173f 91v–99v.
paintings, which included religious compositions and portraits. The house of

another collector, Jacques de Lengaigne, much more closely resembled the
residence of Michiel van Bredesteyn. But unlike van Bredesteyn, de Lengaigne
was a merchant, and arguably a very successful one. The inventory compiled in
1583 mentions sixty-one paintings decorating twenty-one rooms of his house
at Kammenstraat.5 De Lengaigne’s anonymous Conversion of Saint Paul was
displayed in his cleyn neercamere, the smaller of the two reception rooms,
which nevertheless contained more paintings, eleven, than any other room in
the house. It shared this space with allegorical paintings of the Virgin Mary,
Saint Jerome, Ecce Homo, Crucifixion, and Holy Face, a tondo with God the
Father, and allegories of Peace and Truth. (The subjects of two other paint-
ings remain unidentified.) The decoration of de Lengaigne’s cleyn neercamere
is unique in its uniformly religious iconography. The majority of rooms in con-
temporary Antwerp houses offered a combination of genres ranging from Old
and New Testament subjects and devotional images to classical mythology, al-
legories, and portraiture. This was true for all other rooms in de Lengaigne’s
residence, e.g., the large neercamer was decorated both with religious paint-
ings and portraits of family members. The cleyn neercamer, though, a more
intimate but nevertheless socially important space, had clearly been desig-
nated specifically for a range of religious practices, which would have been
stimulated by specific paintings on display. Images of Ecce Homo, Crucifixion,
and Holy Face would have inspired devotion by helping their viewers to medi-
tate upon the episodes of Christ’s passion, an objective that would have been
complemented by the narrative panel of The Conversion of Saint Paul, inspiring
its viewers to a profound change of life. Conversion, however, was achieved
not only through prayer, but also through the study of the scripture; the ulti-
mate example of such a scholar was, naturally, Saint Jerome, represented in
another image in the same room. Overall, while homogenously religious, the
decoration of the cleyn neercamer exemplifies the coexistence of traditional
(Ecce Homo; Holy Face; Virgin Mary) and novel sacred subjects (The Conversion
of Saint Paul), proving that rather than replacing long-established themes, new
types of religious images complemented them, responding to the diversity of
spiritual needs and interests in the era of religious transformation.
The importance of Jacques de Lengaigne’s inventory extends beyond the
information it offers about religious art in Antwerp ca. 1570–1580 and images
of the conversion of Saint Paul: thanks to the inclusion of the inventory of the
winckel (storeroom or office), it also provides invaluable information about
strategies for displaying works of art in primarily professional spaces. In his
5 SAA, PK, 1173f 176 e.v.

76 Chapter 2
office, de Lengaigne hung a portrait of the King of France (possibly alluding

to his nationality), two Roman tronies, and three maps, including one of the
Low Countries. We do not know the mercantile specialization of de Lengaigne,
but maps often decorated merchants’ offices and houses. Their function was
both practical and symbolic: they provided information necessary to conduct
business transactions, while also, by marking entrepreneurs’ professional do
minion, projected their mercantile prowess. The last painting in the winckel
recorded in the inventory is a framed allegory of Charity. The representation
of this particular virtue in the merchant’s office underlined his adherence to
Christian values as defined by contemporary discourse, and presented him to
his business partners as someone who contributed to the well-being of the
community rather than being preoccupied only with his own gain.6 Conform-
ing to the rules of decorum, the decoration of de Lengaigne’s office was focused
on conveying an image of him as a trustworthy and successful entrepreneur
with an extensive international business network, with whom one could have
traded securely and profitably.
The final inventory that mentions where exactly The Conversion of Saint
Paul was displayed was that of the house of Hendrik van Beeringen, a tapestry
maker who lived by the Tapissierspand, one of the new markets created by
Gilbert van Schoonbeke.7 His copy of the Conversion hung in the voorcamer
aen de straete, the lower front room by the street. The location of the house
(whose name, Den Beer, was a pun on the owner’s name) suggests that this
room performed the function of a winckel. Other items displayed there includ-
ed a small Ecce Homo painting, a crucifix, portraits of Charles V and Philip II,
and a seemingly random image of a peasant’s kitchen, whose iconographic
novelty, however, matched that of The Conversion of Saint Paul. This selection
projected van Beeringen’s identity as an orthodox Catholic and a loyal subject
of the Spanish Habsburgs, an ideal citizen of Antwerp in a time when the cen-
tral government had become explicitly hostile toward religious and political
dissenters. Two other semipublic rooms of Den Beer presented a more diverse
scope of painterly genres: the neercamer was decorated with a traditional de-
votional image of the Pietà, a painting identified as Palm Sunday (most likely
an Entrance into Jerusalem), portraits of van Beeringen and his wife, paintings
of Saint Jerome and Moses, a Venus and Adonis, and another image of a
peasant, a theme which had become fashionable in that period thanks to
6 On merchants’ self-fashioning as trustworthy and pious, see an excellent essay by Margaret

Carroll: “The Merchant’s Mirror: Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” in Painting and Politics in
Northern Europe: Van Eyck, Bruegel, Rubens, and Their Contemporaries, ed. Margaret D. Carroll
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 2–27.
7 SAA, PK, 3640 f48r–57v.
artists such as Pieter Bruegel, Pieter Aertsen, and Joachim Beuckelaer. Simi-
larly, the decoration of the second voorcamer comprised the painted parable of
the Prodigal Son and the story of the Woman of Samaria, another portrait of
Hendrik with his wife Anna Dijck, a portrait of his father, a landscape, two
more images of Emperor Charles V and Philip II, and een schilderyken van twee
kinderen, which could refer to either a small painting of two children, perhaps
those of Hendrik and Anna or, more likely, the young John the Baptist and
Christ.8 Van Beeringen, a craftsman/artist himself, was clearly a collector in-
terested in novel genres developed by the Antwerp School, while being aware
of the importance of displaying works of art for religious and political self-
fashioning.
The remaining five inventories list copies of The Conversion of Saint Paul
without indicating their specific locations inside the houses. Four of the five
paintings belonged to small-scale merchants and one to a brewer, both occu-
pations whose standard of living was lower than that of the collectors dis-
cussed above. The theme was thus popular across different social strata and
professions. The increasing number of its renditions in Antwerp households
was paralleled by notaries’ growing ability to identify it properly, yet another
testimony to its importance.
The decoration of voorcameren, neercameren, and winckels suggests that
Antwerp collectors in the later sixteenth century used those spaces to provide
visual attestation of their religious and political orthodoxy. As the narrative of
the conversion of Saint Paul describes a total acceptance of the “true faith,” the
topic’s sudden popularity in the second half of the century can be explained as
a part of that strategy. To better understand this correlation between domestic
decoration and confessional self-fashioning, it is worthwhile to look at a few of
those Antwerp collections in whose case we know the denomination of the
owners.9 While they did not include images of Paul, they shed light on how
8 On the terms used in sixteenth-century Netherlandish inventories and their interpretation,

see Maximilian P. J. Martens and Natasja Peeters, “Paintings in Antwerp Houses (1532–
1567),” in Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe, 1450–1750, ed. Neil de Marchi and Hans
J. van Miegroet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 35–53.
9 The clandestine nature of Protestantism in Antwerp renders this type of analysis chal
lenging. As Guido Marnef points out, the available studies of inventories of the confiscated
goods of Protestants who fled the city between 1567 and 1577 and after 1585 are still
insufficient to draw any definite conclusions about the correlation between sectarian
identity and domestic decoration. Nevertheless, he and Carolien de Staelen used the
existing sample to pursue such analysis. Marnef and de Staelen, Antwerp in the Age of
Reformation, 196–201; and Carolien de Staelen, “Spulletjes en hun betekenis in een com
merciele metropool: Antwerpenaren en hun materiële cultuur in de zestiende eeuw”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Antwerp, 2007). See also Maximilian P. J. Martens and Natasja
78 Chapter 2
collectors distributed works of art in their houses to construct the public image
of themselves, and how they reconciled the performance of religious confor-
mity with individual confessional choices.
Our first example is the modest household of a Catholic merchant, Joos de
la Flie (d. 1594), whose entire collection of paintings and small sculptures was
displayed in the neercamer.10 Their iconography encompassed traditional or-
thodox imagery, including The Deposition of the crucified Christ, a few images
of the Virgin Mary, and a nondevotional narrative scene, Lot and His Daugh-
ters. The multiple images of the Virgin in one collection, displayed in the same
room, are not surprising for an Antwerp Catholic: as the patron saint of the
city, Mary had long been a focus of devotion by its residents, and gained even
greater importance during the Counter-Reformation.
The modesty of de la Flie’s collection contrasts with the opulent household
of a Lutheran couple, Jacobuyne Meeus and Jan de Keyser, inventoried after
Jacobuyne’s death in 1593.11 De Keyser was an oudkleerkoper, a merchant-tailor
who purchased, repaired, and sold or auctioned old clothing. Oudkleerkopers
belonged to the tailors’ Guild of Saint Martin, and often lived, like the couple in
question, by the Vrijdagmarkt, the market square that Gilbert van Schoonbeke
created specifically for auctions held every Friday. Meeus and de Keyser owned
over sixty paintings, half of which were in the neercamer. Their subjects ranged
from religious to secular, and revealed the couple’s interest in novel pictorial
genres associated with the Antwerp School, such as landscapes and peasant
paintings. The sense of local pride apparent in their collection was further con-
firmed by their ownership of an image of Saint George, one of Antwerp’s pa-
tron saints. While the collection did not lack examples of traditional religious
imagery, including pictures of the Crucifixion and procession to Calvary, the
majority of biblical paintings depicted novel narrative themes from both the
New and Old Testaments, e.g., The Prodigal Son, The Road to Emmaus, and The
Miraculous Draught of Fish (three themes popular among Protestants), as well
as Abraham and Susanna and the Elders. The neercamer was also decorated
with a tondo portrait of an unidentified pope, an image whose political and
religious correctness was matched by a portrait of King Philip II in the pronk-
keuken. The latter space, either a kitchen intended for display purposes only or
a dining room furnished like a kitchen (a more likely possibility in this case),
was the second most visually rich environment of de Keyser’s and Meeus’s
Peeters, “Antwerp Painting before Iconoclasm: Considerations on the Quantification of

Taste,” in Economia e Arte Secc. XIII–XVIII. Atti della Trentatressima settimana di studi,
edited by S. Cavaciocchi, 875–94 (Florence: Le Monnier, 2002).
10 SAA, PK 1177, nr 185. See de Staelen, “Spulletjes en hun betekenis,” 224.
11 SAA, N, 1176, nr 153. See de Staelen, “Spulletjes en hun betekenis,” 224.
house. Its decoration, like that of the neercamer, featured traditional religious
themes, such as The Last Judgment and an image of Christ, perhaps a Holy Face,
Old Testament narratives, portraits of family members and a likeness of Eras-
mus, tronies, classical subjects, and peasant paintings. The most “Lutheran”
space in the house was the kamer bij de stove, the Netherlandish equivalent of
an Italian studiolo, an example of which we saw in Jeroen Busleyden’s Meche
len residence. In this room, the couple displayed an allegory of Faith, a theme
related to the foundational Lutheran belief Sola Fide, and portraits of the Four
Evangelists, matching the second pillar of Lutheranism—Sola Scriptura—and
stimulating the study of the scripture as a crucial spiritual practice.
Meeus’s and de Keyser’s address at the Vrijdagmarkt invites a comparison
with Hendrik van Beeringen’s house by the Tapissierspand. Both collectors
lived just off the squares where they conducted business, and would have used
the reception rooms of their houses for social and professional purposes. Un-
like modern entrepreneurs, Renaissance merchants socialized in private hous-
es rather than in public spaces;12 however, just like the modern ones, they were
aware of the importance of social meetings for establishing professional net-
works. In line with the decorum and requirements of such spaces, the careful
combination of politically and religiously correct imagery with iconographic
novelty in the neercamer and pronkkeuken successfully negotiated the confes-
sional identity of the owners with their public image.
Our last case study is the household of a Calvinist couple, Anthoinette
Wasteels and Willem Everaert.13 The six rooms of their Meir residence hosted
a collection mirroring, albeit on a more modest scale, the one of de Keyser and
Meeus. The inventory, compiled in 1587, mentions genre scenes, tronies, por-
traits of family members, two copies of Saint Jerome, an image of the Virgin,
and a triptych Adoration of the Magi, which was an immensely popular theme
among the so-called Antwerp Mannerists in the 1520s and 1530s. Wasteels and
Everaert also owned some mythological images, along with novel New Testa-
ment scenes (The Road to Emmaus) and Old Testament ones (Jacob; The Ark of
Noah). Once again, the predilection for novelty, which can also be associated
with the greater familiarity with the Bible among the Protestants, is balanced
here with straightforward Catholic imagery.
We do not know which of the paintings in the discussed collections were
purchased by their late-sixteenth-century owners, and which were the family
12 Loughman and Montias, Public and Private Spaces, 71. While the authors focus on the
seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, their conclusion is as applicable to sixteenth-
century Antwerp.
13 SAA, R2221, fol. 70. See de Staelen, “Spulletjes en hun betekenis,” 223–24.
80 Chapter 2
inheritance. Likewise, we can only speculate whether the Lutheran and Cal-
vinist couples removed any other more explicitly Protestant items after 1585.
Still, the inventories highlight the distinction between images displayed in the
semipublic spaces of their houses and those relegated to more intimate rooms.
The example of Jacobuyne Meeus and Jan de Keyser’s house is especially tell-
ing in this respect. While the neercamer and the pronkkeuken included both
examples of novel pictorial themes and traditional religious imagery, as well as
likenesses of Philip II and a pope (testifying to the couple’s loyalty to both state
and church), the decoration of the kamer bij de stove, where only the closest
and most trusted friends of the couple would have been admitted, allowed for
a more authentic Lutheran imagery. In chapter 4 we shall see how a rich mer-
chant, Adriaen Vierendeel, in all likelihood a Lutheran, displayed his anony-
mous painting of The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist in the achterkamer of his
house: while biblical, this theme was associated in the later sixteenth century
with Protestant hedge-preaching (known as haagpreek or veltpredicatie) and
could thus have raised suspicions of heresy.14
2 “Alzo tot onzer kennesse ghecommen es”: Habsburg Legislation

and the Culture of External Display in Antwerp
By the second half of the sixteenth century, a careful choice of works of art for
semipublic spaces had become more important than ever in Antwerp. The me-
tropolis was relying increasingly on the external display of religious and politi-
cal orthodoxy as it struggled reconciling Habsburg anti-immigration policies
with its economic reliance on diversity. Since foreigners living in Antwerp
were the pillar of its trade, the Habsburgs’ increasingly suspicious attitude to-
ward them affected the whole community.
One of the most important groups for the Antwerp economy were the Por-
tuguese, active in such crucial sectors as the spice trade, banking, and medi-
cine. Initially, all Portuguese immigrants into the Low Countries belonged to
Old Christian families. They moved to Antwerp primarily for economic rea-
sons, either directly from the Iberian Peninsula or from Bruges once it lost its
position as a center of trade. As early as 1511, they had acquired a house for their
natie at Kipdorp and bargained for considerable trading privileges and tax ex-
emptions.15 Over the next few decades, these established, wealthy Catholic
14 SAA PK 1173, fol. 37–50.

15 Ephraim Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs à Anvers (Antwerpen) (Antwerp: Imprimerie Excel
sior, n.d.), 11–12. Later in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese acquired another house in
families became gradually outnumbered both by their own considerably poor-

er relatives who left the Kingdom of Portugal in the late 1530s and 1540s, usu-
ally at a young age and unmarried, and, crucially, by New Christians.16 The
distinction between those old and new immigrants began to be blurred, to the
extent that in the 1550s and 1560s, New Christians were usually referred to as
Portingaloys (Portugaloisen), because all New Christians in Antwerp had come
from Portugal, and despite the fact that not all Portuguese immigrants were
baptized Jews. We find an example of such a generalization in a letter from
Morillon, a provost in Leuven, to Cardinal Granvelle from September 29, 1566.17
Morillon writes about the Portuguese living in the city whom he believes are
Jews, and accuses them of religious dissimulation. According to the provost,
they care little about Christianity but know how to maintain the outward
Antwerp, whose ownership raised some controversy and caused a major conflict among
members of the natie. Wyffels, “Een conflict in de Portugese Natie te Antwerpen in 1554,”
Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 1 (1953): 28–32.
16 Initially more tolerant than Reconquista and post-Reconquista Spain—and, as such, a
popular destination of Jewish families expelled from Spain—the Kingdom of Portugal
entered the period of forced baptisms and conversions when Manuel I married Spanish
Infanta Isabella of Aragon in 1497 and, after her death in 1498, her sister Maria of Aragon.
In 1497, Manuel ordered all Jewish children to be baptized, and one year later extended
forced conversion to the adult population. However, being aware of the economic
importance of the Sephardic community, Manuel wanted to avoid their emigration by
issuing an edict promising its members a twenty-year grace period during which their
religious practices were not to be investigated. Thus, as long as they adhered to Catholicism
in public, they could in fact continue to practice Judaism. Their wealth also helped them
to gain considerable influence in Rome and escape the persecution of the Inquisition.
These favorable circumstances changed in the middle of the century, when the Sephardic
community lost the favor of both the Portuguese king and the pope, and the Council of
Trent mandated close investigation of the New Christian communities across Europe.
Despite the relative freedom enjoyed by Portuguese marranos in the first decades of the
sixteenth century, Manuel I and João III, under pressure from the Spanish monarchs,
harshened their policies. Many families were forced to leave, while others voluntarily
chose to do so. Many refugees decided to settle in Antwerp, where, as we shall see, they
could live safely only until ca. 1550. Even in exile, their fate depended on the situation in
the Iberian Peninsula, since Charles V suspected that if marrano families decided to
emigrate after the harshening of regulations in Portugal, they must have been guilty of
practicing Judaism in secrecy. On conversos in early modern Europe, see Kevin Ingram,
ed., The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond, vol. 1: Departures and
Change (Leiden: Brill, 2009); on Jews and New Christians in Portugal around 1500, see
Kaspar von Greyerz, “Portuguese Conversos on the Upper Rhine and the Converso
Community of Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Social History 14 (1989), esp. 59–62.
17 Granvelle was extremely unpopular and resented in the Low Countries, and was even
tually moved to another post in March 1564.
82 Chapter 2
appearance of conformity in order to demonstrate the “holy faith.”18 It appears

that around that time, the term Portingaloys indeed became a synonym for
“Hebrew.”19 Because of the confusion over the religious and ethnic identity of
Portuguese immigrants, the tightening of anti-immigration policies by the
Spanish sovereigns of the Low Countries eventually affected the entire natie in
Antwerp, including well-established Catholic families.
Thanks to their economic importance as a part of the Portuguese immigra-
tion, until about 1550 Nyeuwe Kerstenen enjoyed relative freedom and respect
in the Low Countries.20 Although between 1526 and 1537 New Christian fami-
lies were officially allowed to stay in the city only thirty days, this policy was
rarely enforced, encouraging the exiles to settle in wealthy, metropolitan Ant-
werp. Thus, when in 1532 over a dozen were arrested and put on trial under the
charge of Judaizing, it came as a shock to many burghers, who acknowledged
their importance to the local economy. One of those arrested was Diego
Mendes, the representative of a bank founded by his family back in Lisbon.
Portuguese natie, members of other trading colonies, and several Brabant of-
ficials all protested in vain. The prisoners were released only after a large bail
was paid, and King Henry VIII of England personally intervened on their be-
half. The monarch had a strong personal interest in getting involved in the
18 Correspondance du Cardinal Granvelle (1565–1586), vol. 1, ed. Edmond Poullet (Brussels,

1877), 501.
19 According to Göttler, by 1630 a new term, Lusitani, entered episcopal records with the
meaning Judae. Christine Göttler: “Securing Space in a Foreign Place: Peter Paul Rubens’s
Saint Theresa for the Portuguese Merchant-Bankers in Antwerp,” The Journal of the Walters
Art Gallery 57 (1999): 145.
20 There is no evidence that the Portuguese trading nation was ever concerned by the
religious identity of the immigrants. The contrary seems to be true: the natie appears to
have been very supportive of all its members and united in its belief that all immigrants
from the Kingdom of Portugal should be granted the same rights. More fundamentally,
the question of the religious beliefs of the Antwerp New Christians should really be
considered in the context of marranos’ identity across Europe. The traditional distinction
between “authentic” and “dissimulating” Catholics has been challenged by recent
scholarship, which advances a more nuanced vision of the converts’ religious lives. See
essays in Ingram, The Conversos and Moriscos. Ephraim Schmidt has also suggested that
New Christians in Antwerp might have joined clandestine Protestant communities (see:
Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 33–34). However, this hypothesis is not very convincing for
two reasons: first, the lavish lifestyle preferred by the Portuguese contrasted sharply with
Calvinist moderation and Anabaptist restraint; second, New Christians already seemed
suspicious to the authorities and would have put themselves at a great risk if they asso
ciated with any of the Protestant communities. Hans Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen
(1567–1648). Zur Geschichte einer Minderheit (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977), 339–42.
Simply put, Nyeuwe Kerstenen had enough troubles with their status as it was without
joining persecuted Protestants.
case: the bank run by the Mendes’s family was one of the main creditors to the
English Crown.21 This incident prompted some Nyeuwe Kerstenen to leave Ant
werp. Diego Mendes himself considered departure, but eventually stayed in
the metropolis another decade, until his death in 1542. In his last will, Mendes
bequeathed 600 guldens to Maagdenhuis—the same charitable institution
that was supported by Gilbert van Schoonbeke.22
Possibly one of the reasons behind Mendes’s decision to stay in Antwerp
was an edict issued in 1537 by Charles V, which approved the New Christians’
permanent settlement. The ordinance made them subject to the same finan-
cial and civic obligations that were mandatory for all other foreign merchants,
and granted them the same privileges.23 However, this change of legal status
was not as beneficial for the Nyeuwe Kerstenen as they might have expected.
The extraordinarily wealth of many of those families had long provoked envy
among other international merchants, especially the Spanish, who, as subjects
of the same monarch, were not eligible for the tax exemptions enjoyed by oth-
er foreigners, and who resented the fact that many Portuguese immigrants
were of Spanish descent. As soon as the residence of the New Christian fami-
lies became less conditional, the Spanish hostility against them increased.24
International circumstances also worked to their disadvantage. As a result of
the intensified persecution on the Iberian Peninsula, much larger groups of
marranos began to arrive in the Low Countries. Charles V distrusted them as
potential supporters of the Turks in his wars against the Ottoman Empire. Si-
multaneously—and crucially for the external display of religious orthodoxy—
the dissemination of Protestantism across the Habsburg dominion rendered
anyone exhibiting any signs of confessional nonconformity suspicious in the
eyes of the emperor.
Only three years after the publication of the edict allowing New Christians
to stay in Antwerp, Charles V issued a new document addressed to “diverse
persons, living here [in the Low Countries] thanks to the Imperial privilege
and called New Christians, who are not actually Christians but Jews or
21 Cecil Roth, Histoire des marranes (Paris: Liana Levi, 1990), 188. The ambassador to King
João III in the Low Countries also advocated the innocence of the arrested men, proven
by the financial support of the Mendes family for the military campaign against the Turks.
Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 17.
22 In 1554, another Portuguese merchant, Merten Lopez, also made a donation to Maag
denhuis. Geudens, Van Schoonbeke en het Maagdenhuis, 35, 52.
23 Roth, Histoire des marranes, 188.
24 Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 13.
84 Chapter 2
Maranen, and practice Jewish rituals in the privacy of their houses.”25 The or-
dinance’s underlying premise was the distinction between the public and pri-
vate behavior of the immigrants, as it emphasized that religious dissimulation
was a punishable crime, and urged all citizens to denounce anyone whom they
suspected of participating in clandestine Jewish ceremonies.
Even though the law introduced in 1540 led to arrests—a spice merchant,
Emmanuel Serrano, was one of the victims26—the ordinance was still rela-
tively moderate compared to the policies introduced between 1544 and 1549.
Gradually Charles V moved to expel New Christian families who had arrived in
the Low Countries after 1543 and prohibited the settlement of any new ones.27
This date is easy to explain: it is the year when the Inquisition began to operate
officially in the Kingdom of Portugal. In the eyes of the Habsburgs, anyone who
left Portugal after 1543 was more likely to be practicing Judaism in secrecy. The
edict published on July 17, 1549 revoked the privileges granted to New Chris-
tians in 1537, and condemned them as guilty of religious dissimulation and
supporting the Turks. They were considered both enemies of the Holy Catholic
Faith and the Holy Roman Empire.28 If the families who arrived after 1543 were
to stay in the Low Countries, they would face capital punishment and confisca-
tion of their goods.
The 1549 edict ended with a warning that no one was to claim ignorance of
this new policy, as it had been broadly and repeatedly announced. But this
clause was problematic. The ordinance was published in Brussels and Ghent,
but not in Antwerp, whose magistrate refused to do so. Acknowledging the
economic importance of the New Christians for the metropolis’s prosperity,
Nikolaas van der Meeren, Antwerp’s exterior burgomaster, began long and dif-
ficult negotiations on their behalf with the Spanish government. These are
worth discussing here in some detail, as they provide a fascinating testimony of
contemporary appreciation of Antwerp’s diversity and, as such, form a
25 Génard, “Personnes poursuivies le ‘faict de religion,’” Antwerpsch Archievenblad 7 (n.d.):

456. The ordinance is discussed in Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 13.
26 Génard, “Personnes poursuivies,” 450.
27 Placcaerten van Vlaenderen, ordonnanciën, statuten, edicten en placaten, ghepubliceert in
de landen van herwaert-over, byzonder in Vlaenderen (Ghent: Van den Steene, 1559), 201;
Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 23–24; Génard, “Personnes poursuivies,” 377–79.
28 This conclusion is based on a somewhat tautological argument: Charles V accuses New
Christians of religious dissimulation and supporting the Ottoman Empire because some
families have voluntarily left the Low Countries for the Levant, where they have surely
gone back to openly practicing Judaism, but does not take into consideration that their
so-called voluntary departure was caused by the increasingly hostile policies against New
Christians across Europe.
valuable context for both The Conversion of Saint Paul and The Tower of Babel.29
Justifying the magistrate’s decision to withhold the publication of the Imperial
edict, in his first petition to the regent Mary of Hungary van der Meeren ana-
lyzed, paragraph by paragraph, the importance of the Portuguese merchants
for the entire community.30 According to van der Meeren, the Portuguese were
indispensable as creditors to entrepreneurs in the Low Countries and abroad.
This position often came with long-term obligations, and were they to aban-
don them, the entire city would feel the financial burden.31 The mayor also
pointed out to the regent that, while the edict seemed to apply only to the most
recent immigrants, it had caused controversy among the entire Portuguese na-
tie, whose older members were now considering leaving the city voluntarily. If
this happened, van der Meeren warned, other foreigners might follow in their
footsteps, given that their businesses depended on commodities traded by the
Portuguese. Because the departure of one group of merchants would result in
“dommaige commune de la ville” (“universal damage to the city”), it should be
the government’s priority to sustain its unique, integral character rather than
following an unreasonable prejudice against some of its members. We encoun-
ter here the same belief in the common good of the community that character-
ized the literary discourse of the mid-sixteenth century.
What van der Meeren really proposed was the creation of a new collective
identity for Antwerp, one in which religious choices and ethnic descent were
of secondary importance. However, Mary of Hungary rejected his common-
sense arguments. In vain, the mayor sought the support of Cardinal Granvelle,
who was known to have a large influence on the regent. The resistance to pub-
lishing the edict resulted in a long exchange of letters between Antwerp and
Spanish authorities, eventually reaching the emperor himself.32 Disillusioned
by the Habsburgs’ uncompromising position and the definite order that he
publish the edict, the mayor wrote in his diary that the city had been suffering
for a long time now, and perhaps there was not much more to lose, but now the
29 Nikolaas van der Meeren’s petition is reprinted in Génard, “Personnes poursuivies,” 377–
79.
30 Unlike some other trading nations, the Portuguese colony was known for keeping close
personal, social, and professional contacts within the natie, typically strengthened
through marriages. As a close-knit community, they formed a unified front when some of
the members were arrested, and when Charles V tightened his policies against New
Christians.
31 The majority of the Portuguese Nyeuwe Kerstenen in Antwerp were entrepreneurs spe
cializing in international transactions; others were physicians and small-scale merchants.
32 Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 24–28.
86 Chapter 2
entire country would be ruined and destroyed.33 The entry is dated September
30, 1549, nineteen days after Antwerp and its sovereigns celebrated interna-
tional trade during Philip’s joyous entry.
Nikolaas van der Meeren was correct in his pessimism. On May 30, 1550,
Charles ordered the New Christians who had arrived after 1543 to leave within
a month, while all others were mandated to provide evidence of being goede
Kerstenen.34 Failure to obey these orders would result in capital punishment
and confiscation of property, as would sheltering of New Christians. For the
first time in Antwerp’s history, a number of merchants, not only those of Por-
tuguese origin, indeed decided to leave. This witch-hunt atmosphere was cer-
tainly not conducive to business, but its end was nowhere to be seen. On
November 25, 1564, Philip II wrote from Madrid to his sister Margaret of Parma
in Brussels, urging her to tackle immediately the clandestine Jewish commu-
nity in Antwerp, who, according to disquieting rumors, gathered in secret syna-
gogues practicing circumcision and celebrating other religious rituals.35 Those
among the New Christian families who managed to stay in Antwerp continued
to suffer from the stigma of secret Judaizers in the seventeenth century, and
validated their Catholic faith by supporting religious foundations in the public
space of churches.36
33 Schmidt, L’Histoire des Juifs, 28. Not surprisingly, Nikolaas van der Meeren served only one
term as Antwerp’s exterior burgomaster, unlike the majority of his colleagues.
34 Placcaerten van Vlaenderen, ordonnanciën, statuten, 202–4.
35 Correspondance de Philippe II, vol. 1, 327. For a short discussion about the alleged clan
destine synagogue in Antwerp, see J. Denucé, “Een geheime Synagoge te Antwerpen in de
XVIde eeuw,” Antwerpsch Archievenblad 3, 2nd ser. (1929): 151–54, and Schmidt, L’Histoire
des Juifs, 34–35.
36 See two essays by Christine Göttler: “Securing Space,” 133–51, and “Religiöse Stiftungen als
Dissimulation? Die Kapellen der portugiesischen Kaufleute in Antwerpen,” in Stiftungen
und Stiftungswirklichkeiten. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Michael Borgolte
(Berlin: Akademie, 2000), 279–305. In contrast to those public foundations, research on
New Christian households in early modern Antwerp is particularly difficult for a few
reasons. We do not know from inventories whether a given Portuguese family was of Old
or New Christian descent; thus, we can determine neither differences nor similarities
between collections of those two groups of Portuguese immigrants. In addition, the
sample of those inventories is fairly small, making it difficult to compare them against
Antwerp records as a whole. However, some conclusions have been offered by Natasja
Peeters in “Art Fever: Art in Houses of Iberian Residents in Antwerp: A Study of Confis
cation Inventories (1532–1567),” Dutch Crossing: a Journal of Low Countries Studies 1 (2008):
71–94. Peeters notes that Portuguese families, many of whom were extraordinary wealthy,
shared the Iberian predilection for a lavish lifestyle, luxurious commodities, and paintings
commissioned from the most celebrated local painters, from which it follows that the
Portuguese kunstliefhebbers were open to the novel iconographic subjects and genres
Portuguese New Christians were not the only group whose Catholic ortho-
doxy prompted the Habsburgs to take legal action. The sovereigns believed
that cosmopolitan Antwerp made it all too easy for disguised Protestant
preachers to pass for merchants or craftsmen. To prevent such occurrences, in
April 1550 they issued an edict that required all newcomers to produce a cer-
tificate of membership in the Catholic Church prior to their settlement in the
Low Countries. The Antwerp magistrates, again concerned about the impact of
this new law on the local economy, persuaded the Spanish authorities to make
an exception for international merchants.37 However, the city’s success at cre-
ating this exception proved short-lived after the magistrates additionally re-
quested that the edict not compromise the city’s privileges. Discontent with
the magistrates’ growing expectations, the Spanish authorities forced them to
publish the original document on November 5, 1550.38 It was published again
seven years later, on December 12, 1558,39 and the most extensive version was
introduced on October 6, 1565, with a clause that it was to be renewed every six
months.40 According to Philip II, judges were in no position to dispute this or
other antiheresy placards or to refuse to implement them—it was he himself
who was responsible for their content. But local officials nonetheless found
ways to obstruct what the king considered justice; for instance, many trials of
developed by the Antwerp School. In addition to New Testament themes such as Christ in
the House of Mary and Martha, Spanish and Portuguese collectors owned more Old
Testament paintings than did Antwerp burghers in general. It would be tempting to
suggest that perhaps this fondness for the Old Testament stems from their Jewish descent,
and, even if it does not testify to their secret adherence to Judaism, that it speaks to their
greater familiarity with the Bible compared to the average Catholic audience. However,
any further study of Portuguese households and the functions of interior decorations
would need to be preceded by more thorough research on patterns of civic sociability and
the social and professional networks of this colony.
37 Duke, Dissident Identities, 85.
38 Génard, “Index der Gebodboeken,” 241. B. A. Vermaseren has suggested that the emperor
only required foreigners to present proof of Catholic orthodoxy if they caused trouble in
the community. B. A. Vermaseren, “The Life of Antonio del Corro (1527–1591) before His
Stay in England, vol. 2: Minister in Antwerp,” Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgiques 61
(1990): 178–79. However, circumstantial evidence suggests that if the 1550 edict was not
exercised, it was thanks to the resistance of Antwerp magistrates rather than sudden
leniency by the Habsburgs.
39 Génard, “Index der Gebodboeken,” 265.
40 Génard, “Ordonnantien van het Antwerpsch Magistraat,” 378. Occasionally these later
editions of the edict were updated to address the dynamically changing situation in
Antwerp.
88 Chapter 2
religious dissidents were postponed because of insufficient number of schepe

nen (aldermen) would show up.41
Besides the actual legal regulations, it is the language of the 1565 ordinance
that makes this document particularly interesting. Its introduction stressed
just how turbulent the current times were, blaming the state of affairs on the
foreigners who had been coming to Antwerp to lead astray simple people and
cause trouble in the entire community. Once again, it was the common good
and, conversely, the common threat that required taking legal measures and
enforcing collective responsibility for events in Antwerp. The population tar-
geted by this ordinance was particularly extensive: the first-time foreign im-
migrants arriving with the intention of settling down in the Scheldestad,
former residents returning after a long stay abroad, residents renting rooms to
international merchants and craftsmen, artisans hiring foreign apprentices;
and finally, current members of the naties. The first two groups had to provide
the authorities with proof of their former residence, a certificate of active
membership in the Catholic Church, and two or three letters from “trustwor-
thy citizens” who could testify to their “good name and faith” while they were
living abroad; alternatively, they could bring forward two or three witnesses to
attest to their honest intentions to settle in Antwerp. All citizens who lodged
foreign tenants and all craftsmen who hired nonnative apprentices were obli-
gated to request from them the same documentation. Finally, if an immigrant
wanted to join a trading nation, its current members had to confirm his bona
fides as well. As the presence of Calvinist and Lutheran ministers in the city
proves, the system had its loopholes. Still, such a thorough “background check”
was burdensome for both immigrants and residents, and was resented as hin-
dering the economic advancement of the city.
While the magistrates resisted the publication of ordinances issued by
Charles and, once they had no choice but to publish them, underlined that
they were not responsible for the regulations, the increasing radicalization of
Spanish politics imposed the necessity for all Antwerp burghers to keep up ap-
pearances of Catholic identity.42 The rhetoric of these documents and the re-
peated admonitions that every citizen was required to report crypto-Jews
suggest that much of the information the government had about Nyeuwe Ker-
stenen came from denunciations and rumors based on close observation of a
41 Despite this blunt language, there appear to have been no cases of arrests of “negligent
judges.” Woltjer, “Public Opinion,” 93, 105.
42 The edict published in October 1565 clearly indicated that the guidelines had been
established by King Philip II and Governess Margaret of Parma.
person’s appearance in public, clothing, behavior, and purchased food, as di-

etary habits provide copious evidence about religious identity.
This close observation enforced by the government threatened Antwerp
burghers should they fail to report any Jews and promised them a reward if
they brought any religious dissidents to their attention. It resulted in a culture
in which one’s Catholic orthodoxy was assessed on the basis of visual appear-
ances. The authorities often seem to have been informed about the religious
dissimulation of “certain persons,”43 and most of the edicts opened with state-
ments such as “Alzo tot onzer kennesse ghecommen es” and “Alzo onlanghs
tonser kennesse ghecommen zijnde”—“It has come to our attention.” In those
circumstances, the external display of religious virtue became a social norm.
The edict published in October 1565 sanctioned this as a legal practice, man-
dating a display of signs on the façades of private houses that identified the
profession of the owner and, if applicable, those of the tenants. Painters were
required to hang the coat of arms of the Guild of Saint Luke; tailors, an image
of tailoring scissors; glove makers, an image of gloves. The largest professional
group, merchants, was divided into several subcategories, each with a different
ascribed emblem.44 It is tempting to think about those signs as advertisements
for the owners’ particular businesses or as a way of confirming their property
rights, but their purpose, in fact, was to secure greater transparency of the local
population’s demographic, professional, and confessional composition. These
markers reinterpreted the relationship between the public and private spheres
by stressing the idea of citizens as members of society, with an identity defined
by their trade. The mere indication of a profession linked every person to a
particular guild, religious confraternity, and/or chamber of rhetoric; it hinted
at one’s wealth, level of education, and literacy. Signs on façades essentially
positioned every resident within all types of urban networks.
Under these circumstances, it is only logical that one way of convincing fel-
low citizens and the government of one’s bona fides—a precondition both for
one’s personal safety and for collective prosperity—would be through a careful
selection of paintings displayed in one’s office or house. Signs introduced by
the 1565 edict established images as an outer display of identity and a truthful
equivalent of verbal attestations of good faith. Because in early modern Ant-
werp these semiotically iconic images were required by law, they became a
43 Information about the New Christians and Protestants was also provided by spies who
penetrated those communities, such as Johann Vuystkinck, who in the 1530s and 1540s
spied on Nyeuwe Kerstenen in the Netherlands and Italy, and Philippe Dauxy, who kept
Margaret of Parma informed about Calvinists’ activities in Antwerp.
44 Génard, “Ordonnantien van het Antwerpsch Magistraat,” 378–84.
90 Chapter 2
mandated component of the comprehensive juridical system of securing one’s

place in the society, rendering the visual urban sphere essential for the cre-
ation of a peaceful community. At a time when individual confessional choices
had collective implications, domestic decoration served both to fashion the
identity of the collectors and members of the community with whom they in-
teracted.
Such an awareness of the importance of external display of virtue inspired
Antwerp’s secretary, Cornelius Grapheus, to commemorate in his diary the
visit to the house of the secretary of the Portuguese natie, Damião de Góis.45
While Grapheus was admiring de Góis’ art collection, the host kneeled in front
of Crucifixion by Quinten Metsys and began praying: “I feel ashamed, O good
Christ, I feel ashamed. I know it is my fault that you, forsaken by all and cruelly
abandoned, are nailed to the cross. I therefore throw myself at your feet as a
supplicant. Yes, I am here, your miserable Damião. Forgive me, forgive, for you,
though innocent, are subject to punishment for the sins of all mankind.”46
While Grapheus’s visit provided de Góis with an opportunity to demonstrate
his Catholicism—especially as it occurred around the time of the infamous
arrests of a dozen New Christians—he described it carefully in order to prove
his own orthodoxy. In 1522, Grapheus published Luther’s pamphlets and was
imprisoned. His admiration for de Góis’ piety, with a devotional image as its
locus, reflected positively on the secretary as well. Because the ubiquitous at-
mosphere of suspicion deeply affected the entire community of Antwerp, the
city’s prosperity, if not survival, depended on its success in maintaining ap-
pearances of Catholicism through such conspicuous demonstrations of piety
as the one recorded by Grapheus.
3 Defining Conversion in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries
It would be a hasty conclusion to state that the attestation of collectors’ bona

fides was the sole raison d’être of paintings of the conversion of Saint Paul.
Neercameren, voorcameren, and winckels, in which those images were typically
hung, were a part of the voorhuis, which functioned as a boundary between
public life in the world and private life inside the house.47 Thus, in addition to
being seen by visitors, works of art kept in those spaces also formed an integral
part of the life of the family. They served as exempla for family members,
45 Peeters, “Art Fever,” 71.

46 Peeters, “Art Fever,” 71. The painting in question is now most likely lost.
47 De Staelen, “Spulletjes en hun betekenis,” 207.
inspired religious reflection and discussion, and would have facilitated the re-
ligious upbringing of children.
This dual function of images of the conversion of Saint Paul conforms to the
period understanding of conversion and the exegetical interpretations of the
story. While we usually associate conversion with “the exchange of one set of
religious beliefs for another,” the approach of the sixteenth-century Nether-
landish audience was quite different.48 Their view was much closer to the defi-
nition of conversion coined much earlier, in the pre-Reformation world, when
it denoted either the rejection of paganism or Judaism (as was the case of Au-
gustine and Paul, respectively) or a choice of a particular vocation, e.g., priest-
hood.49 The sixteenth century essentially inherited the understanding of
conversion operative among Devotio Moderna authors, who, as Todd Richard-
son points out, thought of bekeeringe as “turning toward” or “changing direc-
tion.” However, Richardson explains, “this turn of change was not from unbelief
to belief in Christian faith, but from one way of Christian devotion to another.”50
Saint Paul converted, and thus embraced the “right” religion. If a sixteenth-
century Netherlandish Catholic broke with the Roman Church to join a Protes-
tant community, that person was not seen as converting, but as lapsing into
heresy.
This theological understanding of bekeeren and converteren was shared in
civic discourse. In November 1566, two Antwerp officials, Jan Gillis and Coenraet
de Vaille, recounted in a letter to other magistrates the impact of the preaching
of Jean Porthaise, called Portesius, a Catholic priest invited to Antwerp after
the Iconoclastic Fury to prevent further dissemination of Calvinism.51 His mis-
sion was successful: Gillis and de Vaille reported that the preacher “velen con-
verteert tot onzen geloove” (“converted many to our faith”). Meanwhile, none
48 Christine Kooi gives this definition of conversion as an exchange of one denomination/

religion for another in her essay “Conversion in a Multiconfessional Society: The Dutch
Republic,” in Konversion und Konfession in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Matthias Pohlig (Heidel
berg: Gütersloher, 2007), 272. While in general applicable to the early modern period, this
definition is only operative in multiconfessional societies that give an individual the
freedom to choose among different religions, denominations, and/or churches. This was
certainly not the case in the Low Countries under Spanish rule.
49 Ute Lotz-Heumann, Jan-Friedrich Mißfelder, and Matthias Pohlig, “Konversion und
Konfession in der Frühen Neuzeit: Systematische Fragestellungen,” in Pohlig, Konversion
und Konfession, 17.
50 Todd M. Richardson, “Landscaping the Soul: Pieter Bruegel’s Conversion of St. Paul,” in Le
Paysage sacré. Le paysage comme éxègese dans l’Europe de la première modernité/Sacred
Landscape: Landscape as Exegesis in Early Modern Europe, ed. Denis Ribouillault and
Michel Weemans (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2011), 58.
51 Prims, “De Briefwisseling tusschen Antwerpsch Magistraat,” 131.
92 Chapter 2
of the chronicles and letters documenting the so-called hedge-preaching of

Protestant ministers outside of the city walls, whether written by Catholic or
Protestant authors, ever uses either “converteren” or “bekeren” when describing
the effects of those sermons on their audience. The strictly Catholic definition
of those terms was thus not the matter of personal confessional beliefs, but
the standard, universal understanding operative among Netherlandish society.
Significantly enough, neither “converteren” nor “bekeren” is ever used in ref-
erence to the Antwerp New Christians; even the Spanish term “conversos” is
entirely absent from the local sources.52 It appears as if the Catholicism of New
Christians was suspicious and not considered authentic (enough) to describe
them as truly converted.53 For instance, when in 1540 Emmanuel Serrano stood
trial for religious dissimulation, it was mentioned that he had been baptized
and embraced Christianity—“is gedoopt geweest, hebbende aenveerdt het
heylighe kersten geloove”—but the specific words “bekeeren” and “converteren”
are not mentioned anywhere in the trial documents.54
Thanks to the strictly Catholic understanding of conversion, paintings
based on Acts 9 allowed their owners to publicly perform their Catholic iden-
tity.55 At the same time, given that conversion was supposed to totally change
52 “Converso” in Spanish simply means “a convert.” In the early modern period, it was used
both for Jews converted to Catholicism and their descendants. The etymology of
“marrano” is more elusive. In Spanish, the term means “pig,” so the word marranos would
refer to the prohibition of eating pork in Judaism, reflecting a condescending attitude
toward converted Jews. Another explanation suggests that the term derives from the
Hebrew marit ayin, “the appearance of the eye,” and implies that converts kept outward
appearances of Catholicism, but still practiced Judaism. Other etymological possibilities
include the Hebrew mohoram attah (you are excommunicated) and mumar (apostate),
with an added Spanish ending –ano; the Aramaic-Hebrew Mar Anus (forced convert);
Arabic mura’in (hypocrite); and Hebrew Maranatha (The Lord comes). Maranatha is the
second word of the Catholic imprecation Anathema Maranatha, based on Saint Paul’s
First Letter to the Corinthians: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be
anathema, maranatha” (1 Cor. 16:22). Church fathers and later theologians interpreted the
exclamation “Maranatha” as either “The Lord is come,” referring to Christ’s resurrection,
or “May our Lord come,” expressing the expectation of Christ’s Second Coming.
53 The same can be said about local interpretations of the conversion of Saint Paul. Even
though the story is essentially one about a Jewish scholar converted to Christianity quite
literally by force, Dutch priests never used him as an example of a Jew who rejected his
former faith and embraced the gospel of Christ. Instead, the conversion of Saint Paul was
approached as evidence that Christ can overcome the stubbornness and pride of even the
greatest sinner.
54 Génard, “Personnes poursuivies,” 450.
55 While predominant in painting and sometimes found in prints (e.g., Lucas van Leyden,
The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1509, engraving), the theme of Paul’s conversion was
occasionally used in other media as well. The Antwerp Vleeshuis Museum has in its
one’s entire self rather than only the outer appearance, there is something
deeply ambivalent about this opportunistic use of the theme. The complex
composition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting offered, on the other hand,
a sophisticated visual stimulus to the meditation on the nature of true conver-
sion. One can even argue that in its paradoxical contrasts between light and
darkness it criticized from within the contemporary strategy of employing
Acts 9 for the purpose of religious dissimulation.
4 Between Light and Darkness: Bruegel’s Conversion of Saint Paul and

Dutch Vernacular Theatre
“Then [there is] a Conversion of Paul with very subtle rocks.” This single sen-
tence is all that Karel van Mander tells us in his biography of Bruegel about the
image of Saint Paul.56 And perhaps we should agree with him that the moun-
tainous landscape is the most significant aspect of the painting in the way it
structures the composition and provides the key to the panel’s interpretation.
Three-quarters of the image presents an unbroken wall of rock; only its left
side provides an open view of a faraway city, river, and sea, with a few ships
sailing back toward the fertile lowlands. From that distant city travels a con-
tinuous procession of soldiers climbing through a steep, narrow canyon, even-
tually reaching a stagelike space in the center before disappearing into a
narrow passage between the two rocks to the right. Smaller, almost indiscern-
ible groups of travelers populate narrow paths to the left of the tall trees, which
further bisect the entire composition. One of those cedar trees, positioned
collection a ceramic tabletop, dated 1547, decorated with the scene from Acts 9. The
image is most likely based on the 1545 engraving by Enea Vico for Cosimo de Medici.
According to the inscription on the print, it was based on the drawing by Frans Floris,
student of Francesco Salviati. J. Douillez, “De Bekering van Saulus,” Tijdschrift der Stad
Antwerpen 3 (1957), 46. The main scene of the tabletop is indeed an almost exact, albeit
reversed, copy of Salviati’s painting in the Galleria Doria Pamphili in Rome. The use of
prints as an iconographic and compositional model for a decorated household object was
a widespread practice in sixteenth-century Antwerp. These artifacts spanned a wide
range of subjects and genres, which, as Goldstein argues, infiltrated “private space with
issues of contemporary interest in the larger culture.” “Keeping Up Appearances,” 84. The
tabletop was found at Kammenstraat, which confirms both the high status of its owner
and the status of the table as a luxury object. It is possible that the table was owned by
Jacques de Lengaigne, although it is not listed in the inventory of his possessions.
56 Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed.
Hessel Miedema, 6 vols. (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994), vol. 1, 106.
94 Chapter 2
closest to the viewers, helps them to locate the minute figure of Saul.57 The
Pharisee is lying on the ground to the right of the tree, struck down from his
horse and blinded by the rays of light coming from the sky to the left. Unlike
the majority of extant sixteenth-century images of the conversion, Bruegel’s
lacks the figure of Christ. However, it remains faithful to the biblical account,
in which “suddenly a light from heaven shined round about him. And falling on
the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou
me?” (Acts 9:3–4).58 Some of Saul’s companions are looking curiously at their
fallen leader, “amazed, hearing indeed a voice, but seeing no man” (Acts 9:7);
others are trying to protect themselves from the blinding light. The rays of the
divine light, which at first glance may seem faint, are in fact superior to the
natural light as they penetrate through the tall, dense trees, in a manner evoca-
tive of the words of John the Evangelist when he describes the Creation at the
beginning of his gospel: “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness
did not comprehend it” (John 1:5). Despite the interruption in travel caused by
Saul’s fall, the procession of soldiers does not stop; those farther in front and
behind Saul are in fact completely oblivious of what has just happened to him.
The composition’s perspective privileges these marching and riding soldiers,
rendering them seemingly more important than Saul; this effect is strength-
ened by his green attire, which blends in with the surroundings.59
57 Although the customary title of this iconographic theme is The Conversion of Saint Paul,
Saul only became Paul after being baptized by Ananias in Damascus. It is thus more
consistent with the biblical narrative to refer to him as Saul in the description of the
composition.
58 The examples of this subject with a figure of Christ include, most importantly, Jan
Rombouts, Conversion of Saint Paul, 1522–1530, Leuven, M-Museum Leuven; Pieter Coecke
van Aelst, Conversion of Saint Paul, 1540s, Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga; Dirck
Volkertsz. Coornhert and Maarten van Heemskerck, Conversion of Saint Paul, 1549,
etching; and Herri met de Bles, Conversion of Saint Paul, 1545, Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art
Museum.
59 Scholars have suggested that Bruegel focuses on two mounted soldiers, the one in yellow,
quarter-turned toward the viewer, and the one in black, further in the distance in the
composition, with his back to the viewer. The latter has been identified with Fernando
Álvarez de Toledo, the 3rd Duke of Alba, and the whole composition has been interpreted
as a depiction of his army crossing the Alps in early summer 1567. Stanley Ferber, “Peter
Bruegel and the Duke of Alba,” Renaissance News 19 (Autumn 1966): 205–19. The Duke of
Alba was summoned by Philip II to the Low Countries to replace Governess Margaret of
Parma, who, according to Philip, lost control over the region during the so-called Wonder
Year. After his arrival in Brussels, the Duke of Alba installed the Council of Troubles, soon
to be nicknamed the Council of Blood, which tried religious dissidents and anyone
involved in the Iconoclastic Fury. Under Alba’s regime, the measures taken against
“heretics” in the Low Countries became much stricter than they had ever been under
Margaret. According to Ferber, Bruegel compared Alba to Saul as a zealous defender of
This representation of Saul as a barely discernible figure within the crowd of

soldiers is crucial for conveying the theological message of the panel. Both the
Catholic and the Protestant authors understood Saul’s sensory blindness as a
necessary condition of his gaining inner sight and wisdom.60 Prior to his con-
version, Saul was spiritually blind, despite possessing physical vision; after his
encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, he would regain his sense of
sight only after being baptized by Ananias. The moment depicted by Bruegel is
thus the moment of Saul’s spiritual illumination. However, this process of gain-
ing inner (in)sight is contradicted by the representation of fellow soldiers and
the landscape. Soldiers emerging from the steep canyon to the left are insis-
tently portrayed with their helmets and hats lowered and eyes fixed on the
ground, so that they are not able to see where they are heading.61 Their volun-
tary physical blindness and inability to recognize the direction of their journey
represent Saul’s inner state: he may be traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus,
but he is spiritually misguided and cannot see that he has erred in his zealous
defense of the law by persecuting Christians. He has been internally blind from
the very beginning of his travel, lacking the proper recognition of his true des-
tination, just as many among his companions cannot see the destination of
their travel.
This contrast of external light and internal darkness, and vice versa, is also
expressed through the relationship between the figures and the landscape. The
distant city and the fertile lowlands to the left are bathed in sunlight, but the
the old faith, cruelly persecuting Christians, while expressing hope that, just like the
Pharisee, the Duke would also undergo an inner transformation and experience a spiritual
enlightenment, which would lead to a change in his politics. However, chronology poses
a major problem with this interpretation. The Conversion of Saint Paul was completed,
signed, and dated by the artist in 1567; the Council of Troubles only began operating on
September 9 of that year. Given the size and complexity of the painting, it is virtually
impossible that the artist would have been able to complete it within a few weeks after
the council was in session and its verdicts began to significantly affect the situation—and
the collective conscience—in the Low Countries.
60 Thomas Martone points out that only Acts 9 and Acts 22 describe the event on the road to
Damascus as blinding, whereas Acts 26 and Paul’s Epistles refer to “a divine illumination,
revealing the universal, divine, and sanctifying nature of the Church.” Thomas Martone,
The Theme of the Conversion of Paul in Italian Paintings from the Early Christian Period to
the Early Renaissance (New York: Garland, 1982), 10. However, these two visions of what
happened on the road to Damascus are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
61 Here, Bruegel may be referencing the ancient tradition of gladiators called andabatae
who fought in helmets without holes for the eyes. Andabatae functioned as a metaphor
for blindness in Varro’s satire Andabatae (de hominum caecitate et errore), and was
adopted by Erasmus and Guillaume de la Perrière. Margaret Sullivan, “Bruegel’s Proverbs:
Art and Audience in the Northern Renaissance,” The Art Bulletin 73 (1991): 463.
96 Chapter 2
farther the soldiers travel, the darker and more claustrophobic the setting
grows. Beyond the plateau where Saul has been struck down from his horse,
the landscape changes into a hostile, narrow, and dangerous passage under
steely skies. But Saul, blinded by Christ’s divine light, will remain oblivious to
these frightening surroundings. As he continues traveling into the darkness, he
is being prepared for the spiritual illumination that lies at its end. His travel
began under sunny skies, which made physical sight possible did not reflect his
inner blindness; the last part of his travel, by contrast, will be in the darkness,
which stands in opposition to his path to spiritual enlightenment.
Bruegel engages in The Conversion of Saint Paul with the Netherlandish tra-
dition of life as a pilgrimage, depicted as a journey through a landscape filled
with symbolic details, typically representing various dangers and temptations
one may encounter.62 This metaphor, largely derived from Augustine and com-
mon in medieval and early Renaissance thought, influenced the imagery of
Hieronymus Bosch, Joachim Patinir, and Herri met de Bles. Their compositions
established a canon of allegorical meanings that can be ascribed to landscape
paintings, including the symbolic reading of mountains and the choice be-
tween two paths in life. Bruegel ingeniously explores both of these topoi. Im-
ages such as Patinir’s Charon Crossing the River Styx depict a choice between an
inviting wide, easy road, which nevertheless eventually leads to Hell, and a
rough, narrow, and dangerous one that leads to heaven.63 Bruegel’s Conversion
combines these two paths into one and eliminates the choice given to the pro-
tagonist. Saul has begun his journey through a sunny, welcoming landscape
that would have been associated in the Netherlandish tradition with an easy
path in life, but eventually reaches the rocky, dark passage—the difficult
path—at the end of which lies the promise of eternal life. The plateau in the
center of the composition marks a neutral space between these two types of
landscape; it is there that Saul encounters Christ, and his acceptance of Christ’s
calling must necessarily lead to his entering the difficult path. This reinterpre-
tation of the motif of two paths in life makes a deeply religious statement:
whereas earlier tradition presented them as alternatives, Bruegel shows that
the hard road is an inevitable destination for those who follow Christ.
62 For the most comprehensive discussion of this theme, see Reindert Falkenburg, Joachim
Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life, trans. M. Hoyle (Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 1988).
63 Reindert Falkenburg, “The Devil is in the Detail: Ways of Seeing Joachim Patinir’s ‘World
Landscapes,’” in Joachim Patinir: Essays and Critical Catalogue, ed. Alejandro Vergara,
(Madrid: Prado, 2007), 61-80.
Mountains in sixteenth-century Netherlandish painting were variously as-

sociated with sin, as in the case of “mountains of pride,”64 or with holiness, the
high road of virtue, and the places of hermits’ pious withdrawal from the world,
as in the cases of Mary Magdalene and Saint Jerome. The possibility of these
alternative readings available to a Netherlandish viewer of The Conversion of
Saint Paul allows for an interpretation that accounts for two stages in the life of
Saul/Paul: that of a haughty Pharisee, and that of a humble servant of Christ.
The unequivocal symbolism of mountains refines the first message of the
painting: accepting Christ’s gospel inevitably leads to a difficult path, but while
on this path (the path of conversion, one may add), a Christian must constant-
ly fight the sins of his or her former life, which in Paul’s case included hubris.
This understanding of bekeeringe as a continuous process was ubiquitous in
the religious literature available in Antwerp, and would have thus seemed self-
evident to the original viewers.65
The totality of Saul’s inner transformation expressed through the mountain-
ous setting is emphasized further by the presence of the curious figure of a
child soldier to the left of the cedar tree. The child stands almost equidistant
from the tree at the exact center of the image as is Saul on the other side, and
like Saul he is positioned just above the line that bisects the image horizon-
tally. The viewers’ attention is further drawn to him by the lances of several
marching soldiers. The child belongs to the left half of the image, where the
journey to Damascus has not yet been altered by Saul’s encounter with Christ.
The formal juxtaposition of Saul and the child soldier corresponds with the
passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spoke as a
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man,
I put away the things of a child” (1 Cor. 13:11). The child soldier represents Saul’s
former, spiritually immature life, before the pivotal moment on the road to Da-
mascus. In Corinthians 13, those two phases of Saul’s/Paul’s life are introduced
in the context of charity, deemed by Paul as the most important virtue. If one
64 Falkenburg, Joachim Patinir, 87.

65 Todd Richardson associates Bruegel’s Conversion of Saint Paul with the Petrarchan
tradition of allegorical description of landscape in Le Familiari, where the ascent to Mont
Ventoux becomes “a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment.” In the Low Countries, this
tradition was integrated into the Devotio Moderna movement and adopted by Erasmus.
According to Richardson, the Petrarchan reference guided a viewer of Bruegel’s panel
toward the perception of the powerful mountainous setting as a pictorial equivalent of
Saul’s inner transformation; the transition from an open vista to the left to the barely
visible narrow path between the rocks to the right would symbolize in this interpretation
a conversion to inner understanding. The beholder would be further encouraged to
participate in Saul’s experience by imagining him- or herself as one of the Pharisee’s
companions. Richardson, “Landscaping the Soul,” passim.
98 Chapter 2
is lacking in charity, Saint Paul writes, all other deeds, skills, and knowledge
become useless. Late medieval and early modern theologians described Paul
as profoundly educated in the scripture and the law, but guilty of the sin of
pride; the Pharisee trusted his knowledge more than he trusted God, and his
hubris led him to persecute Christians.66 Excessive self-confidence and trust
in one’s own wisdom, resulting in the rejection of divine guidance, were often
associated with spiritual blindness, both in the exegeses of the story of Saul
in particular and in the devotional and homiletical literature popular in early
modern Antwerp in general.67 Incidentally, those vices are not far from the sin
of the builders of the tower of Babel.
A necessary condition of a true conversion was a complete renouncement
of one’s own will, ambition, and wealth—and Paul renounces them in the First
Letter to the Corinthians:
If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have
prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if
I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not
charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the
poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity,
it profiteth me nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1–3).
It is worth remembering that Michiel van Bredesteyn, the likely owner of Brue-
gel’s panel, displayed an allegory of Charity alongside The Conversion of Saint
Paul, and Jacques de Lengaigne kept paintings with these two subjects in the
cleyn neercamer and winckel.
The relationship between the saint’s conversion and the necessity of re-
nouncing one’s will, knowledge, and possessions was highlighted in the liturgy
of the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, celebrated by the Catholic Church
66 See, for instance, Desiderius Erasmus, In acta apostolorum paraphrasis Erasmi Roterodami,
nunc primum recens & nata & excusa (Basel: Johannes Froben, 1524); Martin Luther,
Luther’s Works, vol. 58: Sermons V, ed. Christopher Boyd Brown (St. Louis: Concordia,
2010), 370–84; Aegidius Topiarius, Conciones in Evangelia et Epistolas, Quae Festis Totius
Anni Diebus populo in Ecclesia proponi solent: Ecclesiastis omnibus moderni temporis
summopere[n] utiles (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1566), fol. 35v–37v.
67 See Bernardus Claraevallensis, De sermonen ende manieren van levene des … Heylichste
Bernaerdts (Antwerp: Jan van Ghelen, 1557); Johannes Tauler, Petrus Canisius, and
Anthoon van Hemert, Van volcomentheyt alre duechden: een seer innigh boecxken … dwelcke
met rechte ghenoemt mach worden dat merch der sielen (Antwerp: Symon Cock, 1557);
Topiarius, Conciones in Evangelia.
on January 25. Sixteenth-century lectionaries paired for that day the reading
from Acts 9 with Matthew 19, which describes the meeting of Christ and a rich
young man. The young man asks Christ what he should do to gain everlasting
life. But when Christ tells him to sell all his possessions and follow him, the
man walks away saddened, as Christ reminds his disciples, “again I say to you:
it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man
to enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:24). The young man’s story is
the inverted story of Saint Paul, an example of a conversion that failed because
of adherence to earthly possessions.
The theological meaning of the story of Saul’s conversion is conveyed by
Bruegel through the juxtaposition of outer appearances and inner truth, the
conspicuous tension between the mountainous landscape setting and Saul’s
spiritual state, and external and internal sight.68 All of these aspects of his
composition follow theological tradition, which warned against converts who
did not truly turn to God, but who managed to deceive their community with
outer signs of inauthentic piety. Bruegel’s painting thus offers a sophisticated
criticism of the usage of paintings of the conversion of Saint Paul by his con-
temporaries, as it deconstructs the strategy of utilizing domestic decoration as
a demonstration of Catholic orthodoxy. Instead, it invites reflection about the
nature of conversion, without imposing a specific sectarian reading.
The same sectarian neutrality characterizes a mid-sixteenth-century ver-
nacular play, De Bekeeringe Pauli, from about 1545–1550.69 The drama, com-
68 The interest in the relationship between appearances and the truth, seeing and knowing,
and physical blindness and spiritual insight informs much of Bruegel’s painterly and
graphic oeuvre, including the 1558 drawing and engraving Elck (Everyman), The Nether
landish Proverbs (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, 1559), and The Blind Leading the Blind (Naples,
Museo di Capodimonte, 1568), which is chronologically closest to The Conversion of Saint
Paul. The first two works include depictions of the act of looking that does not lead to
cognition, e.g., in the illustration of the proverb “a lantern with no light.” In The Blind
Leading the Blind, on the other hand, Bruegel uses physical blindness as an outward sign
of spiritual blindness. The canvas offers a focus, unique for Bruegel, on the figure’s faces; a
compelling depiction of the various diseases from which the figures suffer engages a
beholder in a detailed inspection of their eyes, which, paradoxically, the beggars them
selves cannot use. Porras has also suggested that the relationship between physical vision
and spiritual enlightenment informed Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary with its contrast of
several subsidiary scenes and the minuscule figure of Christ in the center. Porras, Pieter
Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 76.
69 There are two extant manuscripts of the play: one in the Royal Library in Brussels
(Manuscript 21664), and the second in the archives of the chamber of rhetoric Trouw
Moet Blijcken in Haarlem. Both versions follow the same narrative sequence and include
the same characters with slightly altered names, but their text differs. These differences
led Gerardus Steenbergen to conclude that the Haarlem manuscript is not a variation of
100 Chapter 2
posed in all likelihood by the Marigold chamber from Vilvoorde, belongs to the
genre of Apostle Plays, which combined biblical, historical, and hagiographic
sources in a vivid representation of stories from the life of Christ’s first disci-
ples. The genre thrived among sixteenth-century rhetoricians—a correlation
that prompted some scholars to interpret them as allegorical portrayals of the
persecution of Protestant communities.70 But the texts themselves provide
very little evidence in support of this thesis. “Most religious rhetoricians’ dra-
ma,” Bart Ramakers argues, “does touch on contemporary religious controver-
sy, but does not busy itself with it in any real way, neither explicitly or
implicitly.”71 More interestingly, De Bekeeringe Pauli engages with three impor-
tant themes that would have informed the reception of images of The Conver-
sion of Saint Paul: the contrast between darkness and light as metaphors for
Paul’s conversion (as we have seen, the interpretation of Bruegel’s panel
strongly relied on the chiastic relationship between the two); the contrast be-
tween human wisdom and God’s omnipotence; and the construction of the
subject position of the viewer.
The text of the play follows the account in Acts 9, beginning with Saul’s de-
parture from Jerusalem and ending with his sermon, as Paul, in a synagogue in
Damascus, with the divine apparition during the journey as the climactic mo-
ment of the spectacle. The pivotal scene captures the contrast between spiri-
tual blindness and physical sight, and physical blindness and spiritual insight,
the Brussels one, but rather that the two are based on a lost original, which they
paraphrased differently. According to Steenbergen, the story of Paul’s conversion was a
theme of at least six early modern Dutch plays. G. Jo Steenbergen, De bekeeringe Pauli
(Zwolle: Tjeenk Wilink, 1953), 7–8 and 33–35. None of these plays can be associated
directly with Antwerp, but the genre itself was certainly well known in the metropolis. In
the early 1560s, Willem van Haecht, the leading poet (factoor) of De Violieren, dedicated
three such plays to the second half of the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 16 through 28),
which describes Paul’s apostolic mission, from his liberation from prison to his preaching
in Rome. The prologue to the second play is of particular interest to art historians as it
revolves around the controversy of the theological validity of images. On Willem van
Haecht’s Apostelspelen, see de Vooys, “Apostelspelen in de Rederijkerstijd”; and Ramakers,
“The Work of a Painter.”
70 See Gary Waite, Reformers on Stage. Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low
Countries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). Following the comparison between
the persecution of early Christians and sixteenth-century Protestants, Waite suggested
that De Bekeeringe Pauli was written in the mid-1550s as a response to the renewal of
Charles V’s antiheresy edict on April 29, 1550. Waite, Reformers on Stage, 179.
71 Bart Ramakers, “Sight and Insight: Paul as a Model of Conversion in Rhetoricians’ Drama,”
in The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and
Literature, ed. Lieke Stelling, Harald Hendrix, and Todd M. Richardson (Leiden: Brill,
2012), 341.
and focuses on their juxtaposition as descriptive of Saul’s transformation. Im-

mediately after Saul exclaims that he has never seen such a light, he announces
to the audience that he is losing his sight, only to assert again that he has never
encountered such wonderful brightness (or clarity) and recognize it as eternal
truth.72 The presence of divine light causes the absence of physical vision, fol-
lowing the theological tradition in which Saul’s physical blindness was a pre-
condition of spiritual insight, and aligning with the paradoxical relationship
between the two types of vision in Bruegel’s panel. Later, in Damascus, Ana-
nias asserts the necessity of the loss of external vision for Saul’s inner enlight-
enment and healing from sin by the Holy Spirit.73 These two kinds of sight
remain mutually exclusive only until Saul’s baptism as Paul: born into his new
identity, he regains his physical sight. Curiously enough, the baptism itself was
not shown in the play—possibly because as a sacrament, its administration
had been traditionally reserved for priests, and its performance on stage by
laymen might have been considered a sacrilege.74
The concluding sermon by Paul leaves no doubt that he has made a perma-
nent commitment to the gospel of Christ. As the speech revolves around the
words “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 15:20), it showcases
Paul’s profound knowledge of the scripture. The play opened with Saul’s in-
depth scrutiny of the law, which he used in a conversation with his servants to
explain the imperative of persecuting Christians. Now Paul uses his expertise
to convince his audience that Christ is indeed the Messiah foretold by the
prophets. Thus, viewers observe Paul’s transformation from a persecutor who
followed his own judgment and human logic into a predicator who follows
God’s will. He relinquished his will to Christ, giving testimony to the words
from the Corinthians, which in Bruegel’s panel are evoked by the figure of the
child soldier: “if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all
knowledge … and have no charity, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2)
Bruegel’s image and the play both support the idea that an authentic experi-
ence of God’s grace and love is uniquely individual. In the painting, Saul is
turning directly toward the light coming from heaven, while his companions
are turning away from it; in the play, the inward, personal nature of his meeting
with Christ is similarly underlined by the inclusion of the servants’ reaction.
They interrupt the dialogue between Saul and Christ, stating that they can see
the light and hear a voice, but cannot see anyone. They do not understand
what is happening to their master—God’s revelation is reserved only for Saul.
72 Steenbergen, De bekeeringe Pauli, v. 550–53.

73 Steenbergen, De bekeeringe Pauli, v. 619–23.
74 Ramakers, “Sight and Insight,” 361.
102 Chapter 2
In a short epilogue to De Bekeeringe Pauli, two anonymous disciples reflect

on Paul’s transformation from a proud Pharisee into a humble apostle. The
purpose here is to convince the audience that any sinner can be saved by
Christ’s grace, and to invite them to embark on a similar journey. This invita-
tion is bolstered by the play’s affinities with the allegorical Elkerlijc (Everyman)
dramas.75 Immensely popular in the Low Countries, these plays presented sto-
ries of the pilgrimage of life, in which the protagonist undergoes a transforma-
tion from a sinner bound by mundane pleasures into a pious Christian, and
thus “liberates himself from a state of sin or ignorance and attains grace or
insight.”76 This allegorical model, first introduced in Den Spyeghel der salicheyt
van Elckerlijc, was repeatedly employed by rhetoricians in their plays, the most
broadly accessible performances in the early modern Low Countries.77 The
universal appeal of the Elckerlijc stemmed from the ability of identification
with the character regardless of one’s social strata, profession, and gender.78 In
observing the Everyman’s struggle with sin, temptation, and the dangers he
encountered on his journey, viewers were expected to think about their own
choices in everyday life, ultimately developing the habit of projecting their
own moral and spiritual situation onto his.
As a narrative about a physical and spiritual journey, the story of Paul lends
itself very well to the Elckerlijc genre. Paul undergoes the same type of transfor-
mation, albeit procured by more dramatic means, as an Elckerlijc, and thanks
to the audience’s profound familiarity with the model, he becomes a convinc-
ing and easily relatable example of the conversion every Christian should un-
dergo. Drawing from their experiences of the vernacular theatre, viewers are
encouraged to join Saul on his pilgrimage to (the new) life. Standing in front of
the panel, they are positioned below the plateau where the conversion is hap-
pening; in order to join Saul’s companions, they would begin their journey by
climbing up onto the hostile landscape. They can enter the composition
through a narrow path between two rocks, just behind a soldier in red with a
dog by his side. If they continue to follow the direction in which the soldier is
headed, they will reach precisely the place where Saul has fallen from his horse,
75 The Dutch Elkerlijc is a precursor of the figure of the Everyman in medieval English
theatre, and the English play Everyman is most probably a translation of Den Spyeghel der
salicheyt van Elckerlijc, first performed in Antwerp in 1485. On the provenance of this
genre in the Low Countries and England, see A. van Elslander, ed., Den Spyeghel der
salicheyt van Elckerlijc (Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1985), xii–xv.
76 Ramakers, “Sight and Insight,” 345.
77 Ramakers, “Sight and Insight,” 344–45.
78 See, for instance, Kavaler’s interpretation of the Elck in Bruegel’s print as a merchant:
Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 89–90.
and where he is experiencing the presence of Christ for the first time in his life.
By constructing the subject position for a viewer in such a way, Bruegel extends
the inevitability of following the hard road toward all viewers who embrace
conversion. This is indeed a very different proposition than the religious self-
fashioning in the service of which the theme of the conversion of Saint Paul
was more often used.
Nevertheless, Pieter Bruegel’s ability to see beyond that utilitarian function
of the iconography of Paul and its potential to engage sophisticated view-
ers was not unique. The apostle’s mission became the subject of one of the
best-documented series of paintings created specifically for a dining hall in
sixteenth-century Antwerp.79 In the late 1560s, Calvinist entrepreneur Gillis
Hooftman was remodeling his residence at Steenstraat, and hired, based on
the recommendation of Abraham Ortelius, young Martin de Vos to paint five
panels with scenes from the life of Saint Paul. Three of those panels are still ex-
tant: Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas at Lystra, Saint Paul and Silversmith Deme-
trius (figure 18) and Saint Paul on Malta (figure 19). Despite the extraordinarily
rich documentation of the series, we do not know the subject of the other two
panels, but given the ubiquity of the conversion of Paul in contemporary Ant-
werp collections, it would have been surprising if de Vos omitted that episode.
The iconography of the three known paintings focuses on themes such as
the clash of Christ’s gospel and pagan customs, Paul’s perseverance in convert-
ing the Gentiles to Christianity, the omnipotence of God, the status of apostles
as ordinary humans rather than gods or intercessors, and the importance of
both homiletics and good deeds in spreading the Word of Christ. While those
themes were among the most fervently discussed in the Reformation era, Mar-
tin de Vos—a clandestine Lutheran working for Calvinists—does not impose
a single sectarian reading of the images on his viewer. The open-endedness
of the cycle allowed Hooftman’s guests to exchange different theological in-
terpretations of Paul’s mission in the Mediterranean. For instance, one could
79 The details of the commission were described by Jacobus Radermacher, an apprentice

and agent of Hooftman, in a letter to Ortelius’s nephew, Jacob Cool. Johannes Henricus
Hessels, Abrahami Ortelii et virorum eruditorum ad eundem et ad Jacobum Colium
Ortelanium epistulae (Cambridge: Typis Academiae, 1887), letters 330 and 331. Relevant
excerpts are also reprinted in Suzanne Sulzberger, “À propos de deux Peintures de Martin
de Vos,” Revue belge d’archeologie et d’histoire de l’art 6 (1936): 121–36, esp. 132. I have
suggested elsewhere that a coauthor of the series’ iconographic program was Antonio del
Corro, a former Spanish monk, who spent the autumn of 1566 in Antwerp preaching to
the Calvinist community and who later became a member of the Italian Church in
London alongside Radermacher. Barbara A. Kaminska, “‘That there be no schisms among
you:’ Saint Paul as a Figure of Confessional Reconciliation in a Series of Paintings by
Martin de Vos,” Journal of Early Modern Christianity 3, no. 1 (April 2016), passim.
104 Chapter 2
Figure 18 Martin de Vos, Saint Paul and Silversmith Demetrius, ca. 1568, oil on panel,
125 × 198cm, Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts (© Royal Museums of Fine
Arts of Belgium, Brussels
photo: J. Geleyns - Ro scan photo: J. Geleyns - Art Photography
relate Saint Paul on Malta to the emblem Quis contra nos in Claude Paradin’s
Devises Heroïques, published in 1567 in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin, and
argue that God always watches over his followers, who should therefore fear
no one. In mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp, this exhortation to infinite trust in
God could have been understood specifically as an encouragement for clan-
destine Protestant communities to persevere in the face of the persecution of
the Catholic Church and the Spanish government. Even more narrowly, Quis
contra nos was a personal motto of Emmanuel van Meteren, Ortelius’s Calvin-
ist nephew, who eventually settled for good in London, sharing the experience
of many contemporary Netherlandish Protestants.80
However, the possibility of such a personalized reference in Saint Paul on
Malta does not preclude the painting’s universal message of hope, which would
have resonated with all Christians, regardless of their sectarian identity—and
Hooftman’s merchant and humanist friends indeed represented different
confessional factions. Some of them, like Ortelius and Radermacher, were de-
picted alongside Hooftman and his relatives in that very panel. These portraits

Figure 19 Martin de Vos, Saint Paul on Malta, ca. 1568, 124 × 198cm, Paris, Louvre Museum
photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY
helped to bring together the world of the ancient Mediterranean and that of
sixteenth-century Antwerp, suggesting that the first Christians and those pres-
ent in Hooftman’s dining hall were members of the same community of faith.
This conflation of the painted space with the real was further achieved through
the paintings’ illusionistic “composition and the elegant style [which] are such
that whoever sees them, believes that he is looking at people in action, recog-
nizes familiar faces, and hears their words.”81 The two worlds were akin in their
diversity: while preaching in the Mediterranean, Saint Paul had encountered
different nations, cultures, and languages, and so his religious experience was
shaped by circumstances close to those of the early modern Antwerp elite. The
interpretative flexibility of de Vos’s cycle offered visual stimuli for a conversa-
tion in which interlocutors were not just allowed, but in fact encouraged, to
have different opinions, and whose value lay in the exchange of those opinions
rather than in participants coming to a conclusion shared by everyone. Ulti-
mately, mealtime gatherings in Hooftman’s dining hall stimulated the creation
81 Hessels, Abrahami Ortelii, letter 330. See also Kaminska, “That there be no schisms among
you,” 100.
106 Chapter 2
of a harmonious and successful community of entrepreneurs, scholars, and

artists, whose confessional beliefs differed, but who nevertheless contributed
to the well-being of their city, and whose friendship was more important than
theological differences between the churches whose doctrines they followed.
The very presence of a separate eetkamer in Hooftman’s residence speaks to
both his wealth and the importance he must have ascribed to dinner parties,
which further reflects the habit of clandestine Protestant communities to meet
at members’ houses. As we saw in chapter 1, half a century later congregants
from the Dutch Church in London attempted to re-create convivia; their ambi-
tion is a true testimony to what a vital part of the spiritual life of the commu-
nity this custom must have been. Remarkably, the author of the Acte Aengaende
de Maeltyden der Liefde, Simon Ruytinck, can be traced back to Hooftman’s
circle. He was the dedicatee of the translation of Psalms by Jacob Cool, Abra-
ham Ortelius’s nephew, whose copy was in the library of Jacobus Radermacher.
Radermacher, in turn, was an apprentice and agent of Gillis Hooftman, and in
his later years became a correspondent of Cool.82
5 Toward a New Model of Religiosity
The vital memory of convivia among Netherlandish exiles, alongside Martin

de Vos’s series for Hooftman, confirms the potential of mealtime gatherings to
bring a community together. Still, later sixteenth-century Antwerp was threat-
ened not only by the internal dissolution of communal bonds, but also by the
external politics of its Spanish sovereigns. Under these circumstances, we can
understand the display of works of art to be a “remedial procedure,”83 and the
theme of the conversion of Saint Paul suited that role perfectly. However, Brue-
gel appears to have understood the potential shortcomings of that strategy,
and engaged with the contemporary popularity of Pauline iconography to
scrutinize the nature of true conversion. His Conversion of Saint Paul also con-
tinues his interest in hubris, which was central to The Tower of Babel and to
which he would come back in the Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery. All
of these images encouraged reflection on the potentially disastrous outcome
of human pride, while instilling hope that it could be overcome by self-knowl-
edge and Christian virtue.
82 Kaminska, “That there be no schisms among you.”

83 On “remedial procedures,” see Victor Turner, Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982); Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge:
Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
Considered together, The Conversion of Saint Paul and The Tower of Babel
engaged with three of the Antwerp’s most important and controversial issues:
its demographic diversity, models of commerce and entrepreneurship, and re-
ligious heterogeneity. Their iconography indicates that contemporary society
was eager to embrace a new model of religiosity, in which Christian values and
the gospel remained relevant to everyday life, but whose interpretation no lon-
ger required the immediate supervision of the church. Composition and dis-
play of two other paintings by Bruegel—The Procession to Calvary and Sermon
of Saint John the Baptist—epitomize this process of relocating the spiritual
practices from the public space controlled by the clergy into spaces beyond
their immediate oversight, and illustrate the altered expectations of urban
viewers toward spiritual experience and religious practices. It is to these im-
ages that I am turning in the next two chapters.
108 Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“In Their Houses”: Domestic Space and Religious

Practices in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Antwerp
The Procession to Calvary (1564) is one of sixteen paintings by Pieter Bruegel

the Elder listed in the inventory of Niclaes Jonghelinck’s collection prepared in
early 1566. Alongside The Tower of Babel, this panel exemplifies Jonghelinck’s
predilection for large biblical narratives, which functioned as discursive exem-
pla within the secular space of his suburban villa. Displayed alongside Brue-
gel’s series of the Months, Floris’s Banquet of the Gods, The Labors of Hercules,
and allegories of the Seven Liberal Arts and the Three Theological Virtues, The
Tower of Babel and The Procession to Calvary complemented those images’
more universal meaning by kindling a conversation about Antwerp’s current
affairs. While The Tower of Babel addressed the socioeconomic transformation
of the city, The Procession to Calvary registered the ongoing development of
new types of religious practices, and the increasing dissatisfaction with official
church and civic rituals. Bruegel’s composition engages with those changes
by juxtaposing two artistic idioms. The panel is dominated by a visually rich
multifigured view of the crowd following Christ to Golgotha, assisted by sol-
diers in sixteenth-century Spanish uniforms and mixed with random passers-
by who happen to be taking the same route on their way to Jerusalem. These
contemporary witnesses of Christ’s passion contrast sharply with a group in-
troduced by Bruegel in the foreground to the right. The fainting Virgin Mary,
upheld by Saint John the Evangelist, and the grieving Mary Magdalene and
Mary Cleopas imitate paintings by Rogier van der Weyden (figure 20) and Jan
van Eyck, and exemplify a proper emotional response toward Christ’s passion.1
1 Mark A. Meadow, “Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary, Aemulatio and the Space of Vernacular
Style,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 47 (1996): 180–205. It should be noted in this con-
text that Rogier van der Weyden is only one of several painters whom Bruegel follows here.
The entire Procession to Calvary emulates motifs and compositional solutions introduced by
other artists. Pieter Aertsen, in his version of the theme (n.d., oil on panel, 115.5 × 166cm,
private collection), included the scene with Simon of Cyrene and his wife, figures dressed in
Oriental costumes, and the wagon carrying the two thieves, also repeated by Jan van Amstel
in his Procession to Calvary. Walter S. Gibson, “Mirror of the Earth”: The World Landscape in
Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 68.
However, the most important sixteenth-century artist imitated by Bruegel, in The Procession
to Calvary and the Conversion of Saint Paul, is Herri met de Bles. For a brief, informative sum-
mary of Bruegel’s sources in this panel, see also Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination,
74.

“In Their Houses” 109
Figure 20 Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist
Mourning, ca. 1460, oil on panel, diptych, left panel: 180.3 × 93.8cm, right panel:
180.3 × 92.6cm, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson
Collection
photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art
By including these two distinct groups, Bruegel offers his viewers an oppor-
tunity to engage with his painting on two different levels: to focus on the devo-
tion stimulated by the anachronistic Marian group or, upon closer inspection
of the copious narrative of the middle ground and background, to scrutinize
the actions of individual figures and their interpretations. At first glance, Brue-
gel appears to have completely separated the Rogierian group from the con-
temporized crowd filling the composition. However, while the stylistic contrast
between them is indeed striking, spatially they are not completely disunited.
110 Chapter 3
Just behind the grieving Virgin, John the Evangelist, and their female compan-
ions, Bruegel added a few figures that provide a smooth transition between the
two worlds. Between Saint John and one of the Marys stands a woman accom-
panied by a young boy; with her hands clasped in prayer, she is turning toward
a man who appears to be providing her and her son with an explanation of the
drama unfolding in front of them. To the right, a group of women in contem-
porary clothes, to which their small children are clinging, despair over the
events. Some of the women look at the procession, while others are turned
toward the viewers. They can be identified as “women, who bewailed and la-
mented him [Christ],” and whom Christ addressed: “Daughters of Jerusalem,
weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children” (Luke 23:27–
28). Finally, a group of figures under a pole with a wheel atop, used for placing
the bodies of executed criminals, mimics familiar representations of Christ’s
disciples under the cross. Among those two sets of figures, Bruegel included a
nun clenching her hands who faces the viewer, and a monk turned toward the
procession, carefully observing the moving crowd. Thus, while not fully inte-
grated into the contemporary crowd depicted in the middle ground and back-
ground, the Marian group is not disconnected from it either. Bruegel thematizes
here a transition from the fifteenth- to the sixteenth-century model of religios-
ity, or from a devotional to a discursive one, but does not present them as mu-
tually exclusive.
The close visual scrutiny of the diversified crowd stimulates the mental pro-
cess of interpretation, whose intensity may ultimately transport a viewer into a
quasi-meditative state. Some late medieval and early modern forms of medita-
tive practices called for this type of close following of the text, which required
a reader to focus on every detail and every word of the narrative. Here, the fo-
cus would be on the anecdotal scenes portraying the variety of responses—or
lack thereof—from those who are following Christ to Golgotha.2 Several of the
witnesses are engaged in conversation, providing the audience with a model
of response to Christ’s passion that they can imitate by encouraging them to
share their understanding of the depicted events with other viewers.
2 This connection between meditative practices and Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary was first
recognized by Reindert Falkenburg in “Pieter Bruegels Kruisdraging: Een proeve van ‘close-
reading,’” Oud Holland 107 (1993), esp. 26–27. Stephanie Porras alternatively suggests that
Bruegel is tempting his viewers to focus on the subsidiary scenes rather than the panel’s
“spiritual center,” that is, Christ, whose minuscule figure is very difficult to spot despite being
in the center of the composition. Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 76.
1 “Permissible even for sailors”? Lay Reading of the Bible and Spanish
Legislation in Antwerp
The domestic sphere, in which those conversations would have taken place,
was one of the two settings of potentially suspicious gatherings that came to
the attention of authorities in Antwerp. Ordinances published in the mid-
1560s frequently mentioned meetings, sermons, and religious ceremonies in
“zyne huysen oft buyten inde bosschen,” that is, in “their houses or outside [the
city] in the woods.”3 Both the household and the terrains beyond the city walls,
to which Bruegel would turn in the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, enabled
theological instruction and spiritual practices that were not supervised by the
Catholic Church, and were therefore suspicious to the Spanish authorities. The
pre-Tridentine and early Counter-Reformation Catholic Church was distrust-
ful of domestic devotion and of the private lives of its members at large.4 Since
Anabaptists and Protestants living in Catholic countries were compelled to
practice in secrecy, the domestic space—and any space hidden from the pub-
lic eye—became associated with heresy.
However, the reality of sixteenth-century Antwerp was different, as the
gatherings in private houses and unsupervised reading of the scripture was
certainly not limited to committed Protestants. As we have already seen with
the example of Erasmus’s The Godly Feast, the idea that laymen should be
allowed to read and interpret the Bible was becoming increasingly popular.
A few decades later, a rhetoricians’ table-play composed for a wedding, Let-
ter en de Geest (“Letter and Spirit”), likewise argued that Christ revealed his
divine nature and taught his word to simple fishermen rather than to great
philosophers, scribes, or other learned men.5 If Christ had altered the tradition
in which interpretation of the scriptures was the sole privilege of the religious
establishment, the rederijkers argued, then there was no reason why sixteenth-
century laymen should not be granted the same privilege. The sheer number
3 See, for instance, Ordonnancie ende Statuyt ghemaect by mijnen Heere[n] Schouteth,
Borghemeesteren, Schepenen ende Raede der Stadt va[n] Antwerpen, Aengaende secrete co[n]
venticulen ende vergaderingen. Met meet andere puncten ende articulen daer toe dienende.
Gheboden ende wtgheroepen op den sesten dach Octobris. M.D.LXV (Antwerp: Willem
Silvius, 1565).
4 On this topic, see John Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe,”
Past and Present 47 (1970): 51–70 and, partially polemical with the Bossy article, an essay by
Marc R. Forster, “Domestic Devotions and Family Piety in German Catholicism,” in Piety and
Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment, ed. Marc R. Forster and
Benjamin J. Kaplan, 97–114 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
5 Patricia Lammens-Pikhaus, Het tafelspel bij de rederijkers, 2 vols. (Ghent: Koninklijke Academie
voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 1988–1989), 479.
112 Chapter 3
of vernacular Bible editions, most of which included the Psalms and the New
Testament, testified to the increasing importance of private study of the scrip-
ture in Netherlandish households. As early as 1517, about forty vernacular Bible
editions had been published in the Low Countries; between 1522 and 1545, this
number grew by forty. And in 1566, “there was one Bible for every twenty-five
Dutch speakers.”6 Inventories often list copies of the Bible and sometimes
other religious books in the neercamer, which suggests that the reading of the
scripture occurred in the context of gatherings of family or friends. The meet-
ings of Bible study groups do not appear to have had any particular pattern,
but sometimes, in addition to the reading of the scripture, they would involve
a sermon by an evangelical preacher.7
In mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp, it is then virtually impossible to distin-
guish clearly between Protestants who worshipped in the privacy of their
houses from the moderate, open-minded, and pragmatic Catholics, who saw
little reason to break with the church, but were interested in alternative reli-
gious practices. Since the city’s religious landscape was populated primarily by
the second group, the uncompromising attitude of the Spanish authorities,
who strove to ban any unsupervised meetings and interpretation of the Bible,
continued to cause controversy.8
A long chain of ordinances—which as early as 1540 announced that the mere
possession of heretical books would be punished with death—culminated in
1566.9 A placaet published on May 11 prohibited all gatherings and sermons
organized in secrecy and in public, by Anabaptists and all other sects whose
teachings disagreed with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and specifically
proscribed any unsupervised reading and discussion of the scripture by lay-
men and all “simple people,” under a penalty “according to the circumstances.”10
6 Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 29–30.

7 Duke, Dissident Identities, 85.
8 Within this moderate group, we can further distinguish “Protestantizing Catholics,” who,
according to Guido Marnef, “could no longer reconcile themselves to a number of prac-
tices or articles of faith of the Catholic Church and found points in common with the
Protestant Reformers, but who did not (or not yet) want to break with the Old Church.”
Marnef, “Civic Religions,” 557. Marnef frequently uses the term “Protestantizing Catholics”
in his other studies as well.
9 The ordinances, alongside requests and letters seeking moderation of religious policies,
are extensively quoted in Godevaert van Haecht, Kroniek over de troebelen van 1565 tot 1574
te Antwerpen en elders, ed. Rob van Roosbroeck (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1929–30).
10 “Noch verbieden wy allen leeken oft simple menschen de heylige scrifture te leeren, oft
uyt te leghen, op pene na gelegentheyt.” Copye van de principaelste articulene, die van
weghen der governante den staten van Vlaenderen voorgeleet werden, om the onderhouden
opde den 11 Meye. Quoted in Van Haecht, Kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, 44. As has
already been noted, the first version of this edict was published in 1550.
The prohibition applied generally to the study of the Bible, regardless of its
translation and edition. It thus affected Catholics as much as it did Protestants.
The Netherlandish subjects of the Governess strongly opposed these at-
tempts to totally regulate all domestic meetings. In a booklet published anony-
mously on June 12, a month after the placaet, they argued that it violated the
rights and freedom guaranteed by the Blijde Incompst, on which both Charles
V and Philip II had sworn an oath to become legitimate sovereigns of the Neth-
erlands. While affirming their Catholic faith, the petitioners criticized the ty-
rannical methods pursued by the church and secular administration to enforce
religious orthodoxy, and reminded the regent that violence was not what the
apostles or the church fathers taught. Thus, they argued, all the ordinances
authorizing religious persecution must be immediately revoked.11 This unsuc-
cessful request was followed by a long letter, addressed to King Philip II but
broadly disseminated among the society, in which the nobles specifically cited
the prohibition of reading the Bible and of religious gatherings in private hous-
es.12 The order was much too strict, they claimed, as it affected everyone, in-
cluding devout Catholics, rather than being aimed at sects and heretics only.
Furthermore, the letter continued, while controlling public gatherings of reli-
gious dissenters could be justified to some extent, the authorities’ surveillance
and involvement in the private lives of citizens was completely incomprehen-
sible. Once again, the nobles quoted the examples of saints and church fathers
who fought heresy through learned discussion, while the Spanish government
refused to organize an open theological debate and chose violence instead.
The authors argued that outlawing the private study of the scripture trespassed
against the Christian principle of brotherly love, and that banning certain
books seemed absurd and inconsistent, since some texts that were allowed in
the Low Countries and were printed with the royal privilege were not allowed
in Spain or France, and vice versa. This vehement reaction against the May
edict speaks volumes about the religiosity and vision of the Catholicism of the
Antwerp elite. The nobility did not request universal tolerance for all confes-
sions, and instead repeatedly acknowledged the precedence of the Catholic
faith over “new teachings.” Yet they were far from giving their consent to the
censorship of conversations conducted in private; they regarded a dialogue
11 “Een boecken, welck enighe wyse en verstandighe mannen lieten uytgaen tot onderwy
singhe en waerscouwen alle regierders en staten deser Nederlanden, van ‘t gene dat
sylieden verstaen en versoecken geordineert te worden op ‘t stuc van der religion.” Van
Haecht, Kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, 49–52.
12 “Eenen langhen brief oft boeccxken, geordineert by den edeldom, oft doer eenige gel
leerde, welsprekende mannen doer haer believen.” Van Haecht, De Kroniek van Godevaert
van Haecht, 56–62.
114 Chapter 3
with Protestants as a necessary alternative to their aggressive persecution by

the Spaniards.
The nobles’ letter advocates a discursive approach to religion in both the
private and public realms. But not all citizens of the Low Countries would have
agreed with its content, especially with the laymen’s access to scriptural exege-
sis. The famous Antwerp poet and zealous guardian of the Catholic orthodoxy
Anna Bijns (1493–1575) repeatedly mocked and condemned as blasphemous
the unsupervised biblical discussions conducted in profane settings.13 While
for humanists such as Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives the importance and au-
thority of the Bible rendered its study fundamental to the everyday devotional
practice of any Catholic, Bijns considered its sacred status the very reason to
limit all access to its interpretation to the clergy, and to confine it to the physi-
cal space of a church. She associated laymen’s discussions with the activity of
“learned preachers,” or “geleerde predikanten,” as she sarcastically referred to
Protestant ministers, whose words intoxicated men already drunk with wine as
they gathered in local taverns to discuss the scripture, “the Gospel in one hand
and the tankard in the other.”14 For Bijns, priests, with all their shortcomings,
were still chosen by God to spread his Word and decide about the doctrine—
a status to which no amateur craftsmen could aspire.15 The vices typically
ascribed in the period to the Roman clergy, such as greed, hypocrisy, vanity,
pride, self-interest, gluttony, and drunkenness, are associated in Bijns’s oeuvre
with the Protestant preachers, rendering them unworthy of teaching the word
of God to others. Her uncompromising attitude toward any private reading
and discussion of the Bible reveals a profound division within Netherlandish
society. While many Catholics followed Erasmus’s belief that biblical exege-
sis should be “permissible even for sailors” when demanding open religious
debate and defending their freedom of conscience, others, such as Bijns, out-
wardly condemned the slightest signs of unorthodoxy. The boundaries of reli-
giously motivated conflicts were thus blurry, and developed not only between
13 For an informative recent discussion of Anna Bijns’ biography and oeuvre, see Pollmann,
Catholic Identity, 59–65.
14 Bijns builds upon this comparison between being drunk with wine and with the new
teachings in three of her poems. Anna Bijns, ’t is al vrouwenwerk: refreinen van Anna Bijns,
ed. Herman Pleij (Amsterdam: Em. Queride, 1987), 49; Anna Bijns, Seer scoon ende suyver
boeck, verclarende die mogentheyt Gods, ende Christus genade, over die sondighe menschen
(Antwerp: Peeter van Keerberghe, 1567). See pages 212 and 231 of the online edition for the
relevant poems: <http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/bijn003refe03_01/>. See also Duke, Dissident
Identities, 85.
the Spanish Habsburgs and their Netherlandish subjects, but also among Cath-
olics, and between them and the clandestine Protestant congregations.16
Spaniards’ profound distrust of religious practices held in private houses
and their antiheresy policies explain the lack of Catholic treatises on domestic
devotion addressed to a popular readership. Because the ordinances banned
the dissemination of Protestant writings, and the so-called “blood placards” of
1550 forbade discussions of the scripture by non-theologians, the clergy was
reluctant to write, publish, and preach on any subject that might have poten-
tially qualified as unorthodox.17
Meanwhile, in 1567 Lutheran ministers in Antwerp prepared a booklet,
Christelijcke ende seer noodelijcke huys oeffeninghe, which falls in the catego-
ry of the Hausväterliteratur.18 As such, it offers advice on how the father and
husband should guide his children and wife in spiritual growth and supervise
pious practices exercised in the home, which served as the extension of the
church space. According to the booklet, it is the father’s duty to make sure
that the family gathers together for prayer, to lead mealtime prayers, all of
which should be addressed directly to Christ, and to encourage the habit of
scriptural reflection at the dining table. Christelijcke ende seer noodelijcke huys
oeffeninghe combined confessional guidance with more universal advice for a
Christian household. For instance, an admonition to instruct children in Lu-
ther’s Small Catechism and to pray for the conversion of the pope and the Turks
is presented side by side with a warning against vanity and mundane plea-
sures such as expensive clothes and excessive dinner parties. This exhortation
to temperance is strikingly similar to Erasmus’s guidelines in the Institution of
the Christian Matrimony, and much of the advice included in the sixteenth-
century convivial literature. Thus, the booklet would have had broader appeal
among Antwerp burghers, who eclectically patched their religious practices
from different spiritual traditions, rather than only among the clandestine Lu-
therans in the metropolis.
16 Juliaan Woltjer has made a further important point that the “political moderates” and
“religious moderates” in the Low Countries were often disparate groups of people who did
not necessarily overlap, especially after the 1566 Iconoclasm. In addition, while the
majority of Netherlandish Catholics opposed the persecution of “heretics” and capital
punishment in particular, some agreed with the Habsburg policies, fearing social disorder
and lack of stability. Woltjer, “Political Moderates,” 185–200.
17 Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 46–52.
18 Christelijcke ende seer noodelijcke huys oeffeninge voor de God vreesende huysvaders ende
ouders met haren kinderen ende ghesinne daechlijckx in desen periculosen tijt te houden.
Ghestelt door de Predicanten van de christelijcke gemeynte der Confessie van Ausborch
tot Antwerpen (Antwerp, 1567). The booklet was written by ten members of the
clandestine Lutheran congregation and published anonymously.
116 Chapter 3
Catholics who did not want to risk the possession of a Protestant pamphlet
could have turned to humanistic treatises for the advice on domestic devo-
tions. Juan Luis Vives and Desiderius Erasmus talk extensively about not only
praying, but also studying the scriptures and discussing theological matters
within the family, inside their homes. For Erasmus, religious instruction is one
of the functions of a responsible Christian household, as is the appropriate
pictorial decoration of the house’s interior. Paintings on view not only play an
active role in their owners’ self-fashioning, but are also integrated into the life
of the family and essential for the upbringing of the children. Erasmus agrees
in this matter with Martin Luther, who also promoted decorating houses with
illustrations of religious stories.
2 Theological Approaches to Religious Imagery in Private

Households
While Erasmus dedicated the most attention to the role of images in learned
conversations among convivial authors, related discussions of the function,
iconography, and status of religious paintings in domestic settings were much
broader, forming an important part of the image debate in the Reformation
era. Scholars have tended to focus on proscriptive writings and iconoclastic
movements across confessional and geographical borders, but sixteenth-cen-
tury theologians also formulated new positive approaches to visual arts, which
eventually allowed for the development of novel types of religious imagery
found in Antwerp households.
Some of the most fascinating remarks about religious images and their
setting in sixteenth-century Protestant literature can be found in Huldrich
Zwingli’s Eine kurzliche christliche Einleitung. Fighting against the Catholic cult
of images, Zwingli explains:
it is evident that the images, the paintings, that we have in the churches
were born in veneration or idolatry. Therefore you should no longer let
them remain in your house, nor in the market place, not anywhere where
one could do them any kind of honour. Above all they are intolerable in
the churches, because everything that is within them is important to us.
They may be tolerated outside the churches but only where they are rep-
resented in historical or narrative fashion without invitation to worship.19
19 Huldrich Zwingli, Eine kurzliche christliche Einleitung, in Huldrich Zwingli’s Sämtliche

Werke, vol. 2, ed. Emil Egli and Georg Finsler (Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1908), 658.
For the English translation see Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, 134.
Here Zwingli defines two criteria that religious art needs to meet in order to be
permissible: a secular, private setting (a display in a marketplace might still
lead to idolatry), and a narrative, nondevotional iconography. The Reformer
understands the sacred setting of a church as one that embeds images with a
special status, which inevitably results in their veneration. Therefore, not even
otherwise acceptable narrative paintings should be allowed in a church, while
images that have been displayed there must not be moved to a secular space,
as a viewer might still approach them as holy objects. It is only admissible to
create and keep religious paintings if they have a narrative subject, and if they
were made with a secular setting in mind. Beyond these proscriptive remarks,
Zwingli is not interested in the potential of visual arts for religious instruction.
And yet his treatise in fact describes a phenomenon embraced by Bruegel half
a century later: the possibility of creating biblical narratives specifically for do-
mestic interiors, but not intended for personal devotion.
Although Zwingli, whose writings were popular in Antwerp in the early
years of the Reformation, approved of religious paintings in domestic interiors,
unlike Erasmus and Luther, he was not interested in their didactic potential.
For Erasmus, as The Godly Feast and his other colloquia indicate, religious im-
ages in private houses were an inherent component of a Christian family’s life,
both facilitating spiritual and moral instruction and activating conversation.
The description of Eusebius’s fictional villa in Convivium Religiosum was likely
inspired not only by Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen, but also by the residence
of a canon of Constance, Johann von Botzheim (Abstemius), which Erasmus
discussed in a letter to one of his closest friends, Marcus Laurinus.20 Of par-
ticular importance for the intellectual life of the canon and his guests appears
to be the summer hall, in which “nearest to the table stood Paul teaching the
people; on the other wall was Christ seated on the mount and teaching his
disciples, then the apostles setting off over the hills to preach the gospel. Next
to the fireplace stood the priests, Scribes, and Pharisees, conspiring with the
elders against the gospel, which was then rising its head.”21
The language of this passage is striking: rather than writing about a depic-
tion of Paul, Christ, scribes, etc., Erasmus insists on describing the interior of
the summer hall as if the biblical figures shared its space with Botzheim and
his visitors. By blurring the boundaries between the real and fictive worlds, he
underlines the integrity of the activities taking place in the room and the
painted exempla decorating its walls. Their selection is remarkable: all of the
20 Erasmus, Correspondence of Erasmus, Letter 1342. For a brief discussion of the letter, see
Panofsky, “Erasmus and the Visual Arts,” 206.
21 Erasmus, Correspondence of Erasmus, 378.
118 Chapter 3
scenes portray religious instruction and discussion and choose narrative over
devotional genre. Although we cannot dismiss the possibility that Botzheim
kept devotional images in his private quarters, none is described by Erasmus as
a part of the decoration of the semipublic rooms. His reaction to the decora-
tion of the summer hall proves that the elite beholders recognized that they
were expected to emulate the depicted biblical episodes. The description of
the residence is in fact followed by an account of the “conversation, reading,
and music” and “repasts and suppers of the gods” Erasmus enjoyed at Botz
heim’s house, which would have been much more frequent if only his poor
health had allowed.22 This smooth transition from the description of the resi-
dence—“the house … you would take to be a real home of the Muses”—to the
description of the learned meal gatherings strengthens the decorous relation-
ship between the setting, the paintings, and the convivial customs cultivated
by those who visited Abstemius. The canon was, according to Erasmus, “more
exquisite” than anything that adorned his house, a particularly powerful state-
ment in the context of the endless praise of the house where “no part … but
displays something in the way of polish and elegance, no part without a
voice—all speaks in paintings that attract and retain attention.”23
The same topos of painting as silent poetry appears in Erasmus’s Institutio
Christiani Matrimonii, a treatise published in Antwerp in the same year as its
first Basel edition.24 “A silent painting,” writes Erasmus, “can be very eloquent
and work its way stealthily into people’s consciousness.”25 His Aristotelian be-
lief that “a picture is more graphic by far than words and generally makes a
deeper impression on the mind” governs his guidelines for pictorial decoration
of a Christian household.26 Criticizing much of contemporary imagery for its
lasciviousness—although never mentioning names of specific artists—the
humanist advises patrons to choose simple and morally elevating narrative
episodes from the life of Christ and the saints, which may be complemented by
pleasant, less serious landscape and still-life compositions, and presumably

24 Desiderius Erasmus, Christiani matrimonii institutio (Antwerp: Michael Hillenius Hooch
stratanus, 1526) and Christiani matrimonii institution (Basil: Froben, 1526). For the
standard English translation, see Erasmus, The Institution of Christian Matrimony (Insti
tutio christiani matrimonii), trans. Michael J. Heath, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol 69:
Spiritualia and Pastoralia, ed. John W. O’Malley and Louis A. Perraud (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1999).
25 Erasmus, Institution of Christian Matrimony, 384.
classical “moral fables.”27 As in Botzheim’s residence, this ideal household does

not seem to contain any devotional paintings.
The iconography alone does not, however, guarantee that an image will be
proper for a Christian family, as not all artists and collectors understand that
“pictures on sacred subjects should show the same reverence as a discourse on
them.”28 In fact, many painters use biblical subjects as an excuse for licentious-
ness or add “some stupid and impious details,” both in compositions destined
for domestic and church settings.29 There are, according to Erasmus, “things
surrounding the altars where the Eucharist is performed that would not be al-
lowed into any decent home.”30 His simultaneous criticism of images displayed
in secular and sacred spaces establishes a continuum of church and home as
loci of the moral and religious instruction parents should pass on to their chil-
dren.
This didactic, exemplary function is not the only reason for Erasmus to have
prescribed, for paintings displayed in domestic spaces, a biblical iconography
and decorous style. These paintings were also crucial for projecting the proper
image of a family to visitors. From this perspective, an immodest painting
could be as detrimental to one’s reputation as immodest behavior, and vice
versa—an appropriately decorated household would present its inhabitants as
good Christians:

29 “Some artists introduce their own evil thoughts into even the most uplifting subjects. When
depicting an episode from the gospels, they include some stupid and impious details; for
example, in painting the Lord’s visit to Mary and Martha, they will show Lord talking to
Mary, but at the same time young John will be in a corner whispering into Martha’s ear,
while Peter drains a tankard. Or again, Martha will be standing behind John at the table,
resting one hand on his shoulder while with the other she seems to be mocking Christ,
who is oblivious to all this; or else Peter will be bringing a ladle dripping with red wine to
his lips. And although these images are blasphemous and impious, some people seem to
find them witty.” Erasmus, Institution of Christian Matrimony, 385. This criticism matches,
to some extent, much later paintings by Pieter Aertsen, such as Christ in the House of Mary
and Martha (1553) in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. This affinity is cautiously
recognized by Keith Moxey: see “Erasmus and the Iconography of Pieter Aertsen’s Christ
in the House of Martha and Mary in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen,” Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 24 (1971): 335–36. For Erasmus, paintings displayed
in churches are oftentimes no less offensive: he asks why it is “necessary to have certain
stories depicted in church at all? Why a youth and a girl lying in the same bed? Why David
watching Bathsheba from his window and summoning her to be defiled, or embracing the
Shunammite who was sent to him? Why the dance of Herodias’ daughter? The subjects
are indeed taken from the holy books, but why so much artistic license been used to
depict the women?” Erasmus, Institution of Christian Matrimony, 430.
120 Chapter 3
there must be nothing in the house that will either corrupt the inmates or
give visitors a bad impression of life in the household. When a guest sees
that everything is in its place, that there is nothing superfluous, that all
are intent upon their tasks, that nothing is overlooked, that everything is
neat but not showy, and that there is no impropriety in gestures, speech,
dress, or pictures, he will take away an excellent impression of the family
and, if he is a wise man, will imitate their example in his own house.31
The dual function of domestic decoration in the Institution of Christian Matri-

mony as a conspicuous display of virtue and an instrument in teaching it to
children matches the character of presentation spaces in the Netherlandish
voorhuis, which formed a boundary between public and private lives.32
While Erasmus put much effort into distancing himself from Luther’s ideas,
his conception of visual arts was nevertheless similar to that of the German
Reformer.33 Luther also derived his approach to visual arts from the Aristote-
lian belief in the impact of images on the mind, and argued that people, espe-
cially “children and the simple minded are better moved to remember the

32 In a fascinating study of the decoration of Protestant households in post-Reformation
England, Tara Hamling offers a convincing analysis—applicable to the sixteenth-century
Low Countries—of images in domestic settings as an external display of religious and
civic virtue and a stimulus for private devotions: “Investing in land and the building of a
new house (or updating an existing property) was an important aspect of the fashioning
of identity, signifying prosperity and social status. Decorating the home with religious
themes could serve as a means to express and proclaim the piety of the owner and his
household as part of a symbolic language of visual and material display. But as a
permanent addition to the main reception rooms, this imagery was also part of everyday
experience for the occupants of the building and … could be used to support religious
activities taking place within the home.” Tara Hamling, “Old Robert’s Girdle: Visual and
Material Props for Protestant Piety in Post-Reformation England,” in The Idol in the Age of
Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael W. Cole and Rebecca
E. Zorach, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 140–41.
See also Tara Hamling, Decorating the Godly Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation
Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
33 As is widely known, Luther’s approach to visual arts changed considerably during his life;
initially critical toward images, he condemned the iconoclasm in Wittenberg and argued
that two categories of images, Merkbilder and Spiegelbilder (images as signs and images as
mirrors), were in fact useful for Christians. Images in Luther’s theology belong to the
category adiaphora; while he consistently rejected devotional images and images of
saints, over time he began to embrace the didactic functions of paintings. For a concise
summary of the evolution of Luther’s views on visual arts, see Samuel Torvend, “‘The
whole Bible painted in our houses’: Visual Narrative and Religious Polemic in Early
Lutheran Art” (2003), Institute of Liturgical Studies Occasional Papers 109, <http://scholar.
valpo.edu/ils_papers/109/>.
Christian narrative through pictures and likenesses than through mere words
or teaching. I do not regard it as wrong if one should paint such histories to-
gether with inscriptions even in inns or rooms, so that God’s work and word
were everywhere and ever before the eyes of the people, who would then dis-
play fear and faith towards the Lord.”34 Luther, like Erasmus, believed it was
better to “paint on the wall the way God created the world, the way Noah built
the ark … than that one should otherwise paint some worldly and shameful
thing.”35 For him, images were truly a Biblia Pauperum; however, he relocated
them from the church to the domestic interior, in which the Hausvater super-
vised the religious edification of his children. Biblical imagery was preferable
to the secular, as the Old and New Testament formed the best repository of
examples to imitate. The broadly defined didactic function of images resulted
in the development of new biblical iconography in Lutheran art, encompass-
ing previously neglected stories such as Christ and the Samaritan Woman,
Christ Blessing the Children, and Christ and the Adulteress. These themes had
already appeared in sixteenth-century Antwerp probate inventories; the last of
these was depicted by Bruegel in a small grisaille panel.
The importance of the domestic sphere for spiritual and moral instruction
accentuated by Luther also sets him apart from Zwingli, for whom religious
narrative paintings were acceptable in houses, but not in churches, because
the secular setting precluded idolatry. The space itself did not change the sub-
stance of the works of art, which Luther counted among adiaphora, things
morally neutral in themselves, neither good or bad, whose ethical value was
determined by their usage.
Roughly four decades before Pieter Bruegel the Elder created his biblical
narratives for Niclaes Jonghelinck and other elite collectors, three theologians
whose ideas had influenced the spiritual landscape of sixteenth-century Ant-
werp codified processes that stimulated the development of new types of reli-
gious images. First, the home became a space of scriptural exegesis and
edification, and not only of prayer, which explains the decreasing number of
devotional images in Antwerp inventories.36 Second, religious images became
active instruments of instruction and an integral element in the life of a Chris-
tian household, intended both for family members and visitors. These changes
mutually reinforced each other: as religion became, at least in some circles,
a matter open to discussion, paintings no longer served only as vehicles for
34 Cited in Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, 130–31.

35 Cited in Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, 130–31.
36 See Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, esp. 65–75, and de Staelen, “Spulletjes en
hun betekenis,” esp. 217–30.
122 Chapter 3
meditation, but also as vehicles for conversation. The transformation of religi-

osity and the fear of idolatry on the one hand, and of iconoclasm on the other,
stimulated the development of pictorial solutions that responded to the com-
pletely altered expectations of the patrons, and that allowed painters to con-
tinue to make a living by creating images.37
3 In “zyne huysen”: The Procession to Calvary, Ommegangen, and the

Relocation of Religious Practices
The writings of Erasmus and Luther confirm that the history of Northern Re-
naissance religious painting is inseparable from the history of the transforma-
tion of religious practices and urban religious landscape. Bruegel’s Procession
to Calvary illustrates this phenomenon quite distinctly.
The panel is full of anecdotal details and subsidiary scenes that engage a
viewer visually and intellectually, and which could have easily stimulated
learned conversations. They are all unified by the shape of the wheel, on which
the composition is based.38 The circular procession begins in the city to the
far left, native in its architecture to Brabant—with the exception of the Temple
of Jerusalem—and curves around a singular tall rock to the left, off the center
of the composition, before continuing upward to the hill of the Golgotha to the
right. There, a small circle of the gathered crowd, awaiting sentenced criminals
and Christ, mimics the shape of the procession, while some individual figures
continue their journey to a village behind Calvary. The wheel orchestrates the
march toward Golgotha, and its consistent movement emphasizes the inevi-
table death of Christ.39 Not only was his fate inevitable in the year 33, but it
would have been repeated in the year 1564 as well: the wheel suggests that we
are looking at “a vision of history as continually repeating itself, unable to rec-
ognize Christ’s divine nature either then or now.”40 While the inner curve of
the wheel is composed of figures traveling toward the right, from Jerusalem to
Calvary, the outside curve, closer to the viewer, is populated by peasants
37 See the discussion of Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery and The Death of the Virgin
in chapters 5 and 6 for further analysis of how painters responded to the iconoclastic
controversy through their compositions. See also Koenraad Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after
Iconoclasm: Experiments in Decorum, 1566–1585 (Brussels: Mercatorfonds/New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), esp. 45–53.
38 Bruegel borrows this compositional device from Herri met de Bles’s Road to Calvary from
ca. 1535. For a thorough discussion of Bruegel’s imitation of de Bles, and his reinterpretation
of the shape of the wheel, see Meadow, “Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary,” esp. 186–89.
39 Meadow, “Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary,” 188–89.
40 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 74–75.
headed toward Jerusalem with their wares, oblivious to the spectacle of suffer-
ing and punishment. As the city dwellers hurry to witness the execution, and
marketgoers rush to Jerusalem, they pass by two beggars seated at the edge of
the forest to the left. One of them is desperately trying to capture the attention
of passers-by by displaying his crippled leg, but no one is helping either of the
men. A viewer well-versed in contemporary Antwerp art—and Jonghelinck
and his guests certainly belonged to this group—would recognize in this motif
a reference to Pieter Aertsen’s Meat Stall (1551), in which only the Holy Family,
poor and fleeing to Egypt to escape the massacre of the innocents, gives alms
to those in need (figure 21).41 Amid the colorful crowd composed of people of
different ethnicities, and the mundane details of playing children and pole-
vaulting boys, dogs chasing birds, mounted soldiers escorting the procession,
farmers carrying calves to the market, and random figures such as a man who
is trying to catch his hat after it has been carried away by wind, it becomes dif-
ficult to locate Christ, even though Bruegel situated him in the very center of
the panel. To the annoyance of the escorting soldiers, he is falling under the
heavy cross, not eliciting anyone’s compassion, but rather witnesses’ “morbid
curiosity.”42
According to the Bible, soldiers eventually “forced one Simon a Cyrenian
who passed by, coming out of the country … to take up his cross” (Mark 15:21).
In Bruegel’s composition, Simon must have been on the way to the market with
his wife, carrying a vessel with now-spilled milk and a lamb lying on the ground
with its legs tied. As the soldiers are pulling the resistant Simon toward Christ,
the wife fiercely pulls him back, despite being threatened by one of the guards
with a sharp lance pointed directly at her. Other witnesses remain passive in
the face of Christ’s plight, but Simon and his wife are actively denying him
help. The group has caused a lot of confusion, with some of the figures hastily
moving farther away from Simon, clearly frightened they may share his fate,
but curious too about what will happen not to look back at him. Others have
stopped and are waiting for the outcome of this somewhat comical situation.
The figures’ agitated, engaged reactions toward Simon’s ordeal contrast sharply
with their oblivious attitudes toward Christ. They concentrate on things of
41 Charlotte Houghton argues in “This Was Tomorrow” that Aertsen’s Meat Stall alludes to a
controversial transfer of property, managed by no one else but Gilbert van Schoonbeke.
The reference to the Flight to Egypt is strengthened by the motif of two men eating
cherries, as a child traveling with them asks for some. Some fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century Northern paintings of the Rest on the Flight to Egypt depict Mary and Joseph
feeding cherries and other fruit to the infant Jesus. The two men in The Procession to
Calvary, however, do not share them with the child.
42 Meadow, “Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary,” 200.
124 Chapter 3
Figure 21 Pieter Aertsen, Meat Stall, ca. 1551, oil on panel, 115.6 × 168.9cm, North Carolina
Museum of Art, Raleigh, USA, purchased with funds from Wendell and Linda
Murphy and various donors
photo: Bridgeman Images
secondary importance, being distracted from the one truly important and piv-
otal drama unfolding in front of their eyes. Several attributes of Simon and his
wife help the painting’s viewers to reflect on their own religious behavior. The
couple has been carrying a lamb to slaughter and sell, while Christ—the true
sacrificial lamb—is approaching his execution. They refuse to exchange their
worldly concerns epitomized by the lamb for the concern about their eternal
lives. The active resistance of the couple against partaking in Christ’s suffering
is further refined by a rosary hanging at Simon’s wife’s waist, its red beads
standing out against her white apron. This external display of piety does not
match the woman’s behavior, corresponding with sixteenth-century criticism
of religious hypocrisy among many Catholics. But Bruegel does not stop here.
At the end of an imaginary horizontal line extending from the rosary toward
the right edge of the composition, he positioned two nuns with clenched
hands and a monk whose gaze is fixed on Christ. They contradict the message
of false piety and the related famous dictum of Erasmus, Monachatus non est
pietas, suggesting that all types of religious practices can take a proper or im-
proper form.
Inanimate elements of the landscape further contribute to the symbolically

ambivalent meaning of various details of the composition. The mill atop a rock
in the background, whose wheel-like base echoes other circles in the painting,
seems to be inaccessible and therefore defies its practical function.43 There is,
nonetheless, a singular figure standing atop the hill, who has probably reached
it by climbing one of the narrow paths carved in the rock. The mill may be just
a mill—a source of food for the neighboring city, conveying a message as mun-
dane as the peasants rushing to the market to sell their produce and animals.
But it can connote two symbolic meanings.44 First, Christian art has a long
tradition of images of the Mystic Mill, symbolizing Christ, who transforms the
prophecies of the Old Testament into the teachings of the New Testament. His
Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection are essential for the fulfillment of the
words of the Old Testament; the subject of the painting thus more than justi-
fies this allegorical understanding of the mill. The second reading situates the
mill within a contemporary local discourse. In Leenhof der gilden (1564), Jan
van den Berghe talks about mill as a metaphor for people who change their
beliefs and opinions depending on how the wind blows. This interpretation, in
turn, matches the diversity of behaviors of the witnesses of Christ’s passion:
perhaps some of them used to be his followers, but in the face of danger, they
no longer associate themselves with him. An example of such a lack of com-
mitment and dubious piety is Simon of Cyrene’s wife, equipped with a rosary,
but actively denying Christ help in his time of trial.
Cleverly orchestrating his image by employing the shape of the wheel,
Bruegel also dissects the painting vertically, establishing Christ as the point
that divides the scene into two distinct halves. Exactly above his tiny figure,
the first dark clouds have begun to accumulate toward the right and above
Golgotha, whereas the sky to the left is still blue. Here Bruegel introduces the
same progress from light to darkness that he would employ three years later
in The Conversion of Saint Paul, and uses it to express a specific theological
message. According to the Evangelists, when Christ was crucified, “there was
darkness over the whole earth” (e.g., Mark 15:33). The contrast between the
two halves of the image continues in its lower part. To the right, death and
suffering are ubiquitous: the crowd gathered at Calvary is awaiting the arrival
of Christ and the sentenced thieves, while the extensive landscape to their left
is marked by gruesome poles topped with wagon wheels used as gibbets for
displaying the bodies of executed criminals. A similar pole is positioned much
closer to the viewer, next to the Marian group, also occupying the right half of
43 The mill was first introduced into a scene of the procession to Calvary by Jan van Amstel
in the Procession to Calvary (ca. 1534, oil on panel, 77 × 84cm, Paris, Louvre Museum).
44 Gibson, “Mirror of the Earth”, 68-69.
126 Chapter 3
the composition. By contrast, the left half is free from any signs of death, and
is populated instead with marketgoers and other figures completely oblivious
to Christ’s ordeal. His march from Jerusalem to Calvary is the passage from life
to death. But a Christian viewer knows that this relationship between light and
darkness, life and death, would become reversed through Christ’s sacrifice: his
death is a pivotal point in the history of salvation, as death was conquered
through his resurrection, bringing the promise of eternal life for all who be-
lieve. Bruegel had thus already mastered in this earlier panel the paradoxical
relationship between outer appearances and theological truth skillfully repre-
sented in The Conversion of Saint Paul.
The copiousness of Bruegel’s composition visually articulates two crucial
Renaissance concepts: the art theoretical precept of varietas and the convivial
ideal of a mealtime conversation. In De Pictura, Leon Battista Alberti talks
about the importance—but also possible risks—of varietà:
a historia you can deservedly both praise and admire will be such that it
shows itself so agreeable and rich in certain stimuli [as] to attract for a
long time the eyes of the instructed spectator, or even illiterate, with a
certain sense of pleasure and emotion of the mind. [The] first thing, in
fact, that brings pleasure in a historia is richness itself and variety of ob-
jects. As, in fact, in food and music, new and extraordinary [things] al-
ways delight, not only perhaps because of all other reasons but also and
above all for the fact that they differ from those old and customary
[things], so the mind feels pleasure exceedingly in every variety and
abundance of objects.… In painting, therefore, both the multiplicity of
bodies and colors is pleasing.… And I will appreciate every richness pro-
vided that it conforms to what one speaks about.… I blame, without
doubt, those painters who in some way want to appear abundant or per-
haps not to have left any space empty; for this [reason] they do not follow
any composition but scatter everything in a confusing and illogical way.45
The quote well illustrates Bruegel’s approach to biblical narratives, in which he

offers a new formula of religious painting, different from “old and customary”
devotional and liturgical images. His compositions are fueled by the allure of
novelty and discursivity, two features they share with the Renaissance convivia
that provided a new form of religious ritual and spiritual experience. Alber-
ti’s reference to a copious meal in his description of varietas in painting also
aligns with the sixteenth-century convivial authors’ comparison between the
45 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting: A New Translation and Critical Edition, ed. and trans.
Rocco Sinisgalli (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 59–60.
abundance and diversity of food served at a banquet and the copiousness of

a mealtime conversation. One of the essential patterns of the convivium was
the shifting between different topics, and between grave and lighthearted
tones, so that every guest could participate in the conversation, find pleasure
in its variety, and enjoy the amicable atmosphere that brought people of dif-
ferent educational backgrounds together (the Albertian “instructed spectator”
and “illiterate”).46 This polyphony of opinions was desirable, whereas reaching
a consensus among guests was certainly not. The variety of details and subsid-
iary scenes in The Procession to Calvary, which range from comical to serious,
and their juxtaposition with the tragic main event, would activate different
responses from the viewers, and encourage them to switch between themes
and rhetorical modes. The diverse occupations, gender, and age of the figures
portrayed by Bruegel further allow for viewers’ identification with the crowd,
and individualized reactions within the multiplicity of interpretations. Finally,
the ambivalent understanding of motifs such as the windmill and even the
Rogierian group warrant an open-endedness of discussion, and help to avoid
monotony and the boring type of conversation caused by the universal agree-
ment of all interlocutors.47
Still, Alberti warns painters against an undisciplined florid style and the pre-
cedence of copiousness over compositional clarity.48 Bruegel carefully escapes
those traps by organizing The Procession to Calvary around the wheel-like
movement of the figures, and by further dissecting the image in half on the axis
determined by Christ, which helps a viewer to understand the theological mes-
sage of the panel. A similar danger of confusion and commotion presented it-
self to banquets, if the host did not follow certain organizational principles
and failed to supervise the meal. Erasmus’s A Feast of Many Courses revolves
around exactly this risk, as Spudus, who is about to organize a dinner party for
a large company, seeks the advice of Apicius on how to accommodate people
of different tastes, dispositions, and preferences, who come from different
countries and do not even speak the same language. While those circumstanc-
es may well result in “the kind of farce the Hebrews say occurred in the build-
ing of Babel: when someone asks for a cold dish, somebody else hands him a
hot one,” ultimately Apicius provides Spudus with a set of rules that should
46 See, for instance, Desiderius Erasmus, A Feast of Many Courses, in Collected Works of Eras
mus, vol. 40: Colloquies, ed. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997), 802–8.
47 The monotony of a conversation in which everyone agrees is one of the main topoi of
convivial literature, particularly frowned upon by Michel Montaigne. Richardson, Pieter
Bruegel, 69.
48 Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 49.
128 Chapter 3
secure an enjoyable experience for all the guests.49 These guidelines encom-
pass the types of food and drink, and how to serve them, the manner of greet-
ing guests, and how to direct the conversation toward “entertaining stories
[and] … [a] variety of subjects everyone likes to recall and no one hears with
displeasure.” In the end, the colloquium convinces its readers that a “variety of
guests and dishes, if carefully chosen, is essential to a good feast.”50
When Erasmus first published A Feast of Many Courses in 1527, the scope
of his advice for confused hosts was something truly unique in contemporary
literature. But later decades of the sixteenth century brought an abundance
of convivial literature providing instructions on all aspects of dinner parties.
It was primarily the open-ended, discursive nature of convivia that appealed
to educated people of this period. However, the success of this custom was
also greatly facilitated by the Reformation, as it was this movement that asked
questions that undermined the validity of many religious rites: do they have a
biblical precedent, and are they sanctioned by the teaching of Christ?51 Unlike
devotional processions, the convivium passed this test, preserving one very
important aspect of rituals: their collectivity. Symposia produced a learned,
religious experience not through individual reflection, but through group con-
versation. Ommegangen required a more universal participation of different
social groups, a feature captured in The Procession to Calvary and, as we shall
see, the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist. These paintings thus participated in
the transformation of ritual both through their iconography and incorporation
in convivia.
Antwerp’s four annual ommegangen, organized on the Feast of Saint George,
Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Circumcision (Besnijdenis), and the Assump-
tion (Onze Lieve Vrouwe)—the latter two very well-documented for the years
of Bruegel’s artistic activity—were the primary focus of the community’s
ritual calendar, and the main instruments of shaping citizens’ visual literacy
and analytical skills.52 The wagons (poincten or punten) used in these devo-
49 Erasmus, Feast of Many Courses, passim. The Latin name of this Greek colloquium, Dispar
Convivium, which translates as “unequal feast,” suggests that a “variety of guests and
dishes, if carefully chosen, is essential to a good feast” (802).
50 Erasmus, Feast of Many Courses, 805.
51 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 169–70 acknowledges the role of humanism for the
redefinition of ritual, but, especially in the Northern European context, it was the teaching
of Protestant Reformers that truly emphasized the importance of the scriptural basis of
religious practices and beliefs.
52 There are seven extant programs of the ommegangen organized between 1559 and
1566: Ordinantie van den Besnijdenis Ommeganck, van desen teghenwordighen Jare,
M.D. ende LIX (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1559); Ordinancie, inhoudende de Poincten
vanden Heylighen Besnijdenis Ommeganck der Stadt van Antwerpen, gheschiet inden Jare
tional processions belonged to two categories: old (oude) and new (nieuwe).
The former were redeployed in each ommegang and often used on other civic
occasions such as joyous entries; the latter were designed and constructed for
specific ommegang. Oude punten comprised seven religious images: the An-
nunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Three Magi, the Seven Sorrows and
Seven Joys of the Virgin, the Crowning of Mary, and the Last Judgment. These
were followed by seven secular ones: Neptune, Portunus, Nereus and Doris, an
Elephant, Druon Antigon, the Maid of Antwerp, and a Merchant’s Ship. The
fourteen oude punten integrated religious and civic aspects of the community’s
identity and praised its history and the sea trade—the foundation of its eco-
nomic prowess.
In contrast to those timeless values, nieuwe punten addressed current am
bitions and anxieties, the successes and troubles of the metropolis. The
Besnijdenis processions celebrated, in 1559, the signing of the peace treaty at
Cateau-Cambrésis between Spain and France, ending the war that had finan-
cially deeply affected the Low Countries. The processions organized two years
later presented “the whole course of the world in seven figures,” explaining the
vicissitudes of human life and history; in 1562, they explored the theme of the
Four Ages of Man and in 1564, the Theatre of the World, that is, the diversity
of God’s creation and of human achievements.53 The Assumption processions
focused, in 1563, on the figure of the Elck (Everyman) and the ever-present con-
cerns about greed and the lack of self-knowledge, so troubling for a “commu-
nity of commerce”; the 1564 ommegang continued this message as it addressed
the theme of the proper and improper use of earthy goods; and finally, the 1566
procession, which turned out to be the last one before they were cancelled for
the next nineteen years, sought solutions to the troubled Tijt Present, Present
Time.
The iconography of the nieuwe punten reveals an important paradox: de-
spite the devotional nature of processions, they focused almost uniformly on
M.D. LXI (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1561); Ordinancie, inhoudende de Poincten vanden
Heylighen Besnydenis Ommeganck (ged. 24 Mei) der Stadt van Antwerpen, gheschiet inden
Jare M.D. LXII (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1562); Ordinantie van de nieu Punten van onser
Vrouwen Ommeghanck half Oogst (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1563); Ordinantie inhoudende de
nieu poincten van den heyligen besnijdenis ommeganck, der stadt van Antwerpen, gheschiet
in den Iare 1564 (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1564); Ordinantie inhoudende die Oude en Nieuwe
Poincten, van onser Vrouwen Ommeganck, der Stadt van Antwerpen, gheschiet inden Iare
1564 (Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1564); and Ordonantie Inhoudende de niew Poincten vanden
Ommeganck halff Oogst, Anno. 1566. Ghenaempt den Tijt present (Antwerp: Hans de Laet,
1566).
53 The 1561 procession was translated into a series of prints by Maarten van Heemskerck, The
Vicissitudes of Human Affairs, printed in 1564 by Hieronymus Cock.
130 Chapter 3
secular topics, reserving religious imagery for the oude punten. When biblical
exempla were introduced—such as the tower of Babel as the symbol of hubris
in the 1561 ommegang—they were confessionally neutral, well-established
choices that did not call the orthodoxy of the spectacle into question. Like-
wise, no unorthodox thoughts were smuggled into the 1564 praise of God’s
Theatre of the World. Even the 1566 Assumption procession—clearly orga-
nized when the “present time” was a troubled one due to the confessional per-
secution and the threat of iconoclasm—concentrated on virtues and vices
such as Faith and Love, and Discord and Earthly Avarice, to ultimately express
the hope that “God’s Foresight” and “Correct Knowledge,” portrayed in the last
two floats, would restore peace in the region.
The cautious approach to religion taken by the rhetoricians from the Violie-
ren chamber, who were responsible for designing the program of ommegan-
gen, is easy to understand. The Spaniards had been censoring rederijkers’ plays
and prohibiting controversial religious themes in vernacular drama in re-
sponse to the 1539 landjuweel in Ghent, when many plays expressed evangeli-
cal sympathies.54 More fundamentally, the rhetoricians’ activities were subject
to the ordinances prohibiting the dissemination of Protestant literature; tres-
passes against these edicts were punished harshly. In 1558, the factoor (leading
poet) of the Violieren, Frans Fraet, was executed at the Grote Markt for print-
ing forbidden books. His successor, Willem van Haecht, preferred not to risk
the same fate by creating plays and nieuwe punten that would have violated
Spanish edicts. Thus, while his spectacles addressed some of the contemporary
economic and moral concerns of the community, they did not touch upon
what constituted its most pressing and difficult problems: sectarian diversity,
anticlerical sentiments, and religious persecution. The relegation of religious
imagery to the fixed, repetitive, and nondiscursive oude punten deprived the
participants of arguably the most important religious event in Antwerp of the
opportunity to engage in a meaningful and relevant discussion about religion.
Ommegangen promoted worship of local patron saints and relics, but rejected
anything that might have spurred controversy. And yet, even this apparently
safe choice did not prevent a disturbance to the Assumption procession held
on August 18, 1566, during which one of the spectators taunted the figure of the
54 The competition’s leading question that year was “What is the dying man’s greatest
consolation?” The festival ended with the conclusion that the promise of salvation and
the Holy Scripture could best console the dying. For discussion of the Ghent landjuweel,
see H. A. Enno van Gelder, Erasmus, Schilders en Rederijkers. De religieuze crisis der 16e
eeuw weerspiegeld in toneel- en schilderkunst (Groningen: P. Noordhoff, 1959), and Gary
Waite, Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), esp. 134–64.
Virgin with cries “Maiden, Maiden, come down! Maiden, this is your last out-
ing, you must go in a closed cloister.” According to chronicler Godevaert van
Haecht, these cries were welcomed by witnesses with laughter.55
The reaction of amused witnesses to the verbal assault tells us as much
about the atmosphere in Antwerp in the summer of 1566, at the eve of the
Iconoclastic Fury, as it does about this society’s approach to religious festivals.
Such events marked both holy days and holidays, times of devotion and times
of leisure and entertainment. The Catholic Church in the Low Countries and
across Europe tried to curb the secular aspects of those days, but with little ef-
fect. In 1524, Juan Luis Vives complained helplessly in De institutione foeminae
Christianae, “Concerning feast days, celebrations, and banquets, I do not know
what instruction to give to Christians with respect to these pagan customs
which have become so firmly established, that anyone who would not let him-
self be carried away by them with everyone else would be regarded as mad to
resist the popular frenzy and stand alone or in the company of very few in his
opposition.”56
Vives’s treatise was published in Antwerp in 1524, but the local population
seemed to have little concern about opposition to the secularization of feast
days: twenty years later, on June 11, the magistrate had to issue a command that
criticized secular performances as highly inappropriate for the Corpus Christi
and ordered their change into “eene processie van devotie.”57 While spectacles
such as those organized on the Feast of the Circumcision and the Feast of the
Assumption appear to have indeed been cancelled on the Corpus Christi day,
the popular understanding of the holiday did not change. Godevaert van
Haecht, commenting on the tense atmosphere in the city in early summer
1566, noted that someone had spread a rumor about possible arson that day “as
the procession goes, and people eat and drink.”58 Between the lines of van
Haecht’s account we can read that religious celebration provided opportuni-
55 “Maeyken, Maeyken, compt! Maeyken dit is ouwen lesten uytganck, gy moet in een
besloten clooster gaen.” Van Haecht, De kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, 96. The
authorities anticipated possible disturbance to the festivities, and on August 14 issued a
decree requesting that citizens maintain peace during the procession. Génard, “Index
der Gebodboeken,” 285.
56 Vives, De institutione feminae Christianae, 145.
57 Génard, “Index der Gebodboeken,” 224. The full text of the order reads: “Ommeganck,
voortyds costumelyck gehouden op Heylig Sacramentsdag, veranderd in eene processie
van devotie vermits in dien ommeganck met waegenen, kinderen, peerden en andere
spectaculen dikwyls vele dissolutigheden van spelen en diergelyke sotternyen gebeurden,
ser onbehoorlyk wesende ende tenderende meer tot ydelheyd dan tot devotion en
reverentien van den H. Sacramente.”
58 Van Haecht, Kroniek Godevaert van Haecht, 46.
132 Chapter 3
ties for indulgence and drunkenness, common enough so that burghers would
have been oblivious to any danger, specifically, we may add, danger posed by
the Spaniards. For Lutherans such as van Haecht, the secularization of reli-
gious festivals became yet another shortcoming of Catholic customs. Their
theological and doctrinal contestation by Protestants and Erasmian Catholics
hinged upon the belief that the veneration of relics, saints, and images—the
essence of devotional processions—was blasphemous, and that the proces-
sions themselves were a pagan custom.59
The entertainment value of the festivities and the holy days’ increasing sec-
ularization were the main concerns of the Catholic Church. The Spanish gov-
ernment, on the other hand, was alarmed primarily by the collective nature of
those events. During the 1550s and especially the 1560s, any large gathering was
regarded as threatening the public order and potentially leading to rebellion.60
Civic and religious festivities polarized political factions, as they had to accom-
modate “the contradictory impulses of representing, on the one hand, as much
local autonomy as possible … and demonstrating, on the other, the town’s loy-
alty to the sovereign.”61 Indeed, ommegangen days provided an excellent op-
portunity, unwelcomed by Spaniards, for nobles to meet and discuss political
matters while the entire community was gathered together to celebrate. On
June 9, 1566, the day of the Corpus Christi procession, Antwerp burghers wit-
nessed the meeting of William of Orange, his brother Count Louis of Nassau,
the Count of Egmont, and the Count of Hoorne, all of whom were, in the words
of Godevaert van Haecht, “much beloved by the common folk, because they
were opposed to the Inquisition.”62 Van Haecht’s account suggests that their
unofficial assembly must have taken place in public view, allowing common
citizens to follow the course of the events, take sides, and express their loyalty.
In the eyes of the regent, this must have been tantamount to forming a unified
front of the nobility and the urban population against Spanish rule. It would
have normally taken several hours or more to spread the news about decisions
made in Brussels or for the content of some new edict to become broadly
known. By contrast, ommegangen days allowed for more immediate, dynamic,
and thereby more emotionally charged communication. One of the great iro-
nies of the time was that it was the Calvinist image-breakers who helped the
59 This criticism of secular celebrations may have informed images of kermises by Bruegel
and his contemporaries. On this subject, see Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, 66.
60 Emily Peters, “Den gheheelen loop des weerelts (The Whole Course of the World): Printed
Processions and the Theater of Identity in Antwerp during the Dutch Revolt” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005), 20.
61 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 237.
62 Van Haecht, Kroniek Godevaert van Haecht, 46.
Spanish government to finally ban ommegangen altogether. During the icono-

clastic riots on August 20, 1566, the relic of the Holy Foreskin was lost, provid-
ing a convenient excuse for cancelling the 1567 Besnijdenis procession. The
Onze Lieve Vrouwe ommegang was celebrated that year as a simple processie
van devotie, after which Antwerp processions came to a complete halt for an
entire nineteen years, and were only resurrected in a completely different reli-
gious and political reality.63 Meanwhile, Antwerp citizens were deprived of
any opportunities, beyond regular church services, for the collective experi-
ence of religion in the public sphere.
Under these circumstances, gatherings in private, including convivia, be-
came the only viable alternative, popular—not surprisingly—across different
confessional beliefs. In the Low Countries, festive gatherings often included
short, intimate theatrical plays composed by rhetoricians. These so-called
tafelspelen frequently employed allegorical images and emblems, thus estab-
lishing one of the most important links between the dining culture, the conviv-
ial tradition, and the emergence of paintings designed specifically for the
eetkamer.64
Christophe Plantin defined the tafelspel as “une farce qu’un joue à table.”65
However, the subjects and tone of the sixteenth-century plays performed at
banquets were far from uniformly humorous, nor were they dedicated only to
lighthearted topics. Their thematic scope was as varied as the types of dinner
parties at which they were performed.66 In addition to wedding feasts, tafels-
pelen were typically written to mark occasions such as births, baptisms, the
ordination of a new priest, and the investiture of a new mayor or member of
the magistrate. They also embellished feasts of the guilds and chambers of
rhetoric themselves, and annual holidays, including the Epiphany, carnival,
and kristelijke bijeenkomst, that is, a Christian agape.67 Many of these occasions
can be understood as rites of passage, and some were counted among Catholic
sacraments; this correlation confirms the Renaissance belief that “nothing
happens in public or in private … in religious or profane life, without a meal.”68
The context of a banquet determined the location in which tafelspelen—also
63 Peters, “Den geheelen loop des weerelts,” 41.

64 Tafelspelen have gained very little attention among art historians. Some preliminary
thoughts on the relationship between this genre and the dining culture are offered by
Claudia Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel, esp. 76.
65 Lammens-Pikhaus, Tafelspel bij de rederijkers, 87.
66 There was no fixed time for the performance of tafelspelen. They could be presented
before, during, or after a festive meal.
67 Lammens-Pikhaus, Tafelspel bij de rederijkers, 92–95, 501, 503.
134 Chapter 3
known as kamerspelen (chamber plays)—were performed: either the recep-

tion rooms of private houses or semipublic guild houses, all of which were
spaces typically decorated with paintings. The relatively small, intimate space
dictated the number of characters in tafelspelen, which was limited to two or
three figures, rarely reaching four. Sometimes a play was a simple monologue.
As in other rederijkers’ genres, the characters were often personifications of
virtues and vices and categories such as the four elements or the five senses;
occasionally instead of these abstract concepts rhetoricians introduced figures
symbolizing professions, activities, social status, gender, or age.69
In spite of these similarities to public performances, tafelspelen differed
from them profoundly. When witnessing the former, viewers were a part of a
large and anonymous crowd, whereas the domestic or guild setting guaranteed
familiarity among viewers, and between them and the performing rhetori-
cians. This contributed to a more relaxed, leisurely atmosphere, and allowed
for a greater freedom to exchange ideas than the censored—and self-cen-
sored—spelen van zinne. After the 1539 Ghent landjuweel, Spanish authorities
began to forbid religious subjects in these types of plays, but no official edict
restricting tafelspelen seems to have ever been published. They would still be
subject to more universal prohibitions of the dissemination of “heresy,” but
extant table plays nonetheless included much more daring thoughts than
plays performed in public. This is not surprising: rhetoricians had a long tradi-
tion of approaching biblical material in a more creative and analytical manner
than confraternities.70
In the mid-sixteenth century, tafelspelen reflected the variety of confession-
al sympathies and eclecticism of the Netherlandish religiosity of that day.
Some of the plays, e.g., Weereltsche Geleerde en Godelicke Wijse and Prochiaen,
Coster en Wever, advocated Lutheran doctrine and its fundamental concepts:
communion in both forms for laymen and -women, the juxtaposition of the
law and the gospel, and the rejection of pilgrimages, fasting, indulgences, sanc-
tification through works, and the veneration of relics and images.71 In these
69 Lammens-Pikhaus, Tafelspel bij de rederijkers, 122–26.

70 Marnef and van Bruaene, “Civic religion,” 192. One should not forget that rhetoricians’
participation in the religious life of the community significantly predates the Reformation,
as they would have been typically responsible for local processions and religious festivals.
Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 29.
71 Weavers were frequently mentioned as supporters of evangelical teachers, both in
vernacular plays and in civic discourse. As Alastair Duke observes, “according to hostile
contemporaries, those who went to … clandestine [Protestant] meetings conformed with
one of two stereotypes. Either they were ignorant ‘furriers and weavers’ or melancholic
intellectuals and impressionable artists.” Duke, Dissident Identities, 83. The Protestant
sympathies of craftsmen and artists are more than an anecdotal detail or a negative
texts, the criticism of a mechanistic understanding of salvation led to the criti-

cism of the Catholic clergy as greedy. Such anticlerical sentiments had been
widely shared in the Low Countries since the Middle Ages, typically fueled by
the economic privileges enjoyed by the church, and thereby were not very like-
ly to lead to accusations of heresy.72 Moreover, the plays advocated this posi-
tion within a broader socioeconomic context, indicating that other members
of society, most notably merchants, were also guilty of avarice, pride, vanity,
and hypocrisy.
Alongside its critics, the Catholic Church had staunch supporters among
the rhetoricians, such as Cornelis Everaert, who loyally defended in the Sint
Lasant and Spel van den Nyeuwen Priester traditional devotional practices, in-
cluding the veneration of saints and pilgrimages, and who addressed the ac-
cusations brought against the clergy. Spel van den Nyeuwen Priester, written to
celebrate the ordination of a priest, did not deny that some priests betrayed
their vocation and chose a sinful life. But it maintained that despite individual
priests’ shortcomings, the priestly estate was worthy of every praise, as it had
been instituted by Christ. The new priest is warned against following the ex-
ample of the corrupted clergy and reminded that he needs to serve as an ex-
ample, or speculum, for fellow Christians—his body may be weak, but his
eternal soul should be adorned with virtue.
The message of Sint Lasant had a more universal appeal. Encouraging his
audience to a reflection on lay piety, the protagonist addresses members di-
rectly, asking them questions and seeking their advice on spiritual matters.
This interaction with the play’s viewers allowed for an engaged, active, and
conscious choice of Catholic doctrine—something truly unique when com-
pared to the usually dogmatic, nondiscursive approach and the sweeping re-
jection of debate by the Roman Church. The exchange is particularly important
in the context of the play’s narrative, built around the main protagonist’s pil-
grimage to the church dedicated to his patron saint, which stands as a meta-
phor of life. The tafelspel persuades its viewers—or, rather, allows them to
persuade themselves—to remain faithful to the Catholic Church amid sectar-
ian controversies, as only that can secure their redemption. Everaert faced
the challenge of the Reformation without pretending that the Roman Church
had not been struggling with the problem of “unfaithful servants.” Instead, he
cliché—they testify to the patterns of dissemination of new teachings. These professional

groups shared workshops, apprentices were frequently lodged in their masters’ houses,
and it was not uncommon for artists to marry their colleagues’ daughters or sisters.
136 Chapter 3
confronted this criticism, and ultimately let the audience form their own opin-
ions.
The conversation with the public in the Sint Lasant is one of many examples
of breaking the “fourth wall” in tafelspelen. This process was often facilitated by
the presentation of a gift: in approximately half of the extant sixteenth-centu-
ry plays, actors either exchanged gifts among themselves or offered them to the
audience.73 Much of the “onstage” activity of those presentspelen revolved
around the presentation and meaning of the gifts, which become the primary
stimuli activating a conversation among guests and rhetoricians. The complex-
ity and novelty of each of these exchanges was guaranteed by the great variety
of gifts, which ranged from a Bible, mirror, herbs and plants, and bread and
herring—all embedded with symbolic meaning—to religious images, em-
blems, crucifixes, and scrolls with text.74 In some cases, the text of a play does
not clarify whether the offered gift was an actual object or its pictorial repre-
sentation. Often, they featured multiple presents, which a viewer needed to
remember and connect in his mind by the end of the spectacle to fully grasp
the play’s meanings. In a wedding play (bruiloftspel), Onbedorche Jonckheijt,
the bride and groom receive an emblem with two burning hearts bound to-
gether with a bridal girdle of harmony, symbolizing love; a bridle, a symbol of
temperance; and an image of a snake, a symbol of caution. The three gifts in-
troduced love as a fundament of a happy marriage, which nonetheless needs
to be guided by temperance and caution. Similarly, three gods in another
bruiloftspel, Ceres, Neptunus en Aeolus, each bring a gift from the realms they
guard: Ceres offers a loaf of wheat bread promising fertility, Neptunus a her-
ring symbolizing prosperity and abundance, and Aeolus, god of winds, a sail,
wishing the newlyweds that just as the wind moves a ship, love should always
enliven their marriage.
Plays could also feature the exchange of multiple gifts: in De geboorte van
vrou Margriete, composed to commemorate the aristocratic birth of a male
heir, characters bring myrrh, a rose, and an apple, standing for loyalty, dignity,
and power—the three virtues that should characterize a prince. While the
symbolism of these objects was relatively standard, that of many others ob-
jects posed a real challenge to the viewers, and it seems that not all gifts neces-
sarily had a single fixed meaning. Their interpretation often required profound
knowledge of mythology and scripture, as in the case of Joncheyt ende Redene,

74 Similarly, in The Godly Feast, Eusebius and his guests discuss the symbolic meaning of
plants in his villa.
in which instead of gifts, actors brought beilde van portraituere and fyguere of
Nathan and David (2 Sam. 12: 13–14) and Esther and Assuerus (Esther 8:1–8).
However, merely understanding the most obscure references of the indi-
vidual gifts would still not have been sufficient to grasp their significance for
the play. The audience also needed to relate them to the narrative progress of
the performance and textual allusions, while possibly having to keep in mind
all the other presents. Presentspelen thus demanded a very attentive and active
viewership and a high level of literacy. The complexity of the plays, and the
open-ended, equivocal meaning of gifts encouraged the audience to exchange
ideas and would have stimulated a mealtime conversation that would have
continued after the performance was over, especially as presents were typically
introduced toward the end of the play. The offering of gifts indeed provided
one of the most effective opportunities for a discursive exchange at a banquet.
Each present matched the festive occasion for which the table-play had been
composed, and at times the exchange allowed for the smooth appearance of a
new personification in the play.75 Actors sometimes helped their audience to
interpret presents, further contributing to the relaxed atmosphere of familiar-
ity of the gathering and providing guests with an example of the type of con-
versation in which they should engage. In the Letter en Geest, the protagonists
commented on their presents: “See, worthy gentlemen, this is my light, which
heals all those in need, whose broken souls are dead; this is my present, take it
with gratitude,” and “This is a lantern which holds beautiful light … This is my
gift, my dear gentlemen!”76 In contrast to the publicly performed spelen van
zinne, tafelspelen routinely engaged with viewers and expected their response.
The whole exchange was much more personal than in public spectacles, which
encouraged the audience to ponder questions asked in the course of the play
but ultimately proceeded to reveal rhetoricians’ own answers.
The audience’s interpretative efforts in the presentspelen did not go unre-
warded. Once a viewer successfully positioned a gift within its broad concep-
tual network, it acted as a mnemonic device, facilitated the memorization of
a specific play, and served as a proxy of its message. This kind of engaged ap-
proach to text and image corresponds with the type of readership advocated
in collections of emblems published in Antwerp in the mid-1560s. In the in-
troductions to their Neo-Latin books, Johannes Sambucus and Hadrianus Ju-
nius emphasized the role of the reader in establishing the emblems’ meaning
and argued that the beholder’s mental and intellectual effort was essential for

76 Cited in Lammens-Pikhaus, Tafelspel bij de rederijkers, 140.
138 Chapter 3
enjoying the genre.77 Emblems activated the memory of each reader and his or
her knowledge of the classical and Christian traditions, arts, poetry, and phi-
losophy, which led to the construction of an individualized argument, albeit
one firmly grounded in broader cultural references.78 While the same effect
would have been particularly prominent in tafelspelen that featured emblem-
atic images, the interactive mode of plays, open-ended meaning of symbols,
and close relationship between rhetoricians and their guests promoted a simi-
lar “individualization” of the messages conveyed in all table plays.
As tafelspelen typically addressed themes such as gender roles, professional
and Christian virtues, and attributes of different vocations, estates, and offices,
this personalization of their content contributed to the creation of an orderly
society in which everyone accepted his or her status and fulfilled his or her
obligations. This strengthening of the community was one of the most impor-
tant goals shared by table plays and convivia. Beyond this affinity, tafelspelen,
and especially presentspelen, established, alongside Erasmus’s feast colloquia
and their real-life precedents at the Hof van Busleyden, the most direct link
between dinner parties and the custom of learned conversations inspired by
images. The performance of the plays in richly decorated reception rooms may
suggest that a conversation about gifts would have not only sharpened the er-
istic and visual skills of the audience, but might have even formed a prelude to
a convivial discussion of the paintings on display.
77 Johannes Sambucus, Emblemate, cum aliquot nummis antique operis (Antwerp: Christophe
Plantin, 1564), and Hadrianus Junius, Emblemata. Eiusdem aenigmatum libellus (Antwerp:
Christophe Plantin, 1565). For the impact of emblem books on the patterns of reception
in the mid-sixteenth-century Netherlands, see, for instance, Kaminska, “Looking beyond
Confessional Boundaries,” esp. 89.
78 In a fascinating study of sixteenth-century French emblems, Alison Adams analyzes how
the genre constructed “webs of allusion” through intertextual references and triggering
the memory of the beholder; the emblems thus encouraged active readership and,
ultimately, advancing one’s own argument in the religious debates of the period. Alison
Adams, Webs of Allusion: French Protestant Emblem Books of the Sixteenth Century
(Geneva: Droz, 2003).
“Outside in the Woods” 139
Chapter 4
“Outside in the Woods”: The Sermon of Saint John

the Baptist and Hedge-Preaching in Antwerp
In previous chapters, we saw that The Tower of Babel and The Procession to Cal-
vary would have been in all likelihood displayed in the dining hall of Niclaes
Jonghelinck’s villa, while paintings of the conversion of Saint Paul were typi-
cally hung in semipublic, often professional spaces, where they served the pur-
pose of confessional self-fashioning. The patterns of display are much different
in the case of images depicting the sermon of Saint John the Baptist. While we
do not know who originally owned Bruegel’s panel, a sample of contemporary
inventories registers an interesting regularity regarding the placement of
paintings with the same theme, and sheds light on this subject’s understanding
by sixteenth-century viewers. Collected by the Antwerp elite, these images
were typically relegated to more private quarters, distinct from the more acces-
sible neercameren.
The inventory of Lenaert van Impegem, a general at the Antwerp Mint,
deceased in early 1583, lists an anonymous predicatie van Johannes babtista
op paneel in lysten in the middelcamer, a room between the front and back
rooms.1 The decoration of this in-between space was considerably more mod-
est than that of the neercamer, indicating its lesser social significance and
greater importance for the life of the family. Another example of een schilderye
van sint Jans predicatie op panel in herdde lysten is registered in the collection
of the alderman Niclaes van Bouchout (d. 1576).2 Interestingly, van Bouchout
owned two houses within the city proper, one at Kerkhofstraat and another at
Arenberchstraat, the latter a single-room woonhuis decorated with an image
of Saint John. It is difficult to imagine that he would have used such a small
space for large social gatherings; rather, its intimacy situates its closer to Bus-
leyden’s stoove, which significantly limits the viewership of the sint Jans predi-
catie. The third inventory with een tafereel van Johannes predikacie op paneel
in lysten lists it as a part of the decoration of the achtercamer.3 Its owner, the
wealthy merchant Adriaen Vierendeel, ranked, like the other two collectors,
among the city’s elite, presiding over the Antwerp militia as its colonel. In
1 SAA, PK 1173 fol. 84r–91r.

2 SAA, PK 465 fol. 272r–278r.
3 SAA, PK 1173 fol. 37–50.

140 Chapter 4
addition to the paintings and luxury objects displayed in twenty-three rooms

of the house at Venusstraat, Vierendeel owned more than ten books, including
a German translation of the Bible and another unspecified groot Duitse boek,
both of which suggest at least Lutheran sympathies by their owner. Paintings
displayed in his two neercameren reveal a predilection for novel iconographic
themes from both the Old and New Testaments, such as The Deluge, Sint Peeter
de visscher (most likely The Miraculous Draught of Fish), and Christ Blessing the
Children. That the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist was not included along with
this innovative imagery of the primary reception rooms, which it would have
complemented very well, is indicative of its distinct status. Vierendeel’s house
was already strongly suggestive of a Protestant worldview, and someone of his
rank certainly had no interest in bragging about that reputation. The fourth
copy of the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist listed in probate inventories be-
longed to Margareta Boge and Joris Veselaer, once the general at the Antwerp
Mint.4 Although Veselaer could have been an owner of the Bruegel, the notary
attributed the panel to Marten van Cleve. Unfortunately, in this case we do not
know the specific location of the painting inside the house, but the identity of
its owner confirms that the subject matter was especially popular among the
metropolis’s elite.
The display of images of the preaching Saint John in more private rooms of
wealthy Antwerp collectors suggests that their iconography could have been
seen as potentially seditious. In the case of Bruegel’s image, we are looking at
men, women, and children of all ages and social classes, tightly squeezed at the
edge of a forest and up on a hill overlooking a river valley. Some appear to be
pondering the words of the prophet and some discussing them among them-
selves, while others yawn, tired and bored by the sermon. The colorful crowd
presents a broad spectrum of religious identities and behaviors: a pilgrim com-
ing back from Santiago de Compostela, in a hat embellished with shells and
with a pilgrim staff in his hand; Dominican and Augustinian monks; lay mem-
bers of religious orders; and gypsies, who are taking advantage of this large
gathering as an opportunity to make money by palm reading. The crowd de-
picted by Bruegel corresponds closely with a report written by the Antwerp
magistrates to the Deputies to the Estates General in Brussels in late June 1566:
And from what we could understand, the listeners were mostly Walloon
[i.e., members of the clandestine Walloon congregation], and many
among them French, so that together with people from Berchem and
from elsewhere, who were drawn by novelty [of the gathering], there
4 SAA, PK 1329 fol. 141–148.

Figure 22 Frans Hogenberg, Hedge-Preaching outside Antwerp, after 1570, engraving,

21 × 28.8cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
were between four and five thousand people, both men and women; al-
though the majority were men, there were also women who were caring
for small children. And some were so eager, that they stood on elevations,
others climbed on bushes that were thick enough, so that they did much
damage in the forest and in the field.5
The letter describes the first so-called hedge-preaching organized by the Wal-
loon congregation outside the city wall on June 24, 1566 (figure 22).6 From that
day until April 9, 1567—reportedly the last open-air Protestant sermon—
hedge-preaching remained a constant topic of correspondence among the
5 Floris Prims, “De briefwisseling tusschen Magistraat van Antwerpen en Gedeputeerden,”

Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 31 (1940): 18.
6 Although the hedge-preaching outside Antwerp officially began on that date, sermons of
Protestant and Protestantizing preachers organized at private houses and sometimes in public
are documented as early as 1557.
142 Chapter 4
authorities, who remained helpless about such gatherings, fearing an open re-
volt if they decided to intervene.7 While in late June four to five thousand at-
tendees appeared to be a countless crowd, over the next few months this
number tripled, reaching in one documented case twenty-five thousand, de-
spite Catholic priests’ cries that veltpredicanten (field preachers) were pos-
sessed by the devil, if not the devil incarnate themselves.8 The enormous
popularity enjoyed by hedge-preaching across a broad spectrum of society
would have made it impossible to look at paintings of the sermon of Saint John
the Baptist without thinking about those gatherings—even more so as velt-
predicanten themselves would often invoke the example of John the Baptist
and Christ, who likewise preached in the open air.9
1 Picturing Conversations in Bruegel’s Sermon of Saint John the

Baptist
Pieter Bruegel’s panel offers clear testimony to his growing interest in the abil-
ity of images to stimulate discursive religious experiences, parallel to the open-
ended nature of the hedge sermons. The lower right corner of the composition,
where in The Procession to Calvary Bruegel placed the non-narrative, devotion-
al Marian group, is here occupied by a very different pair of figures. The man
in the grayish-blue robe to the left, pointing at John and slightly turned toward
his interlocutor, is a member of the confraternity of Saint Anthony, the Third
(Secular) Order of Saint Francis, whose Latin name Tertius Ordo Regularis
Sancti Francisci explains the letter “T” on the garment.10 The Franciscans were
a strong presence in the Low Countries, and their confraternity in fifteenth-
century Bruges counted among the most prestigious in the region. The Ter-
tiary’s companion dressed in a black habit is a monk in the Augustinian Order,
which had a special place in the history of the Reformation. Martin Luther
was ordained as a priest in an Augustinian monastery in Erfurt in 1506, and his
fellow brothers became some of the most fervent supporters of his teachings
in Germany and across Europe. Antwerp Augustinians—some of who studied
7 As Pollmann reminds us, it also was not entirely clear who was to restore the order in the
cities. Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 17.
8 Guido Marnef, “Dynamics of Reformed Militancy in the Low Countries: The Wonderyear,”
in The Education of a Christian Society. Humanism and the Reformation: Papers delivered
to the Thirteenth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, 1997, ed. N. Scott Amos, Andrew
Pettegree, and Henk van Nierop (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 198.
10 Gustave Glück, Das Bruegel Buch (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1936), nr 28, n.p.
with Luther in Wittenberg11—had already translated and disseminated his

writings before 1520 and became the first victims of religious persecution in
the Netherlands when in 1523 two of the brothers were burnt at the stake for
heresy.12 Bruegel’s Augustinian seems equally receptive to the new teachings:
not only is he attending a sermon outside of the city walls, but he is also dis-
cussing its content with a layman.
Bruegel’s open-minded monk would soon be compelled to decide on which
side of the religious conflict his loyalty lay. As Juliaan Woltjer has demonstrat-
ed, in the first decades of the Reformation many Catholic priests managed to
remain in the church and serve their parishioners despite dissenting opinions,
and often introduced changes in liturgy or encouraged their flock to listen to
the evangelical teachers. But around 1560, the church no longer tolerated such
disobedience. In Flanders alone, between 1555 and 1565 over thirty Catholic
priests were removed or left the church.13 For those moderate priests who
managed to remain among the clergy, the decisive moment came with the 1566
Iconoclasm. The image-breaking and its aftermath made it clear that no com-
promise would be possible, that there would be no place for religious dissi-
dents within the Catholic Church.14
No less significant for the sixteenth-century transformation of religiosity is
the presence of the Tertiary at the gathering: by the 1560s, the glory days of
confraternities were over, no new ones were established, and the number of
their members continued to decrease.15 On the one hand, the Tertiary repre-
sents older, in fact old-fashioned and outdated, spiritual practices, but on the
other, his conversation with the Augustinian epitomizes the switch toward a
more discursive and open model of religiosity. In this new model, laymen
could participate in the theological discussion (even if not everyone—and cer-
tainly not the Spanish authorities—supported that practice), while the knowl-
edge gap between the laity and the clergy was shrinking.16 The figure of the
Tertiary also reminds us that the laity had long been actively involved in com-
11 Marnef and van Bruaene, “Civic religion,” 193.

12 Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, vol. 3 (Brussels: Lamertin, 1907), 327.
13 Woltjer, “Political Moderates,” 194–95.
14 Woltjer, “Political Moderates,” 196.
15 The decline of the popularity of confraternities was just one of many signs that Catholics
in the sixteenth-century Low Countries were rethinking their devotional practices. Fewer
people were joining the monasteries and donating money to specific cult sites, and many
switched from studying hagiographic literature to studying scripture. See, for instance,
Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 39–40.
16 According to Pollmann, this narrowing of the gap in education between the laity and the
clergy contributed to the debate about the necessity of reform in the Catholic Church.
Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 32. The situation in the Low Countries, however, is unique for
144 Chapter 4
munal religious life in the Low Countries.17 At the hedge-preaching, we thus

have people from circles with a well-established, lively interest in religion, who
continue to seek out opportunities to deepen and diversify their spiritual expe-
rience.
The relationship between Catholic devotional customs and church-super-
vised rites and novel, nonliturgical religious practices emerges as one of the
primary themes of Bruegel’s composition. According to the biblical account,
the culmination of Saint John’s preaching was the baptism of Christ, which
confirmed John’s identity as the last prophet and Christ’s identity as the son of
God. Earlier Netherlandish paintings typically emphasized the baptism in the
scene of the preaching of Saint John, and approached the sermon itself as its
mere preparation, of secondary importance. Bruegel considerably changed
this model by relegating the baptism farther away to the spit of land jutting out
into the river in the valley, where it is almost invisible to the viewer, at least
without a close scrutiny of the composition. The viewer is much more likely to
focus on the diverse, colorful crowd surrounding John and their gestures and
facial expressions. Paradoxically, Bruegel’s compositional innovation strength-
ens the theological meaning of the baptism of Christ by conforming to the
contemporaneous transformation of religiosity. Saint John’s words prepare the
gathered viewers for the meeting with the true Messiah who will baptize them
“in the Holy Ghost and fire” (e.g., Matthew 3:11); after the coming of Christ, it
will be in his and the church’s power to administer what would be established
as one of the sacraments. Saint John—and the Protestant ministers—have the
authority to preach God’s word, but the sacraments require the agency of con-
secrated clergy, represented by the cathedral exactly across from the scene of
baptism. Following Erasmus, Bruegel thus distinguishes between the two types
of religious practices, in a manner similar to the rederijkers in De Bekeeringe
Pauli, when they did not include the scene of the baptism of Paul.
By deemphasizing the motif of the baptism and focusing on the sermon it-
self, Bruegel stresses the importance of John’s role in disseminating the word of
God. His mission is important only inasmuch as he “prepares the way” for
Christ, and is “the voice … crying out in the wilderness [to] make straight the
way of the Lord” (John 1:23). Bruegel’s Saint John has his left hand stretched out
in the direction of a standing figure in a light blue robe that distinguishes him
from the other attendees dressed in dark and earthy colors. John’s gesture
early modern Europe, as the level of education of both laymen and priests was excep
tionally high.
17 See, for instance, Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 21, and Marnef and van Bruaene, “Civic
Religion,” passim.
inspires some of the listeners to look at this figure instead of at him, while our
attention is further drawn to that figure by the diagonals of the hill and the
heads of the listeners. The Tertiary’s outstretched finger also points toward that
man, as if he were explaining to the Augustinian that this is the Messiah fore-
told by John. All the compositional clues leave little doubt that he is right.
Bruegel chooses the moment of the narrative when John deflects attention
from himself to Christ, depicting the fulfillment of his prophecy and the cli-
mactic moment of the history of salvation. Those among the gathered crowd
who are looking at Christ rather than at John are truly listening to the prophet
recognizing the coming of the Messiah.
The understanding of the role of Saint John suggested by Bruegel aligns with
a common approach to hedge-preaching among his contemporaries. Its apolo-
gists and the preachers themselves argued that the gatherings primarily dis-
cussed the word of God rather than disseminating a specific confessional
agenda; in his chronicle, Godevaert van Haecht recalls the words of a minister
who preached in the church of Sint Joris on August 24, 1566: “I am neither a
Calvinist nor a Lutheran; man should not believe doctors...”18 This declaration
of the precedence of scriptural instruction over sectarian indoctrination ex-
emplifies the sociohistorical discourse of hedge-preaching, which crossed con-
fessional boundaries. Two detailed eyewitness accounts of the phenomenon,
one by a Catholic, Marcus van Vaernewijck, and the second by a Lutheran, van
Haecht, both express a certain admiration for the Protestant preachers’ expli-
cation of the Bible to their listeners. Their profound, engaging exegesis im-
pressed not only “common folk, who were not well-versed in the scriptures and
[the writings of] the Church Fathers,” but also good, devout, and learned Cath-
olics, who admitted they had never heard such beautiful and moving words.19
Among van Vaernewijck’s friends and relatives were many people who sup-
ported the Protestant movement, including one of his godsons, and the paint-
er, poet, and rhetorician Lucas de Heere.20 Despite his own orthodoxy and
enmity toward Protestants, van Vaernewijck did not hesitate to include in his
account a testimony of “good Catholics” who greatly benefited from attending
hedge-preaching: “The Holy Scripture, they said, that they heard so meticu-
lously explained, made their hearts leap with joy; they were thoroughly moved,
18 “Ick en ben noch Calvinist noch mertinist; men hoeft de doctoren niet te gelooven, maer
d’woerdt Godts, dat ick U leere.” Van Haecht, Kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, 101.
19 Van Vaernewijck, Van die beroerlicke tijden, vol. 1, 13–15, 81.
146 Chapter 4
and in tears, which were caused by their great piety and devotion towards God,
[tears] which were running from their eyes, but really from their hearts.”21
Beyond the ministers’ focus on the gospel, the cautious self-censorship of
the accounts of hedge-preaching renders it nearly impossible to reconstruct
the content of the sermons. The scarce available data indicate that some min-
isters stressed an anti-Catholic, mostly anticlerical agenda, but to a much less-
er extent than popular historiography has it. Their criticism of the clergy’s
wealth and greed was not necessarily the goal in itself, but it typically occa-
sioned biblical reflection about the simple life of Christ and his apostles, which
one should imitate for the sake of the entire society.
Overall, preachers appear to have focused on the prescriptive rather than
the proscriptive message: their confessional doctrines, the authority of the Bi-
ble, and the importance of perseverance under religious persecution in imita-
tion of the first Christians.22 Given their diverse background, it is difficult to
assess how faithfully they presented the agenda of the Reformers. This, how-
ever, would not have mattered a great deal for the sermons’ attendees. Van
Haecht’s and van Vaernewijck’s chronicles indicate that they did not care par-
ticularly for the coherence of religious instruction, often wandering from one
sermon to another or rushing to listen to the ministers after attending a Catho-
lic service or procession. While this eclectic approach often frustrated the
preachers, whose ultimate goal was to convert their listeners, the perceptive
open-mindedness of the audience resulted in their becoming familiar with di-
verse beliefs and contributed to their ability to present more nuanced theo-
logical arguments.23
The Protestant preachers’ consistent, almost obsessive emphasis on dissem-
inating the word of God occasionally took a comic turn. In an entry from July
24, 1566, a month after the beginning of the haagpreken, van Haecht reported
how, in an effort to regain their congregants, Catholic priests posted notices on
church doors across the city that the “Word of God” would be preached in the
Borchtkerk. The popular reaction to this announcement was quite different
21 “Die heilige scriftuere, zeijden zij, die zij daer hoorden zoo naectelic uutlegghen, dede
haer herten van vruechden upsprijnghen ende al haer binnenste van ander tot boven
beroeren, die tranen overvloedic, uut grooter devoice ende viericheijt tot Godt, uut haren
ooghen, ja, uut haerder herten sprijnghen.” Van Vaernewijck, Van die beroerlicke tijden, 81.
22 Marnef, “Dynamics of Reformed Militancy,” 196–98.
23 Despite these troubles with conversions, Reformed ministers in the Low Countries do not
appear to have followed a particularly harsh course against mere sympathizers of the
movement or, as John Calvin referred to them, the “Nicodemites.” In a pamphlet circulated
in the Netherlands in 1543, Calvin wholeheartedly condemned those who did not fully
support the Reformed Church, but his uncompromising stance was widely criticized and
rejected as unsuited to the local circumstances.
than the one they were hoping for, as passers-by commented: “Shall they only
now begin to preach the Word of God? What have they been teaching so far all
these years?”24
By visually articulating both the biblical understanding of the role of Saint
John and the contemporary approach to hedge-preaching, with its emphasis
on the teaching of the scripture, while confirming that rituals such as baptism
were still the domain of the Catholic Church, Bruegel’s panel takes a careful
stance in the ongoing debate about the validity of hedge-preaching. Given its
popular support among Netherlandish society, it was hardly a radical or he-
retical move to advocate that this novel form of religious instruction could en-
rich the spiritual lives of Catholics. Religiosity in the Low Countries has long
been characterized by the combination of different types of devotional prac-
tices, which, as I have already mentioned, would strike only modern scholars
as antithetical.25 For religious moderates, there was nothing odd about attend-
ing a Protestant sermon and a Catholic procession on the same day. The group
of people who met buyten inde bosschen would therefore have been composed
of orthodox and unorthodox Catholics alike. Most of them continued to ad-
here to the pragmatic principle of moderation, as would become evident a few
years later. When, on July 16, 1570, at the time of the Duke of Alba’s harsh reign,
a royal and papal pardon was proclaimed, as many as 14,128 people in Antwerp
alone reconciled themselves with the Catholic Church.26 This is an astonishing
number, one that indicates a substantial part of the city’s adult population
must have attended Protestant sermons, but did not consider breaking with
the church. Moderate Catholics might not have liked some of the practices
imposed on them by the church, but the majority were even more averse to the
prospect of a schism (or dying for sectarian doctrine).
The tremendous popularity of hedge-preaching was also determined largely
by the novelty of its form, content, and setting. Moreover, its emergence over-
lapped with the period of post-Tridentine reform, which further formalized
the already rigid Latin Catholic liturgy. Long prayers and repetitive rites elicit-
ed boredom rather than piety and alienated many congregants, who welcomed
charismatic, often well-educated ministers.27 The colorful crowd depicted by
24 “Sullen sy nou Godts woerdt preeken eerst? Wat hebben sy sulange jaeren geleert?” Van
Haecht, Kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, 73–74.
25 On this issue, see Marnef and van Bruaene, “Civic Religion,” passim.
26 Marnef, “Civic Religions,” passim.
27 On the educational, social, and national background of Calvinist ministers, see Crew,
Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm, esp. 41. Long liturgy and prayers were heavily
criticized by Erasmus: Desiderius Erasmus, On Praying to God (Modus Orandi Deum), ed.
148 Chapter 4
Bruegel approaches the sermon as both an opportunity to listen to Saint John

and a form of picnic; some of the attendees are napping, others have brought
dogs with them, while the man dressed in black, sitting at the edge of the gath-
ering and in the center of the composition, is having his fortune told by a gypsy.
As confirmed by many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century written sources,
Netherlandish urbanites were particularly fond of countryside excursions, de-
spite the contradictory belief that the world beyond the city walls was danger-
ous. This ambiance of a leisurely outing or a kermis was often underlined in
eyewitness accounts, and to a certain extent moved the hedge-preaching from
the realm of religious controversy into that of popular culture. Van Haecht
mentioned that “at a sermon one could also find beer and other stuff for sale,”28
while the Antwerp magistrates commented on the way such events attracted
so many listeners as if there were “a farce performed.”29
Nevertheless, these gatherings, “disenchanted” and less formalized than the
Catholic ceremonies, would gradually develop their own structure and rites.
Ministers continued to preach “outside the city, in the usual place,” embed-
ding, deliberately or not, those certain fixed places with the aura of sacred-
ness.30 Preachers and attendees also began to use emblems and props that
helped to distinguish between Lutheran and Calvinist sermons in case the two
took place simultaneously, and began to separate the male from the female
audience. But these changes had not yet been registered by Bruegel, who de-
picts an early stage of veltpredicatie, and focuses on its communal quality and
unifying potential, as the listeners seem to forgo all traditional social divisions.
Similarly, while over the summer of 1566 hedge-preaching came to be regarded
as seditious and rebellion-provoking and began to be disrupted by the shouts
of “Vive les gueux!” (“Long live the Beggars!”), Bruegel upholds a peaceful at-
mosphere. Only three among the attendees carry arms: a man hiding behind a
crooked tree to the left, looking directly at us; a man on the other side of the
same tree, with a short spear attached to the belt behind his back; and a figure
to the left of the Tertiary and the Augustinian monk with a sword at his waist.
All these men are standing at the edge of the gathering, which aligns with the
popular explanation of why some people arrived at veltpredicatie with weap-
ons. According to the apologists, this was not a threat targeted at the regent,
and trans. John N. Grant, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 70: Spiritualia and Pastoralia,
ed. John W. O’Malley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 217.
28 Van Haecht, Kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, 72.
29 Prims, “De Briefwisseling tusschen Magistraat van Antwerpen,” 22.
30 The phrase “buiten de stad op de gewoone plaats” is commonly used in the accounts of
the hedge-preaching and correspondence of the magistrates.
but a necessary act of self-protection in case the Spanish government sent sol-
diers to one of these meetings.
While the Reformed movement denied their militaristic ambitions, many
religious moderates such as those depicted by Bruegel changed their position
in the aftermath of the 1566 Iconoclasm. Since the image-breaking struck many
people as a senseless, even barbaric act of violence, the popular sympathy to-
ward the Reformed preachers decreased. But this did not yet mean that anti-
heresy placards and the persecution of dissidents by the Habsburgs suddenly
gained the wholehearted support of the political and religious center. Quite
the contrary: with the 1568 executions of Counts Hoorn and Egmont and the
Antwerp burgomaster Antoon van Stralen, the Spanish government once more
set itself against its Netherlandish subjects.31 The choices made by the mod-
erates—from attending the open-air sermons to reconciliation with the Cath-
olic Church and their simultaneous opposition to Philip II—were determined
more by the changing political circumstances than by religious zeal and un-
broken faith in a specific sectarian doctrine.32 In fact, as all the characteristics
of the religious center suggest, they were only mildly interested in the doctrine,
focusing primarily on the scripture and the question of Christian ethics.33
The depiction of a colorful crowd of religious moderates in Sermon of Saint
John the Baptist allowed Pieter Bruegel to explore the diversity of religious be-
haviors, also a feature of The Procession to Calvary. One can choose between
different models of Christian piety, he seems to say, and each can either remain
pious or become corrupt. Both panels were displayed in domestic spaces that
offered more security and freedom than public spaces, but that also dictated
a very specific type of decoration that would secure the family’s good repu-
tation and stimulate religious practices among its relatives. The large size of
the Procession and the Sermon, their copiousness and complexity, guaranteed
that each time viewers gathered in front of them, the compositions would have
activated a different type of response. However, the presence of the anachro-
nistic Marian group in the Procession—and its juxtaposition with the convers-
ing Augustinian and Tertiary—also poses a question as to whether meditative
paintings were still possible in the era of the Reformation without raising sus-
picions about the improper veneration of images. Could one produce paintings
31 Woltjer, “Political Moderates,” 189–90.

32 See also Marnef, “Civic Religions,” 557. As the circumstances were less pressing in the post-
revolt northern provinces, its population could have maintained a moderate religious
outlook and remained reluctant to make binding choices. Even by the end of the first
quarter of the seventeenth century, the Calvinist Church counted among its members less
than 20 percent of the society. Woltjer, “Political Moderates,” 197.
150 Chapter 4
intended for personal devotion rather than collective conversation, and, if so,
what formula should their iconography and composition follow? The Death of
the Virgin and Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery are Bruegel’s answers
to those vital questions, attesting to his quest for a total renewal of religious
imagery in the mid-sixteenth-century Low Countries.
“If You Are without a Sin” 151
Chapter 5
“If You Are without a Sin”: Religious and Artistic

Discourse in Christ and the Woman Taken in
Adultery
In the previous chapters, I focused on Pieter Bruegel’s large narrative composi-

tions displayed in semipublic domestic and professional spaces, intended for a
collective viewing experience. By contrast, in this and the next chapter I look
at two grisaille paintings, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery and The
Death of the Virgin, whose small format and subject matter predisposed them
for a more private—one could say intimate—reception. The ownership of
these compositions confirms this purpose: the first one remained in the Brue-
gel family, and the second belonged to the cartographer, humanist, and collec-
tor Abraham Ortelius (figure 23). Interpreting both these works required not
only an in-depth knowledge of the Bible and an awareness of the contempo-
rary transformation of religious beliefs and practices, but also a familiarity
with Netherlandish, German, and Italian artistic traditions. Like Bruegel’s large
biblical panels, these small grisailles formulated a new idiom of religious imag-
ery: they could easily have been used as visual aids in meditation and thus
updated one of the genres most fervently questioned by the Protestant Refor-
mation. But their ability to transform older formulas derived primarily from an
active engagement with past and current art rather than the sociopolitical and
economic issues of the time, and relied upon their viewers’ ability to recognize
this visual dialogue. What could be called an artistic and historiographic self-
awareness of Bruegel’s grisailles was thus fundamental for understanding their
religious message.1 The second visual and rhetorical tradition that was crucial
for their creation and reception was contemporary vernacular theatre, espe-
cially relevant in the case of Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery.
1 The importance of this visual dialogue with a variety of artistic traditions specifically in
Bruegel’s grisailles has been recognized by Stephanie Porras, for whom these paintings are
prime examples of his construction of an artistic identity within the classical and the vernacu-
lar contexts, or his “hybrid” approach to art history actively expressed in a visual form. Porras,
Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, esp. 121–26.

152 Chapter 5
Figure 23 Philips Galle, Portrait of Abraham Ortelius, 1572, engraving, 17.5 × 12.5cm,

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
1 Truth and Penitence in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery
The scenery and costumes in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery are not
contemporized as are those in The Tower of Babel, The Procession to Calvary, and
other large biblical panels by Bruegel; however, the words written by Christ on
the ground are rendered in the vernacular: “Die sonder sonde is/Die V… ” (“He
that is without sin, let him …”). The local language stands in contrast to the Ro-
man numerals in the signature (BRUEGEL MDLXV) and the Hebrew-like, albeit
purely decorative letters at the hem of the robe of one of the Pharisees. The use
of vernacular is also unique considering the iconography of John 8: typically,
if the words presumably written by Christ on the ground are included, they
are either intelligible, as in the copy of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting in the
Philadelphia Museum of Art (figure 24), or intended to pictorially mimic the
Hebrew alphabet while remaining meaningless, as is the case in the paintings
by Pieter Aertsen in Frankfurt (figure 25) and Stockholm (figure 26).2
The vernacular text, which forms a diagonal line in the otherwise empty
middle space of the foreground, is compositionally very close to the viewers. It
is also the focus of the four figures arranged around it in a semicircle: the
bowed-down Christ to the left, the adulteress—who has her eyes cast down,
but points at the text with her fingers—and a Pharisee and a scribe who ap-
pear to contest Christ’s ostensible rejection of the Mosaic law. Once again, as in
The Conversion of Saint Paul, Bruegel invites his viewers to ponder the relation-
ship between human knowledge and misguided religious zeal on the one hand,
and the divine guidance of Christ on the other. The long-bearded Pharisee
crosses his arms under his tunic in the familiar gesture of sloth,3 but his attri-
butes—a book at his waist, the pseudo-Hebraic letters—nonetheless signify
his uncompromising adherence to the letter of the law, which contradicts
Christ’s merciful dismissal of the adulteress.4 The scribe to his right appears to
be more vocal in his opposition to Christ’s flexible interpretation of the law.
Bending toward the ground, “his mouth and hands fluttering, he remonstrates
2 Some versions of this theme from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas
Cranach the Younger—and there are almost twenty such paintings—include the biblical cita-
tion in German, but it is introduced above the row of half-length figures rather than as words
written by Christ on the ground.
3 Melion reads the Pharisee’s gesture as a deliberate refusal “to ‘grasp’ the import of the doctrina
Christi.” Walter S. Melion, “Visual Exegesis and Pieter Bruegel’s Christ and the Woman Taken in
Adultery,” in Imago Exegetica: Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700, ed. Walter
S. Melion, James Clifton, and Michel Weemans (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 12.
4 Melion, “Visual Exegesis,” 8.
154 Chapter 5
Figure 24 Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Christ and the Woman Taken in

Adultery, 16th century, oil on panel, 75.9 × 55.9cm, Philadelphia,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection
photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Figure 25 Pieter Aertsen, Market Scene with Christ and the Adulterous Woman, ca. 1557–58,
oil on panel, 122 × 180cm, Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut
photo: © Städel Museum—ARTOTHEK
with the Lord, loudly contesting what has been silently written.”5 The four fore-
ground figures suggest that what we are looking at can possibly be interpreted
as “an image of conflicting authority.”6 A stone brought along by the scribe—or
one of his followers—still lies there below his hands, and along a diagonal es-
tablished by the bottom of Christ’s robe and his finger, ready to be picked up
any moment. The rest of the crowd forms a larger semicircular wall behind
Christ and the adulteress, obscuring any details of the background that would
help us to identify the setting of the scene.7 Many onlookers are already
5 Melion, “Visual Exegesis,” 11. Melion interprets the scribe’s gesture—his crossed palms—as
potentially signifying his intention of “crossing” Christ, understood both as contradicting his
teachings and eventually crucifying him.
7 Koenraad Jonckheere, who emphasizes the resemblance of Bruegel’s adulteress to a Gothic
sculpture, compares this semicircle to a niche, used in real architecture to showcase statues
and mimicked in Netherlandish painting. Thus, according to Jonckheere, “Bruegel created the
illusion that Christ is writing his legendary words in a niche at the base of a Gothic sculpture.”
Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, 208.
156 Chapter 5
Figure 26 Pieter Aertsen, Market Scene with Christ and the Adulterous Woman, ca. 1559, oil
on panel, 123 × 179cm, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
artwork in the public domain
fleeing—one with a basket full of stones—while others are still intensely gaz-
ing at what Christ has been writing on the ground. Once again, Bruegel throws
us into the middle of the story, when the fate of the adulteress has not been
decided, and Christ’s clash with the Pharisees is yet to come to a conclusion.
The actions of the foreground figures of the scribe and the Pharisee imme-
diately direct the viewer back to Christ’s message as written on the ground. The
grisaille’s composition and the use of the vernacular indicate clearly that its
original viewership was meant to see, read, and reflect upon the biblical quo-
tation. Such visual scrutiny would have been further encouraged by the small
size of the panel: at 24.1 × 34.4 cm, it lent itself to being studied while being
held in one’s hands or set down on a table, in a manner exemplified by many
Flemish paintings of cabinets of art. The vernacular also made the grisaille ac-
cessible to viewers without a humanistic education. It thus echoes the practice
of Protestant preachers and theologians who strove to reach a broader public
with sermons delivered in or translated simultaneously into a local language.8

The viewer is compelled to scrutinize Christ’s admonition, only the beginning
of which is actually included. As Walter Melion convincingly argues, the in-
completeness of the text—“its final words still to be written”—indicates that
evangelical message, unlike the law, is more open-ended.9
The fragmentary rendition of the biblical quotation also serves as a power-
ful reminder that no one is without sin, shifting the focus of the story from the
punishment of the adulteress to the sinful human nature of each and every
viewer. Bruegel confronts viewers with a question about their own sinfulness,
and visualizes a myriad of possible responses in the details of the composition
and the varied reactions of the crowd. The Pharisees and the scribes chal-
lenged Christ to judge the woman; Bruegel challenges his viewers to examine
their behavior and to account for their own sins. Once viewers complete this
scrutiny of Christ’s words—acted out in the composition by many figures sur-
rounding him and the adulteress—and the ensuing sincere self-examination,
they need to make a decision about their future actions. The stone to throw at
the adulteress lies there in plain sight, within the reach of any beholder who
may want to condemn her, convinced of his own righteousness. Mid-sixteenth-
century literature is full of warnings against false piety and false righteousness,
which characterized both individuals and entire confessional movements.
These vices went hand in hand with pride and hubris, recognized, as we saw in
the discussion of The Tower of Babel, by authors along a broad spiritual and
sectarian spectrum. In a bitter letter to Emmanuel van Meteren from Decem-
ber 13, 1567, his disillusioned uncle Abraham Ortelius reflected on the situation
in Antwerp and the Low Countries: “All this we have deserved through our sins,
for we are up to our heads in pride and ambition, and everyone is out to seem
good, but not to be good, and everybody wants to lecture others but not be
humble, to know much and do little, to have command over others and not to
bow under God’s patient Hand with self-denial. May He be merciful to us and
give us to see our sins.”10
8 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 139. Porras further suggests that “the inclu-
sion of Dutch here also recalls the contemporary debates about the historical and there-
fore valuable character of the vernacular as a language worthy of translation. Just as
Bruegel translates the Latin of the Bible into contemporary Dutch, he pictures his own
translation of pictorial models in the various figure types on display within the
painting.”
10 Harris, “The Religious Position of Abraham Ortelius,” 115.
158 Chapter 5
Ortelius’s letter comes surprisingly close to Bruegel’s grisaille. While I do not

want to suggest that the cartographer had this particular composition in mind
when writing to his nephew—although there can be little doubt that he was
familiar with it—the content of his statement and the imagery he evokes align
with the visual argument constructed by Bruegel. Ortelius’s juxtaposition of
true humility and false piety, expressed through the metaphor of having “com-
mand over others” versus “bow[ing] under God’s patient Hand,” mimics the
contrast between the Pharisees and Christ. As Christ bends low next to the
adulteress, he humbles himself in opposition to the crowd’s desire to judge
and condemn, to “have command over” the woman. Christ’s humility at this
moment foreshadows the events of the Passion and crucifixion—the extreme
self-denial in the fulfillment of God’s will. Compositionally, the scribes and the
Pharisees tower above Christ, eager to lecture him in the Mosaic law, in which
they are experts. They do so from the position of doctrinal authority, and re-
fuse to side with Christ, who on several occasions emphasizes his mission to
fulfill the law: “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets.
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).11 Ortelius concludes
with a prayer that God help everyone to see their own sins, hoping for the same
self-examination to which Christ calls his followers in John 8.
Other authors quote the specific story from John 8 to illustrate the same
disappointment with the lack of self-knowledge and the haste of judgment
that characterizes their contemporaries. Perhaps the most surprising among
these examples comes from Anna Bijns; as we saw in previous chapters, this
strongly anti-Protestant writer would typically criticize with mockery religious
Reformers. And yet, in one of her poems, Bijns offers a uniquely inclusive, sin-
cere, and introspective statement:
Hate and spite are everywhere, and love is dead

everybody condemns others…
We should take our brothers’ shortcomings lightly
For if we each looked at ourselves
we would sometimes have to sigh and cry out…
So if you hear someone speaking evil, say, leave well alone
He who is without a sin, let him cast the first stone.12
11 Walter Melion explores the theme of the exemplary humility of Christ throughout the
quoted essay: “Visual Exegesis,” esp. 8–10.
12 K. Ruelens, ed., Refreinen en andere gedichten uit de zestiende eeuw. Uitgaven der Maat
schappij der Antwerpsche Bibliophilen, 4-7-9, 3 vols. (Antwerp, 1879–1881), vol. 1, 84–85.
For the English translation used here, see Honig, Painting and the Market, 41.
Ortelius’s and Bijns’s bitter observations that false righteousness is apparently

ubiquitous among their contemporaries suggest that, if they were to be honest,
many viewers of Bruegel’s grisaille should have seen themselves in the depicted
Pharisees. The sure shock of this recognition confronted them with the choice
between adherence to religious doctrine and evangelical, forgiving love.13 Ac-
cording to the Bible, when the gathered crowd heard Christ’s words, they “went
out one by one, beginning at the eldest” (John 8:9). However, we do not know
what this group of Pharisees and scribes did next: whether they continued to
live their lives unchanged, with the intent on undermining Christ’s authority
on other occasions, or whether they took the first step toward changing their
behavior. For sixteenth-century theologians, acknowledgment of one’s sins was
fundamental for repentance, and repentance, in turn, was essential for conver-
sion. As viewers observe the Pharisees and scribes and the adulteress, they are
invited to answer for themselves what their next step would be. Ideally, rather
than condemning others, they would change their own lives, following the ex-
ample of the adulteress, whom Christ exhorts to no longer sin. Standing in a
three-quarter view as she turns away from her accusers and toward Christ, her
eyes cast down and her hands intertwined, her pose connotes penitence. Such
understanding of the story was promoted by Erasmus, who in his Paraphrase
on John encouraged his readers to embrace Christ’s mercy while acknowledg-
ing their own sin: “Jesus urges everyone, as each is covered with sins, to come
to him, provided that he come penitent; let each follow Jesus rather than the
Pharisees, who were the blind leading the blind, and so that no one would be
reluctant to approach out of awareness of his own misdeeds, Jesus has shown
just now in the case of the Adulteress how he does not keep anyone away who
wishes to be healed.”14
Another work by Bruegel features a woman posed identically to the adul-
teress, with the same delicate facial features (which distinguish them from so
13 Interestingly, as Honig shows, mid-sixteenth-century poetry also cited Christ’s famous

words in nonreligious contexts. An anonymous writer opened one of his poems by
reminding his readers that “‘He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone’/so speaks
Christ, in general/to everyone” to offer a criticism of a society in which people from
different estates and classes (e.g., craftsmen) mock others (e.g., farmers). Instead, the poet
continues, all social groups should embrace the contributions—as well as imperfections—
of others. Honig, Painting and the Market, 41. The poem aligns with the discourse of self-
knowledge and the individual profit and common good whose understanding is
fundamental for a harmonious society, and which I consider in my analysis of The Tower
of Babel.
14 Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrase on John, trans. Jane E. Philips, in Collected Works of
Erasmus, vol. 46: New Testament Scholarship, ed. Robert D. Sider (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1991), 108.
160 Chapter 5
Figure 27 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Calumny of Apelles, ca. 1565–69, drawing, 20.2 × 30.6cm,
London, British Museum
photo: London, British Museum
many of Bruegel’s figures), dressed in similarly classicizing clothes and with

a subtle veil on her head. We find her to the left of The Calumny of Apelles,
identified as Penitencia (figure 27). The adulteress in the grisaille can thus be
understood as a personification of repentance, embodying the only proper
reaction to Christ’s words. The affinities between these two compositions by
Bruegel are worth exploring in some detail; their compositions, subject matter,
and “stylistic and temporal heterogeneity,”15 as well as their shared use of the
15 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 136. Porras emphasizes that Bruegel’s
grisailles—especially Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery—and The Calumny of
Apelles share a similar approach to art and its history expressed through stylistic hybridity.
The grisailles and the drawing alike bring together classical and vernacular themes and
idioms, referencing at once Northern artistic heritage, Italian Renaissance, and classical
antiquity. For Porras, The Calumny of Apelles can be in fact regarded as a metaphor of
Bruegel’s eclectic approach to art, historical imagination, and ambition to demonstrate
“how the ancient subject par excellence could be reimagined as the product of a
vernacular art history.” Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 129.
vernacular theatre of the rhetoricians, can inform our understanding of view-

ers’ reception of Bruegel’s grisaille.
Two literary sources—Karel van Mander’s Het Schilderboeck and a 1670 let-
ter by art dealer Gilliam Forchoudt—mention that Pieter Bruegel made a
painting of the Calumny of Apelles. However, we know only a drawing with
this theme, which resurfaced in 1959.16 Whether it was meant as a preparatory
drawing to a painting, perhaps even a grisaille, remains a matter of specula-
tion, but the effect of even this small sketch is powerful. Bruegel’s composition
closely follows the famous description of Apelles’s masterpiece in Lucian’s es-
say “On Not Believing Rashly in Slander.”17 Lucian used the painting created by
16 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Calumny of Apelles, 1565–69, drawing, 202 × 306mm, London,
British Museum. David Cast, The Calumny of Apelles: A Study in the Humanist Tradition.
Yale Publications in the History of Art (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 101.
Karel van Mander talks about this composition’s superiority, at least in Bruegel’s own
opinion: “hadde verder gemaeckt, daer de waerheyt doorbreeckt: dit soude (nae zijn
seggen) t’beste zijn, dat van hem ghedaen was.” Van Mander, Het Schilderboeck, fol. 234v.
The half-kneeling, half-seated pose of Veritas in the drawing does not necessarily conform
to van Mander’s description of the “Truth breaking through,” which may suggest that van
Mander had a different composition in mind or, more likely, that he knew of Bruegel’s
image second-hand, and assumed it would have followed the conventional representation
of Veritas in Italian Renaissance art.
17 According to David Cast and Stephanie Porras, Bruegel based his Calumny on the
translation of Lucian’s essay by Philip Melanchthon, who rendered Envy as the masculine
Lyvor rather than the more common feminine Invidia. Cast, Calumny of Apelles, 102;
Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 119. Porras—and Bart Ramakers before
her—also suggest that Bruegel knew of the description of calumny in the Venetian
edition of Alberti’s Della Pittura (1547). However, this theory, while not impossible, is
highly speculative. Both Ramakers and Porras use, once again, the figure of Lyvor to
establish a connection between Bruegel’s sketch and Alberti’s drawing—albeit for
different reasons. Ramakers associates Lyvor with Alberti’s advice to include in a painting
a figure that would either gesture or look directly at a viewer, capturing his attention,
while Porras points out that Alberti elaborates on Lucian’s ekphrasis by describing Lyvor
as an exhausted soldier, and Bruegel depicts Lyvor with a piece of armor covering his right
elbow and a sword hanging from his waist. Bart Ramakers, “Bruegel en de rederijkers.
Literatuur en schilderkunst in de zestiende eeuw,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 47
(1996): 89. Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 119, 121. Both theories are
problematic. Bruegel indeed shows Lyvor looking out at the audience and gesturing at the
king with his right hand, but the strategy was ubiquitous in early modern painting, and
Bruegel would have been familiar with it through pictorial examples even without
knowing Alberti’s treatise. Moreover, it was also a strategy for breaking the fourth wall in
the rhetoricians’ theatre, another source of inspiration for Bruegel. If we look at Porras’s
interpretation, the association of Envy and Calumny with War was not unique to Bruegel
either: for instance, Maarten van Heemskerck’s engraving The Triumph of Envy, the fourth
plate from his Cycle of the Vicissitudes of Human Affairs published by Hieronymus Cock in
1564, shows Lyvor in a quasi-Roman, quasi-military outfit, seated beneath the figure of
162 Chapter 5
Apelles after he was falsely accused of participating in a conspiracy against

Ptolemy IV Philopator to explain “what sort of thing Calumny is, how it begins
and what it does.”18 The image allegorizes what happened to the artist, who
nearly lost his life due to an unsubstantiated charge brought against him by an
envious colleague. It presents a universal, timeless example of the importance
of truth; in Lucian’s ekphrastic description, Apelles’s masterpiece becomes the
most effective and persuasive way of showing how calumny “works in the
world.”19 Despite its highly allegorical content, the painting’s composition as
introduced by Lucian is clear, persuasive, and easy to follow:
On the right hand sits a man with such a respectable length of ears, that
they might be taken for those of Midas, reaching out his hand towards
Calumny, yet at a distance, coming up to him. Near him on either side
stands a female figure which I take to represent Ignorance and Suspicion.
From the other side advances Calumny in the form of a beautiful maiden,
but in her countenance and action expressing heat, anger and rooted
malice. She bears in her left hand a burning torch, while in her right she
drags a young man along by the hair, who stretches forth his hands to
heaven calling upon gods to attest his innocence. Before her walks an
ugly, pale-faced, hollow-eyed man, looking emaciated, as if undermined
by some slow disease, and whom without trouble we discover to be Envy.
Behind Calumny walk two other females, who seem to be irritating, sup-
porting, and adorning her, of whom one, as my guide and interpreter in-
formed me, was Artifice, the other Deceit. At a greater distance behind
her followed Repentance in a black tattered mourning habit; she wept,
Bellum, and about to whip the two horses drawing the chariot of Envy: Detractio and
Calumnia. Van Heemskerck’s print was based on the spectacle designed by the rhetoricians
for the ommegang for the Feast of Circumcision in 1561. That year’s floats were dedicated
to “the whole course of the world in seven figures and likeness,” and introduced Envy on
the third wagon. According to the procession description published by Hans de Laet, the
charioteer was a somber, dark, and ugly young man, but neither his attributes nor his
outfit is described in any more detail. The same ommegang—and the print series by van
Heemskerck—featured an image of the tower of Babel on the wagon of Pride (second
wagon of the procession), alongside painted pyramids, tombs, other majestic edifices,
and an episode from gigantomachy. Ordinancie, Inhoudende de Poincten vanden Heylighen
Besnijdenis Ommeganck der Stadt van Antwerpen, gheschiet inden Jare M.D. LXI (Antwerp:
Hans de Laet), 1561.
18 Cast, Calumny of Apelles, 3.
and turned away her face for shame before Truth, who approached her, as
if afraid to meet her eyes.20
Lucian’s description identifies envy as the leading cause of calumny, and indi-
cates artifice and deceit as her characteristics. These were the vices that char-
acterized Apelles’s rival Antiphilus, who pretended to be his friend only to
bring a false accusation against him out of jealousy. The outward beauty of the
figure of Calumny suggests that she may seem alluring at first, especially if ig-
norance and suspicion are the only advisors to the judge before whom the ac-
cusation is brought.21 This malevolent company is blind to the truth, which
would bring to light the falsehood of accusation, forcing them to repent for
their wrongdoings.
Pieter Bruegel’s drawing follows the composition as described by Lucian
and the order in which all the figures are introduced, while also arranging
them in three groups. The first group to the right consists of the seated king
with a crown and a scepter in his left hand; his ears, however, although unnatu-
rally large, are not the Midas-like ass ears that we find in Andrea Mantegna’s
and Sandro Botticelli’s representations of the same theme. While malevolent,
the king’s two companions, identified with Latin inscriptions as Suspicio and
Ignorancia, are well-dressed young women, standing together in a friendly em-
brace, reminiscent of sinnekens in rhetoricians’ plays.22 Their physical appeal
suggests, like the beauty of the Calumny in Lucian’s ekphrasis, that it is easy to
fall under their charm. Insidiae, Fallacia, Calumnia, and the accused young
man—a child, really—occupying the center of the drawing are led to the king
by Lyvor, the masculine personification of Envy. The attributes of these figures
and the commotion of the group remain close to Lucian’s ekphrasis, but Brue-
gel adds further elements to his characterization of Lyvor. While he remains an
“ugly, pale-faced, hollow-eyed man,” and looks “emaciated, as if undermined
by some slow disease,” he also bears attributes of a soldier—a sword at his
20 Cast, Calumny of Apelles, 3–4.

21 While it would be tempting to identify the seated king as Ptolemy IV Philopator, such
historical identification would also contradict the emphasis on the allegorical nature
of Apelles’s lost masterpiece and its description in Lucian. It is telling that, while all
the other figures are precisely identified, the judge/king to whom they are all coming is
described simply as “a man with … respectable length of ears,” the ears being his only
significant attribute. Renaissance and Baroque artists remained equally hesitant in es
tablishing his identity; while most of them, like Bruegel’s, included an explanatory
inscription above each personification, the judge/king remained anonymous.
22 The resemblance of Suspicio of Ignorancia to sinnekens—a pair of vices typically featured
in the vernacular theatre of the rederijkers—has been noted by Porras in Pieter Bruegel’s
Historical Imagination, 118.
164 Chapter 5
waist and a piece of armor on his right elbow—and looks directly at the viewer
as he points with his right hand at the king, and brings one finger of the left
hand to his mouth.23 The latter is a conventional gesture of Invidia, popular-
ized by sixteenth-century emblems, Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, and images of
the Seven Deadly Sins.
The two groups—the king with Suspicio and Ignorancia, and Calumny with
her companions—are set against a curtain, with a seam separating them com-
positionally along a vertical line. The third group, Penitencia and Veritas, are
shown against an architectural backdrop; as we shall see, this contrast of cur-
tains and architecture sets them apart semantically. Penitencia differs consid-
erably from other female personifications in the drawing: while the figures of
Calumnia, Insidiae, and Fallacia display anger and hatred, and Suspicio and
Ignorancia stand self-assured in fashionable dresses, modestly dressed Peni-
tencia, with a veil covering her head and shoulders, turns away from the com-
motion of the central scene and casts her eyes down, fixing her gaze on the
ground, ashamed to face Veritas.
It is this last figure that has sparked the most interest among scholars. She
is seated on a bench in a curious pose, half-kneeling, in a manner such that at
first glance it might be assumed that she is sitting on the ground. Her head is at
the same level as the head of the boy dragged by the Calumny, and lower than
everyone else’s. The pose of Veritas is unique to Bruegel’s representation of the
Calumny of Apelles. Renaissance artists typically picture her as a standing fig-
ure, whose naked body—the common attribute of her as the Nuda Veritas—
seems to be radiating onto the rest of the composition. After all, Truth should
reveal that Apelles has been falsely accused, or, as Stephanie Porras puts it,
“illuminate the fact that Ptolemy has been fooled.”24 Unlike the Italian versions
of the Calumny, but close to Lucian’s ekphrasis, in Bruegel’s drawing Veritas ad-
dresses Penitencia as if suggesting that the first necessary step in attaining jus-
tice is to repent for the false accusation. Despite the difference in pose, Bruegel
decided to keep his Truth nude. It is the only nude figure in the extant work of
Bruegel,25 and the earliest representation of Truth as a naked figure in the Cal-
umny of Apelles made north of the Alps.26 Nuda Veritas thus testifies to Brue-
gel’s awareness of the classical heritage and the Italian Renaissance. It can also
be linked to contemporary Netherlandish interest in the monumental female
23 As previously noted, Lyvor’s attributes and gestures prompted Stephanie Porras and Bart
Ramakers to suggest that Bruegel’s drawing is also based on Alberti’s Della Pittura.
24 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 142.
nudes of Frans Floris, Lambert Lombard, and Lucas van Leyden, the last of
whom consistently depicted Christian virtues as nude figures in his 1530 series
of engravings. This figure alone reveals Bruegel’s eclectic approach to artistic
traditions and his ambition to combine different—“local and imported”—vi-
sual sources in his hybrid style.27
Scholars have repeatedly pointed out that the scene of the Calumny—
a quintessentially classical topic—is presented by Bruegel as if it were from
a contemporary vernacular play by rhetoricians.28 The akin-to-sinnekens per-
sonifications of Suspicio and Ignorancia wear fashionable sixteenth-century
dresses that would have been common among middle- and upper-class wom-
en, referencing the essentially local nature of spelen van sinne. The dresses con-
trast with the historicizing costumes of other figures and, perhaps the most
strongly, with the nudity of Veritas;29 the blending of local with classical tradi-
tions was yet another common feature of rhetoricians’ spectacles, as explored
in more detail later in this chapter. Then we have the figure of Lyvor addressing
viewers directly, drawing their attention to the king. While the inclusion of a
figure that looks at the viewer was recommended by Alberti in Della Pittura,
the same strategy was used by the rederijkers. Body language and gestures of
other personifications bear further similarities to the delivery of vernacular
dramas in the period.30 Finally, as I have already briefly mentioned, Bruegel set
the figures in the center and to the right of the composition against a simple
curtain, similar to the one we can see in his engraved allegory of Temperance,
in which Rhetoric is symbolized by a theatrical performance (figure 28). Such
“staging” of the Calumny of Apelles is unique to him, resulting in a conceptual-
ly innovative image. As Porras explains, “Bruegel turns the famous painting, an
allegory of a historical event known only through textual traces, into a pictured
performance of an allegory. The figure of Lyvor and the curtain behind him
encourage the viewer to recognize Bruegel’s image as a singular, iterative per-
formance … This is a Calumny of Apelles rather than the Calumny of Apelles.”31
By setting his negative figures against curtains and his positive ones against
an architectural background, Bruegel distinguishes between the ephemeral
world of theatre and the lasting, real world. Vice, Bruegel tells us, is temporary,
27 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 121–24, 126.

28 While we would search in vain for an actual play dedicated to this theme in the rederijkers’
oeuvre, it was featured twice in the sixteenth century in productions of Latin schools, and
rhetoricians staged another play based on Lucian, Charon de helsche schipper. Ramakers,
“Bruegel en de rederijkers,” 86.
29 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 118, 124, 126.
30 Ramakers, “Bruegel en de rederijkers,” 86–89.
166 Chapter 5
Figure 28 Philips Galle after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Temperance, from the Virtues,
ca. 1559–60, engraving, 24.4 × 31.2cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprenten
kabinet
while Virtue is eternal, and will outlast Vice. The contrast between the contem-
porary-looking Ignorancia and Suspicio and the nude Veritas further enhances
this distinction. All types of public spectacles performed in the sixteenth-cen-
tury Low Countries, from spelen van sinne to joyous entries and ommegan-
gen, forbade the introduction of naked living actors, but would sometimes
have included nude figures in the pictorial and sculptural backdrops. This
complementary imagery typically featured biblical and classical exempla that
provided timeless solutions to the questions and problems presented in the
vernacular play. Bruegel’s drawing recalls this familiar visual strategy, confirm-
ing for its viewers that, although the doings of Calumny may be damaging and
powerful, the Truth will eventually prevail—a message that is simultaneously
deeply humanistic and deeply religious in spirit.
This theme of truth renders The Calumny of Apelles an important visual ref-
erence for Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, even though their composi-
tions are very different. The grisaille shows Christ and the adulteress in the
center, set against the dark wall of the Pharisees and the scribes in the back-
ground, and confronted by two of them who stand closer to the picture plane.
The figures here are layered, suggesting depth in spite of the impenetrable
darkness obscuring the setting of the scene, and they stand in a semicircle, as
if entrapping Christ and the adulterous woman. By contrast, The Calumny of
Apelles displays a powerful, stagelike compositional clarity, with all the figures
arranged along one subtly diagonal line, which invites a reading from right to
left rather than focused on the center of the image, as is the case of the gri-
saille. We begin with the king positioned higher to the right, on a dais with a
baldachin and in the company of Suspicion and Ignorance, and continue to-
ward the left, where we eventually encounter Truth seated on a humble bench,
almost kneeling on the ground, accompanied by the modest figure of Repen-
tance. The position of the king, his attributes, and the two female attendants
confirm his authority and power to render a verdict over the (falsely) accused
man—he personifies earthly authority. On the other hand, Truth embodies
humility, a virtue which all the self-righteous dramatis personae lack.
This contrast between humility and the self-abasement of Veritas in Brue-
gel’s sketch—even more striking if we keep in mind Italian depictions of Truth
as a consistently erect, radiant, and beautiful young woman—and the simul-
taneous aggrandizement of the king is what connects the drawing to Christ
and the Woman Taken in Adultery most strongly. In the Calumny, Veritas is
positioned lower than all the other figures, except for the wrongly accused
youth, whose head is meaningfully aligned with hers. In Christ and the Woman
Taken in Adultery, Christ has lowered himself, also half-kneeling, to write on
the ground, “assuming an attitude that places his head at waist-height and the
bulk of his body beneath that of every other bystander.”32 Christ’s message is
thus humbly inscribed in the ground, with just his finger, inspiring meekness
and mercy, whereas the Pharisees adhere to “the law written in tablets [which]
made them proud and arrogant in their false justice.”33 In the grisaille, the law
is represented by the book hanging by the waist of the scribe to the right, a
book that is closed, complete, and definite; the unfinished sentence being writ-
ten by Christ is open and accommodates the particular case he was asked to
judge. As Melion points out, Bruegel strengthened this message of exemplary
humility and self-abasement by placing Christ off the central axis of the im-
32 Melion, “Introduction: Visual Exegesis,” 8.

33 Erasmus, Paraphrase on John, 105.
168 Chapter 5
age, reserving it for the penitent adulteress, and encouraged viewers to identify
with him by aligning their vantage point with his eye level.34 Even if (false)
righteousness prevails among Bruegel’s contemporaries, viewers are invited
to embrace Christ’s message of love. Finally, the distinction between Christ’s
humility and the Pharisees’ and scribes’ pride is accentuated by their place-
ment one step higher in a manner akin to the elevated position of the king in
the Calumny. The adulteress is at the boundary between these two worlds: she
stands among her accusers, higher than Christ, but focuses her gaze on him
and his words.
Thinking about Christ’s self-abasement and the Pharisees’ hubris, a viewer
would be reminded of the passage in Luke 14:11: “Because every one that exalt-
eth himself, shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted”
(see also Matthew 23:12). Christ’s message would eventually triumph, while the
accusers of both people would perish. Christ’s position reaffirms this prophetic
understanding of the episode: it recalls images of his fall under the cross on the
way to Calvary, in particular the engraving by Martin Schongauer.35 The Cruci-
fixion, in turn, brings us back to John 8, where in verse 28 Christ talks to the
Jews about his fate and how his identity shall be revealed to them: “When you
shall have lifted up the Son of man, then shall you know, that I am he, and that
I do nothing of myself, but as the Father hath taught me.” Likewise, in Lucian’s
story Truth eventually reveals the innocence of Apelles and the falsity of his
accuser, which result in a just judgment. When analyzing the subject of truth,
Renaissance humanists often emphasized that in any situation facts will in the
end be recognized, and truth will prevail. This belief in the ultimate discovery
of any lie and the triumph of truth was also expressed in one of the adages
depicted by Bruegel in the upper right corner of his Netherlandish Proverbs:
there’s nothing spun so fine that the sun does not show it. The bright sun in the
panel recalls the humanistic personification of Truth holding the sun in one of
her hands, confirming Bruegel’s interest in blending classical and local tradi-
tions.
The shared importance of truth in Lucian’s and John’s stories notwithstand-
ing, the accusations they describe seem to be fundamentally different. Under
Mosaic law, the adulteress was indeed guilty and deserved the cruel punish-
ment of stoning; nothing in the biblical account suggests that the scribes and
the Pharisees lied about her sin. The similarity between the adulteress and
34 Melion, “Visual Exegesis,” 8. This paradox of “humble authority” has also been recognized
by Kavaler, according to whom viewers need to resolve it for themselves. Kavaler, Pieter
Bruegel, 17.
Penitencia in Bruegel’s images suggests that she has indeed admitted her sin: in
the ekphrasis of the calumny of Apelles, Penitencia is ashamed to confront
Veritas, aware of her transgression. Strictly speaking, in contrast to Lucian’s
story, the biblical one is not about calumny, but a lawful administration of jus-
tice. Or so it would seem, if we focus on the adulteress. However, the gospel
text indicates that it is in fact a story of the Pharisees hoping that Christ will
give them a reason to accuse him of trespassing against the Mosaic law. This
interpretation was upheld by sixteenth-century theologians and humanists. In
his commentaries to John, Erasmus emphasizes the Pharisees’ self-assurance
about the success of their cunning plot:
They set the woman in their midst so that if she were condemned by
Christ’s judgment some part of the crowd would lose their enthusiasm
for him, since he had won popular approval chiefly by his mildness and
gentleness; but if he found her innocent, as they expected he would, they
would have a charge to level against him because contrary to Moses’ rule
he had not feared to free the adulteress. They hoped that in the ensuing
confusion he would be stoned to death instead of the woman.36
The Pharisees, “indulge themselves” in their behavior, as in setting their trap

they were motivated by self-righteousness, pride, envy, and hatred—vices
commonly associated with calumny. Such connection exists in both the Greco-
Roman and local traditions. In Apelles’s lost masterpiece, Calumny was led to
the king by Envy, as it was envy that inspired Antiphilus to bring the false ac-
cusation against Apelles. In a humanist reading, this would confirm that envy
is essentially a distortion of relationships among humans, a true moral failure.37
In the Christian tradition, envy is also born from pride, an understanding that
connects these vices to the story of the rebel angels, as well as those of Cain
and Abel, Saul and David, and Joseph and his brothers. Not surprisingly, theo-
logians have consistently recognized envy as one of the gravest sins, and ac-
cording to Thomas Aquinas, envy is the mother of calumny, hatred, and
backbiting—another example of how superbia leads to invidia.38 In the Low
Countries, the link among pride, envy, and calumny was recognized not only
by Erasmus and in the religious context, but was also stressed in the vernacular
work of the rhetoricians. In the 1561 spectacle presented at the Feast of Cir-
cumcision, the wagon of Envy was preceded by the wagon of Pride, illustrating

170 Chapter 5
Figure 29 Maarten van Heemskerck, The Triumph of Envy, from the Vicissitudes of Human
Affairs, 1564, engraving, 21.8 × 29.5cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprenten
kabinet
how pride, vainglory, arrogance, contempt, and disobedience would lead to

envy, hatred—whose personification was a charioteer of this wagon—malevo-
lence, backbiting, and calumny. The ommegang inspired Maarten van Heems
kerck’s cycle The Vicissitudes of Human Affairs, published in 1564 by Hieronymus
Cock (figure 29). Van Heemskerck’s engraving features all the allegories includ-
ed in the procession, labeling one of the personifications of Envy as Invidia,
and the other as Livor. The print with the triumph of Pride is followed by the
triumph of Envy, emphasizing the connection between envy and other vices
and the inevitability of calumny as the ultimate outcome of pride.
Fueled by arrogance, the Pharisees’ hope that the confrontation with Christ
would lead to his stoning or, at the very least, falling out of favor with the
crowds, remained unfulfilled. Christ’s perplexing reaction completely aston-
ished the adulteress’s—and his own—accusers. Representing the truth, Christ
challenged both accusations in John’s story, the one against the adulteress and
the one against himself, without breaking the law as the Pharisees expected.
Without denying the sin of the adulteress, he forced the Pharisees and the
scribes to “examine their own conscience in light of divine law.”39 Self-exami-
nation is the first step toward acknowledging truth. A few verses after recount-
ing the story of the adulterous woman, John quotes Christ’s words to “those
Jews who believed him” (John 8:31):
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They an-
swered him: We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never been slaves
to any man: how sayest thou: you shall be free? Jesus answered them:
Amen, amen I say unto you: that whosoever committeth sin, is the ser-
vant of sin. Now the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the son
abideth for ever (John 8:32–35).
This story exemplifies the liberating nature of truth well: through revealing the
truth about the Pharisees’ own nature and sins, Christ not only freed the adul-
terous woman, but also opened to the Pharisees themselves the possibility of
salvation if they were to look into their souls and repent. This opportunity, in
turn, resonates with an earlier passage in John’s gospel, when Christ declares
that “God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world
may be saved by him” (John 3:17).
The understanding of the liberating nature of truth is not only stimulated
by an exegetical, metatextual reading of the story of the adulteress, but also
encouraged by the grisaille technique used by Bruegel. We saw how in The Con-
version of Saint Paul the metaphors of light and darkness dictated a paradoxi-
cal reading of the painting, juxtaposing physical sight and spiritual blindness,
and physical blindness and spiritual insight. Thanks to the very nature of the
grisaille, the metaphors of inner enlightenment and the revelation of truth be-
come even more pronounced in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery. Al-
though the absence of color may at first appear to increase the simplicity of its
composition, its reliance on tonality causes viewers to explore the decorous
application of the medium and further their exegetical exploration of the
scene. While the background and middle-ground figures are hidden in the
shadows, Christ’s robe, as he bends forward, seems to shine in front of them,
stressing the concluding line of the story: “I am the light of the world: he that

172 Chapter 5
followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John
8:12).40
However, the grisaille by no means offers a straightforward dichotomy of
light and darkness and, by extension, truth and deceit. Its tonal variations are
subtle, based more on a gradual transition from the darkness of the back-
ground through a partial obumbration of the figures closer to Christ, to the
relative radiance of Christ himself. The adulteress emerges from the shadows
in a three-quarter view, with her left arm and the dress below still obscured. It
would be tempting to conclude that the right side of her body is illuminated by
the light emanating from Christ, but if he has “enlightened” her, how can we
interpret the unexpected brightness of the Pharisee and the scribe to the right?
Both figures are strongly lit, with the light appearing to come from the lower
left: that is, the words written by Christ on the ground. Although the scribes
and the Pharisees typically represent the obstinate adherence to the letter of
the law, Bruegel appears to suggest the possibility of their internal illumination
by Christ’s renewed, merciful interpretation of that law. After all, Saul, one of
the most zealous, learned, and respected members of the Sanhedrin, under-
went such an inner transformation, visually articulated through the metaphors
of light and darkness. Bruegel’s decision to strongly illuminate the scribe and
the Pharisee aligns with the theological position that every sinner may hope
for Christ’s absolution and eternal life, assuming they renounce their sins and
allow themselves to be guided by God. Always preached by the church, this
message of mercy was particularly stressed during the Counter-Reformation.
In this perspective, Christ’s concluding words “he that followeth me, walketh
not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” become an invitation that re-
sulted from the words he had written on the ground. It is a promise to all of
those who cease to “cast stones” at others, and who take an introspective look
into their own souls instead.
2 Adultery, Idolatry, and Rhetorical Strategies of Bruegel’s Grisaille
The visual and conceptual affinities between Christ and the Woman Taken in
Adultery and The Calumny of Apelles help us appreciate the former’s exegetical
meaning and explore the theme of truth in a more in-depth way. In the draw-
ing, the eventual triumph of truth is mediated through the adaptation of visual
strategies from contemporary theatre, specifically the distinction between the

ephemeral and the eternal. The grisaille, on the other hand, follows the discur-
sive idiom of rhetoricians’ theatre. The incomplete vernacular quote, situated
in close proximity to the viewers’ space, engages them with the themes of sin,
mercy, and false righteousness.
To fully appreciate this affinity between Bruegel’s images and theatre, we
need to remind ourselves that rederijkers’ spectacles—be those tafelspelen per-
formed in the intimate space of a dining hall or spelen van sinne with hundreds
or thousands of viewers gathered at a market square—were more discussions
presented on a stage than suspenseful Shakespearean dramas.41 But this rela-
tive lack of a narrative did not render the plays uninteresting or irrelevant to
their audience. Quite the contrary: rhetoricians’ performances served to re-
solve actual social tensions and addressed contemporary civic and, up to a
point, religious affairs. As Mark Meadow explains, “given the breakdown of
transformation in the sixteenth-century Netherlands of those social structures
by which identities and social roles were defined—church, state, economy—
new structures had to be created, new options explored, and these plays must
have been one of the means by which this was done.”42 Spelen van sinne ful-
filled a similar role to joyous entries, poetry, and prognostications with their
rhetoric of communal prosperity, and one comparable to, as I argue through-
out this book, convivia constructed around paintings on display in semipublic
domestic spaces.
All spelen van sinne produced for a given landjuweel, a festive competition of
the Brabant chambers of rhetoric, explored one and the same question based
on a specific theme, for example, “What is the dying man’s greatest consola-
tion?” at the 1539 Ghent contest and “What best awakens man to the arts?” in
1561 in Antwerp. The premise of landjuweel alone—over a dozen chambers
preparing a play in which they addressed the same issue—already implied
that the audience would be presented with a variety of potential solutions
rather than one dogmatic statement. These possibilities were further multi-
plied within each play. Although every chamber would close its performance
with their chosen final answer, throughout the spectacle the characters on
stage examined several other answers.43 Viewers were thus exposed to differ-
41 Meadow characterizes the rhetoricians’ plays as “something more in the line of delibera
tive arguments … with the various lines of the argument embodied by characters on
stage.” Mark A. Meadow, “Aertsen’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Serlio’s
Architecture and the Meaning of Location,” in Rhetoric—Rhétoriqueurs—Rederijkers, ed.
Jelle Koopman (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1995), 189.
42 Meadow, “Aertsen’s Christ in the House,” 187.
174 Chapter 5
ent opinions and ideas, each supported with long argumentation. And just as
rhetoricians’ plays “presented and explored a range of possible answers before
finally deciding on a single solution,”44 Bruegel’s grisaille offered viewers a
range of possible reactions to Christ’s perplexing words written on the ground.
If we were to translate that incomplete quote into the theme of a landjuweel,
we could ask about the importance of self-knowledge, the implications of
man’s sinful nature, the relationship between human judgment and divine
mercy, or—perhaps in the most relevant but also the most seditious manner—
about the role of the Law and the gospel.
However nondramatic, the action on stage would have been deeply relevant
and easily understood by viewers, and the opinions exchanged by the charac-
ters might have been exchanged by the onlookers as well. The familiarity of the
discussion taking place in the foreground contrasted with the nonlocal charac-
ter of the tableaux eventually revealed in the background, which were usually
based on mythological and biblical stories and featured silent figures in histo-
ricizing costumes.45 These tableaux did not allow for the type of identification
stimulated by the activities in the foreground, but functioned as exempla fro-
zen in time. In Bruegel’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, the Dutch
quote stands out amid the imaginary antique clothes of the Pharisees and the
scribes and contrasts even with Bruegel’s Roman signature. It is the only ver-
nacular element of the composition, which necessarily becomes the focal
point for a sixteenth-century Netherlandish viewer; everything else in the gri-
saille happens in reference to the incomplete line “Die sonder sonde is/Die
V….” This interplay between the classical and the vernacular is akin to the con-
trast between the sinnekens-like Suspicio and Ignorancia, and the classical
Veritas in Bruegel’s Calumny.
The rederijkers’ strategy of rhetorical juxtaposition of the foreground and
the background was frequently employed by Bruegel’s contemporary Pieter
Aertsen. Whether specifically adopting Serlian architecture (as in the 1553
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in Rotterdam, figure 30), using other
framing elements such as windows and open doors (as in Meat Stall), or simply
differentiating between the costumes and setting of the foreground and back-
ground (as in the Frankfurt version of Christ and the Adulteress), Aertsen uses
this familiar compositional approach to activate viewers’ ability to read a phys-
ically and metaphorically multilayered argument.46 The viewer of his images

46 A compelling, comprehensive analysis of the importance of Sebastiano Serlio’s archi
tecture—known in Antwerp from joyous entries and the 1561 landjuweel—for Pieter
Figure 30 Pieter Aertsen, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1553, oil on panel,
126 × 200cm, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
photo: Studio Tromp, Rotterdam
was accustomed to the manipulation of the near/far structure in joyous entries

and landjuweel festivals, and given the popularity of Aertsen’s formula, fre-
quently repeated by Joachim Beuckelaer, would have appreciated the interpre-
tational open-endedness enabled by the continuous exchange between the
foreground and the background. The combination of alluring meat, produce,
household items, and other commodities displayed right in front of viewers
with the more distant biblical exempla helps to escape simple didacticism; in-
deed, scholars have long rejected the idea that Aertsen focuses on the condem-
nation of earthly goods that divert people’s attention from spiritual matters.
More dialectic interpretations have been offered since, according to which
Aertsen was actively responding to socioeconomic and moral concerns of the
community and not making an outright condemnation of his contemporaries.47
Aertsen is offered by Mark Meadow in the quoted 1995 essay “Aertsen’s Christ in the House
of Martha and Mary.”
47 See the essays in the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch
Jaarboek, ed. G. Th. M. Lemmens and W. Th. Kloek, vol. 40 (1989); Meadow, “Aertsen’s
Christ in the House”; and Houghton, “This Was Tomorrow.”
176 Chapter 5
In Christ and the Adulteress from Frankfurt, the market scene nearly over-
laps spatially to the biblical episode. The market not only occupies the fore-
ground, but extends with one vegetable stand into the background; some of
the Pharisees and scribes, having read Christ’s words on the ground, are in fact
fleeing behind the stall. The adulteress stands just a few feet from the market
vendor, her light-green and beige dress matching the colors of produce on sale.
The facial expressions and tilted heads of the two women, who both have their
gaze fixed on the ground, echo one another, as their calmness contrasts with
the frantic escape of the Pharisees and the activities of the foreground market.
And yet, despite this proximity and formal affinities, the adulteress and the
vendor are completely oblivious to each other’s presence.48 It is our eye that
connects the two realities. Two of Aertsen’s vendors, a young girl to the left and
an older woman to the right of the foreground, make eye contact with the
viewers; beginning with the girl’s eyes, we follow a diagonal line that extends
toward the adulteress and the fleeing witnesses of the scene, and back to the
reality of a sixteenth-century market in the makeshift stall next to them.49 By
contrast, the older woman’s head is not tilted, and so the roughly horizontal
line established by her eyes leads us to Christ’s hand as he writes on the ground.
In meeting the gaze of two figures looking directly at us, our attention is drawn
to the essential elements of the story: Christ’s call to self-examination and the
contrasting reactions of the adulteress and the Pharisees. Aertsen thus offers a
clever visual argument about the relationship between the gospel and every-
day life. Viewers are presented with a scene in which sixteenth-century figures
refuse to respond to the teaching of the Bible, but are given an opportunity to
connect to both worlds visually and spiritually.
Aertsen’s composition works similarly to Bruegel’s grisaille: the beholders
are invited to ponder different potential reactions and implications of Christ’s
words for their own lives. It is a different strategy than the one adopted by the
Cranachs and their circle, in whose panels Christ is either addressing the Phar-
isees or looking at the viewers. In the first case, the story focuses on the
48 Keith Moxey suggests that the foreground and background of the Frankfurt painting can
be linked conceptually in reference to the biblical episode of the Cleansing of the Temple,
when Christ expelled merchants and money changers from the synagogue (Matthew
21:11–13; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 9:45–46; John 2:13–16). Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, 55. However, as
Honig correctly points out, the “evangelists do not describe simple farmers with wares:
three speak of money changers, and two mention sellers of doves, which were not random
market goods but had a ritual function in the Jewish temple. And in any case there was no
tradition, either textual or pictorial, of associating Christ’s fury at the money changers
with his words to the adulterous woman.” Honig, Painting and the Market, 40.
49 Honig, Painting and the Market, 43.
contrast between law and grace—one of the fundamental themes of Lutheran

theology, frequently found in early woodcuts. In the second, it addresses the
self-righteousness of the Pharisees, encouraging viewers to a similar introspec-
tive look into their own souls.50 In both instances, these paintings follow Lu-
ther’s explanation of Christ’s encounter with the adulteress, which he used to
illustrate two fundamental flaws in the understanding of the process of salva-
tion: the self-justification (Selbstgerechtigkeit) and the righteousness of works
(Werkheiligkeit), sins embodied by the Pharisees and the scribes.51
Aertsen’s Stockholm painting of the adulteress appears to more clearly sep-
arate the foreground display of produce and other wares offered by the sellers
from the background scene. First, as in the case of the rhetoricians’ spelen van
sinne, the figures in the foreground, leaning toward and reaching out into our
space, are dressed in contemporary clothes, in contrast to the biblical protago-
nists. Second, there is no interaction between the two realities: not a single
figure from either group looks toward the other. As Elizabeth Honig observes,
their disjunction is further emphasized through the use of formal and stylistic
elements; the contrast between the foreground and the background can be
described as interplay between “realism” and “romanism.”52 Peasants are tan-
gible figures with unflattering proportions, whereas the biblical group exhibits
the idealizing idiom promoted in the North by Pieter Coecke van Aelst.53 How-
ever, this neat dichotomy is complicated by the architectural setting and the
pattern of the floor. Market vendors sit on the same bricks on which Christ has
written his admonition that garners the attention of the adulteress and causes
diverse reactions among the scribes and Pharisees. The monumental architec-
ture that frames the figures in the background continues to the left of the com-
position, and serves as a backdrop for the two sellers. Aertsen seems to suggest
50 The distinction between panels that show Christ addressing the Pharisees and those in
which he looks at viewers has been acknowledged by Christiane Andersson, who situates
this shift in the context of Luther’s conflict with the pope and the zeal of the Catholic
Church in defending its doctrine. Christiane D. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im
Dienste der Reformation,” in Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der
deutschen Geschichte: ein Tagunsgbericht, ed. Lewis W. Spitz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1981), 53.
51 Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs,” 52–53.
52 Honig, Painting and the Market, 42. As Honig further observes, this interplay between two
idioms can be analyzed in the context of contemporary art theory: in the twelfth chapter
of the first book of his treatise, Karel van Mander describes switching between them as
“adultery,” adding that committing it is “no sin”: “En blijft dan niet, als moetwillighe Secte,/
Aen u valsch’ opiny te vast ghebonden,/Maer overspeelt hier vry, ten zijn geen zonden.”
Karel van Mander, Het Schilderboeck (Haarlem, 1604), fol. 49v, verse 37.
53 Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, 57.
178 Chapter 5
that the market and the encounter of Christ with the woman and her accusers
happen in the same courtyard or square. Moreover, a relief underneath the
marble column at the edge of the painting features a classicizing grisaille of a
branch with fruit, as if linking the abundance of produce to the mythological
realm of Ceres. This Romanizing reference corresponds with the historicizing
aura of background figures set against Serlian arches.
As modern viewers, our perception is inevitably biased by decades of schol-
arship that has established a firm distinction between the vernacular and
classicizing idioms; we do not question the stylistic contrast between the fore
ground and the background of Aertsen’s paintings of the woman taken in adul-
tery. Quite the contrary: to us it is obvious that these parts of the picture are
painted in very different manners. But would the sixteenth-century viewer also
have been so certain about the stylistic opposition between the background
and the foreground? The situation is more complicated than that. Although
the original viewer would have recognized the diversity of artistic traditions
in Aertsen’s and Bruegel’s compositions, they would have understood them as
complementary and mediating specific meanings rather than as mutually ex-
clusive. For instance, Bruegel’s Peasant Dance references the tradition of Ital-
ian bacchanals to argue visually for the role of moderation in local religious
festivals, a topic ubiquitous in the sixteenth-century Low Countries.54 On the
other hand, the construction of vernacular antiquity, a self-aware hybrid com-
bination of local and classical styles and traditions, blurred the boundaries be-
tween what was regarded as native versus foreign.55 These distinctions would
thus have been much more flexible at that time than today.
Setting the question of stylistic ambiguity aside, there remains the ambigu-
ous relationship between the biblical and the market scene in Aertsen’s paint-
ings: the figures appear to occupy the same space, yet they do not interact. This
ambiguity invites viewers to keep shifting between the foreground and the
background rather than approaching the scriptural story as a fixed example
that denigrates the foreground as dedicated to the sins of the flesh. In fact, it
may be the foreground of these two paintings, with their display of alluring
and possibly symbolic wares, that allows viewers to read the background story
as one about carnal transgressions, rather than the other way around.56 The
relationship between foreground and background is dynamic, not static, and
54 Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 123–48.

55 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, passim. See also Wouk, Frans Floris,
esp. 331–79.
while the depicted figures may not necessarily mingle and interact on the pan-
els, they may—and should—in the eyes of the viewer.
Just like Aertsen’s compositions, Bruegel’s Christ and the Woman Taken in
Adultery also follows strategies of rhetoricians’ theatre. We could easily imag-
ine Bruegel’s grisaille as a silent tableau revealed to the audience at the end of
a rederijkers’ play, providing a final commentary on the debated issues. But
what is the central theme of this painting and the depicted story, really? At first
glance, the story of the adulterous woman appears to address the sins of the
flesh. After all, at the beginning of the gospel we read that the scribes and the
Pharisees brought the woman to Christ because she trespassed against the sev-
enth commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” However, as Honig has
argued in reference to Aertsen, carnal desire is of secondary importance in
those images. Likewise, this aspect of John’s text does not seem to have been of
particular interest to Catholic theologians, and sixteenth-century catechism
discussions of adultery do not even include a reference to John 8.57 As we have
seen, if the scribes and Pharisees wanted Christ to judge the adulteress, it was
only to gain an opportunity to accuse Christ himself of not abiding to Mosaic
law. Christ’s reaction, on the other hand, has often been understood as a lesson
in mercy and tolerance: Erasmus quoted it as an example for the clergy, who,
given their own sins, should display particular gentleness and mildness toward
sinners.58
The message of “gentleness” and “mildness” expressed in Christ’s reaction
toward the adulteress should be regarded, if we follow Erasmus’s reasoning, in
the context of the community whose life was based on the Old Testament code.
Christ does not absolve or declare the adulteress innocent, as the Pharisees
had hoped he would, but he does not condemn her either. On an individual
57 Catechismus, Dat is die somme des heylighen Christen geloofs (Antwerp: Niclaes vanden
Wouwere, 1565); G. vander Heyden, Catechismus ofte onderwysinghe inde Christelijcke
religie (Antwerp: Gielis vanden Rade, 1588); and Martinus Duncanus, Catholijcke catechis
mus (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1594). See also Honig, Painting and the Market, 40,
246.
58 Erasmus, Paraphrase on John, 107. Scholars of mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp frequently
associate the theme of Christ and the adulterous woman with a plea for tolerance.
Margaret Sullivan states, “Bruegel’s grisaille Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery is an
eloquent plea for tolerance … consistent with the Stoic stance typical of Bruegel’s known
associates in Antwerp.” Unfortunately, she does not explain how exactly the grisaille
advocates tolerance, and what is it that makes it such “an eloquent plea.” Margaret
Sullivan, Bruegel and the Creative Process, 1559–1563 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 198. See also
Honig, Painting and the Market, 41, 247. Kavaler proposes a similar interpretation for
Aertsen’s Stockholm painting, which, according to him, “seems to promote a reading that
stresses toleration and charity.” Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, 15.
180 Chapter 5
level, this of course meant shifting judgment onto the Pharisees and scribes
themselves, “condemned by their own guilty knowledge,” as the law—unlike
God—does not punish the sins of arrogance, envy, disdain, and hatred that had
provoked them.59 On a collective level, Christ’s response was dictated by his
struggle to maintain public order and tranquility;60 his actions confirmed his
words that his mission was to fulfill rather than to abolish the law, and he was
acting entirely within the framework of Mosaic law.61 Erasmus’s interpretation
of John 8 highlights Christ’s ability to negotiate the law, public interest, and the
message of mercy and love. It would have struck a familiar note with readers
in the Low Countries. In the majority of cases, Protestant and Protestantizing
circles did not demand that their nascent congregations become churches of-
ficially recognized by the state; they simply asked for a theological debate, the
revocation of persecution ordinances, and tolerance beyond narrowly defined
sectarian boundaries. This was entirely possible within the legal and religious
framework of the period, as theologian Franciscus Junius reminded Philip II in
a short polemical text from the mid-1560s. Junius argued that the king should
grant freedom of worship to Lutherans and Calvinists because by attending
their services, they became honest and God-fearing people, respectful of civic
authorities, and thus helped to create a law-abiding, pious Christian society.62
One of the most pressing issues pertaining to the public order in mid-six-
teenth-century Antwerp was the image debate, and the justified fear of icon-
oclasm. Adultery, typically associated with lust, desire, and carnal sin, was a
surprisingly important element of the discussion of the theological validity of
religious art. The comparison of the worship of images to adultery has been
present in Judeo-Christian discourse from the very beginning; when prophet
Ezekiel uses the figure of an unfaithful wife to point out Jerusalem’s sins, one
of her adulterous deeds concerns the creation of images: “And thou tookest thy
beautiful vessels, of my gold, and my silver, which I gave thee, and thou madest
thee images of men, and hast committed fornication with them” (Ezekiel 16:17).
The notions of images as harlots and of image worship as adultery were thus
not new in the sixteenth century, but certainly became more common—and
59 Erasmus, Paraphrase on John, 105, 107.

61 Such an understanding of the gospel text may explain why the images of the adulterous
woman were occasionally displayed in justice halls. Honig, Painting and the Market, 246.
62 According to Junius, only the Anabaptists and other sects should be persecuted, as they
posed a threat to public order. Marnef, “Dynamics of Reformed Militancy,” 195. With his
clear and thoughtful explanation, Junius was somewhat of an exception among the
religious center, which, as Woltjer has argued (“Public Opinion,” 104), lacked a program
and had troubles defending freedom of worship as a principle.
on both sides of the debate. On the one hand, John Calvin wrote about the “vil-
est species of adultery, the worship of images”;63 on the other hand, the bish-
op of Arras, confessor to Margaret of Parma, François Richardot, was clearly
thinking about Ezekiel 16 when he began his 1567 Sermon on the Images against
the Iconoclasts: “The Holy Scripture and especially the Prophets unanimously
call idolatry harlotry, fornication and adultery of the soul, and such with good
reason. For as a woman in this world can do nothing worse to tarnish the hon-
our of her husband than cheat on him, so the soul cannot be more disgraced
or humiliated than when it lowers itself to the banned veneration of idols; nor
can it [the soul] dishonor God more, who made it after his image.”64
Although Richardot stresses that the Catholic use of images does not follow
this idolatrous pattern,65 his sermon proves that, like so many other arguments
in the image controversy, the comparison to adultery was also malleable, leav-
ing it to the listeners to decide which side they were willing to take. There is
no question, however, that this comparison provided a common framework
of interpretation at the time. One important way in which it operated was the
belief that images are “whores” because of their seductive power.66 Anecdotal
evidence and religious scrutiny of images’ potential to arouse viewers are com-
mon throughout the history of art, and two examples chronologically close
to Bruegel’s grisaille are particularly worth referencing. The possibly seductive
nature of images was addressed by the Council of Trent in the decrees of its
twenty-fifth session, “On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics, of Saints, and
on Sacred Images.” While the document was produced during the council’s last
session on December 3 and 4, 1563, it was the first to be translated into Dutch,
and was published as early as 1565, clearly in the hope that it would put an
end to the image debate and prevent the disaster of iconoclasm that affected
Germany, Switzerland, and England.67 Establishing the guidelines for images’
iconography and composition, as well as their proper worship, theologians
stated that
in the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics, and the sacred use of
images, every superstition shall be removed, all filthy lucre be abolished;

64 François Richardot, Het Sermoon vande beelden teghen die beeldtschenders (Leuven, 1567),
n.p. For the English translation, see Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclam, 207.
65 Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, 207.
67 Ordonancien ende Decreten, vanden heylighen Concilie generael ghevonden tot Trenten
(Antwerp: Willem Silvius, 1565).
182 Chapter 5
finally, all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be
painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust; nor the celebration of
the saints, and the visitation of relics be by any perverted into revellings
and drunkenness; as if festivals are celebrated to the honour of the saints
by luxury and wantonness. In fine, let so great care and diligence be used
herein by bishops, as that there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that
is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing
indecorous, seeing that holiness becometh the house of God.68
Reinforcing the rule of decorum, the Council of Trent recognized that even ap-
propriate subjects, if painted in a manner that focused on external beauty and
other mundane attributes, could potentially become problematic; the famous
criticism of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and the loincloths added in 1565 by
Daniele de Volterra illustrate this concern very well. The decrees appear to
compare, in fact, the inappropriateness of visual arts to the secular and all-too-
festive celebrations of religious holidays, whose implications had a profound
impact on civic sociability in Antwerp.
Another contemporaneous comment on the seductive potential of art
comes from the prologue to Willem van Haecht’s second Apostle Play, per-
formed by the Antwerp Violieren in April 1564. In the opening dialogue, one of
the interlocutors repeats the common argument for the prohibition of all im-
ages based on the belief that people have a weak, “inherently lustful heart”69
that will lead them to idolatry in the same manner it causes them to look with
lust at a woman.70 A viewer well-versed in the Bible would think here about
68 Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, ed. and trans. J. Water
worth (London: Dolman, 1848), 235–36. The 1565 Dutch edition translates this passage as
follows: “Voorts dat oock alle superstitie de welcke geschien soude mogen int aenroepen
vanden heyligen/enn het eeren vande reliquien oftheylich gebruyck der beelden vande
reliquien oft heylich gebruyck der beelden/wtgeroeyt enn wech gedaen werden. Dat ooc
alle onbehoorlyck gewin wtgedreven worde/enn metten cortsten geseyt alle brootdron
ckenschap gheschout werde: so dat de beelden gheenssins verciert noch geschildert en
sullen wesen lichtveerdich/oft met een onhebbelyck ciraet. Dat ooc de menschen het
vieren vanden heyligen/oft pelgrimagie gaen/enn besoecken de heyligen/oft pelgrimagie
gaen/enn besoecken de heylige Reliquien/niet en misbruycken tot overdaet enn dron
ckenscap/al oft die h. dagen souden moeten overgebrocht werden met overdaet enn
brootdronckenscap ter eeren vanden heyligen. Ten lesten so sullen in dese saken de
Bisscoppen so neerstelyck enn scherpelick tesien/datter niet ongheregelt/verkeert
oft beroerlyck en gheschiede/noch niet ongoddelycx oft oneerlycx ghesien en werde:
gemerct dat den huyse Gods die heylicheyt wel voeght.” Ordonancien ende Decreten, fol.
CC.xxxiiij verso–fol. CC.xxv.
70 De Vooys, “Apostelspelen in de Rederijkerstijd.”
Christ’s words in Matthew 5:27–28: “You have heard that it was said to them of
old: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you, that whosoever shall look
on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his
heart.” It is therefore the action of looking itself, the seduction of sight, that
establishes, in religious terms, an adulterous/idolatrous relationship between
the viewer and the object. It is along these lines that we can understand
Aertsen’s paintings of Christ and the adulterous woman with their juxtaposi-
tion of the sexually charged wares and the biblical story, in which the former
prove “the eye’s inescapable susceptibility to temptation.”71 However, as Honig
points out, the combination of these two distinct scenes, the eroticized fore-
ground and the background which, despite the presence of a woman who ac-
tually committed adultery, is focused primarily on the warning against hasty
judgment, ultimately helps a viewer to distinguish between the minor and “for-
givable weaknesses of the hungry eye” and the grave sins of self-righteousness,
envy, and pride. Such recognition, in turn, serves as “the first step toward a new
self-knowledge.”72
The sixteenth-century metaphors concerning adultery and idolatry share
the belief that the seductive and ultimately sexual appeal of paintings and
sculptures is a combination of their iconography and composition with view-
ers’ susceptibility to what is probably best, if vaguely, called “the power of im-
ages.” If we look at Ezekiel’s lament over Jerusalem and the Reformation image
controversy, it becomes clear that this “power” comes from the physicality of
images; indeed, the material from which images were made was one of the
central issues of the sixteenth-century debate. Concerns were not limited to
one particular type of medium or material: paintings and sculptures, wood and
precious metals, polychrome and blank, were all addressed by both Protestant
and Catholic writers.73 Orthodox authors such as Martinus Duncanus and Re-
natus Benedictus followed the position of the Council of Trent, which empha-
sized that in the veneration of images, the recipient of veneration was the
prototype rather than the physical object that represented it or the material
from which it was made.74 In other words, for Duncanus and Benedictus, the

73 Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, 199. See also by the same author: “Images of
Stone: The Physicality of Art and the Image Debates in the Sixteenth Century,” Nederlands
Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 62 (2012): 116–47, and “An Allegory of Artistic Choice in Times of
Trouble: Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 64 (2014):
151–77.
74 Martinus Duncanus, Een cort onderscheyt tusschen godlyke ende afgodische beelden
(Antwerp, 1567), and Renatus Benedictus, Een Catholic Tractaet van de Beelden (Antwerp:
184 Chapter 5
essence of an image was the idea it visualized. This distinguished Catholic im-
ages from the pagan idols of Antiquity, whose makers and worshippers be-
lieved that it was their eyghen stof oft materie that embedded them with special,
sacred status.75 While the Catholic apologists radically separated the meaning
and the material of works of art,76 Reformers rejected altogether the idea that
faith can be manifested physically, as it was the sole domain of the spirit; this
notion thus rendered image-making, and even more so the veneration of im-
ages, absurd.77
Their universal criticism of images notwithstanding, Reformers were par-
ticularly suspicious of sculpture. Statues were regarded as more lifelike, more
deceitful, and more prone to idolatry than paintings, and were typically the
first target of iconoclasts across Europe.78 This made the grisaille technique,
intended to mimic stone sculpture problematic as well. Thus, while Bruegel’s
usage of grisaille in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery was a decorous
expression of the composition’s exegetical message about the liberating nature
of truth, it also established it as a voice in the image debate. At the time when
Bruegel created both Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery and The Death of
the Virgin, grisaille was, as Jonckheere contends, no longer a neutral, impartial
technique, and its application would have been inevitably perceived in the
context of the iconoclastic controversy.79 However, Bruegel’s small, cabinet-
size pieces, which were certainly not intended for the church setting, are very
different from grisailles imitating, in realistic scale, the life-size statues that
Peeter van Keerberghen, 1567).

75 Duncanus, Een cort onderscheyt, n.p.
76 Jonckheere, “Images of Stone,” 121. A slightly different approach was taken by François
Richardot, whose language comes particularly close to that of the decrees of the Council
of Trent. According to him, images’ power of persuasion rendered their material
manifestation essential, as it was through the physical appearance that the religious
message would have been conveyed: “What is true is that if one wants to make sculptures
or paintings for churches, and place these in there, one should look sharply into the fact
that these are decorous, relate to and befit its meaning, that is: the paintings and
sculptures should not show in being, in manner, or in attire something that undermines
the dignity of whom the image is of.” Richardot, Het Sermoon vande beelden, n.p. For the
English translation, see Jonckheere, “Images of Stone,” 121.
77 Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, 200.
78 Sculpture as particularly deceitful and stimulating idolatry was discussed in Heinrich
Bullinger, De origine erroris libri duo (Zurich, 1539); an anonymous tract from the 1520s,
Van den Propheet Baruch; and Jan Gerritsz. Versteghe (Johannes Anastasius Veluanus),
Der Leken Wechwyser (Strasbourg, 1554). Scholars have also suggested that some Nether
landish altarpieces were destroyed in the iconoclasm because they were too “sculptural.”
See, for instance, Arthur J. DiFuria, “Maerten van Heemskerck’s Collection Imagery in the
Netherlandish Pictorial Memory,” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 1 (2010): 45.
79 Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, 203–4.
were more typical for the Netherlandish tradition.80 The ownership and the
context of reception of these panels established them as an ideal medium for
experimentation, perhaps ultimately intended to “disenchant” the dubious gri-
saille: Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery remained in Bruegel’s family,
and The Death of the Virgin belonged to Abraham Ortelius; both of these con-
texts guaranteed a more intimate, familiar, and sophisticated viewership. The
panels—especially Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, with its focus on a
narrative moment frozen in time—proved that it was possible to employ gri-
saille technique in a non-idolatrous manner, and thus provided an answer to
one of the central questions in the image debate. In Christ and the Woman
Taken in Adultery, Bruegel exploits the tonal variations of the grisaille tech-
nique to construct a complex, equivocal argument about the possibility of in-
ner enlightenment and liberation from sin as accessible to even the most
stubborn sinners. However, Bruegel does not eschew the medium’s potential to
imitate sculpture either. He depicts Christ’s words written on the ground as if
they were carved in stone, and thus transforms their ephemerality into a per-
manent, timeless message. It is a gesture akin to his distinction between the
Calumny shown in a theatrical performance and the enduring virtues of Truth
and Repentance set against a solid architectural background.
The context of the sixteenth-century image controversy may lead to a
yet different and rather surprising interpretation of Bruegel’s Christ and the
Woman Taken in Adultery, which I would like to propose with some caution.
At the most fundamental level, the depicted story is one about an adulter-
ess—or a whore—which corresponds with the multilayered discourse of im-
ages as whores. Images seduce our eyes and may lead to idolatry, especially
if they are sculptures. Grisaille has long been understood as a technique that
is concerned first and foremost with the imitation of statuary, so it is justi-
fied to think about Bruegel’s composition as an active voice of an artist in the
theological controversy. However, for sixteenth-century readers/viewers along
a broad confessional spectrum, the text of John 8 exemplified the pride, self-
righteousness, envy, and hatred of the Pharisees and scribes, and served as an
admonition to self-examination and repentance. The incompleteness of the
80 As noted above, Jonckheere further argues that the arrangement of figures in Christ and
the Woman Taken in Adultery resembles a niche, with the adulteress herself imitating a
Gothic statue. While the impenetrable semicircular wall of the Pharisees and the scribes
may indeed remind us of an architectural niche, the latter claim is generic at best, and
other scholars have persuasively argued that the woman is primarily based on figures in
the work of Raphael. See Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 139, and Cast,
Calumny of Apelles, 102. On the other hand, her pose, as I argue throughout this chapter,
is first and foremost based on the personification of Repentance.
186 Chapter 5
quote in Bruegel’s painting, reduced to the opening words “He that is with-
out sin, let him,” enhanced the open-endedness of the story and the focus on
viewers’ own souls and the nature of their sins. Given the contemporaneous
socioreligious climate, it is not unreasonable to imagine that a viewer would
have asked himself whether he was guilty of idolatry in his usage of sacred and
biblical images, and what would be the source of that idolatry—the images
themselves or his sight. All these factors can lead to the conclusion that Christ
and the Woman Taken in Adultery serves as a justification of images, or at least
an argument in favor of a neutral position. The employment of the grisaille
technique is a deliberate, self-conscious statement made by Bruegel that he
recognizes potential problems with religious art. However, as no one is without
sin, perhaps the predilection for images constitutes merely, in the words of
Elizabeth Honig, “forgivable weaknesses of the hungry eye.”81 Maybe the whole
controversy has been blown out of proportion by both Protestant and Catholic
authors, just as the Pharisees overestimated the sin of the adulteress while un-
derestimating their own trespasses. If that is indeed his position, then the gri-
saille’s connection to The Calumny of Apelles becomes even more significant.
Bruegel’s drawing, countless pictorial versions of the theme, and the story in
Lucian defend images with their power to provide exempla and persuade view-
ers much more effectively than words alone. But if Bruegel strove to defend im
ages, iconoclasts remained unpersuaded, and the 1566 riots proved that there
were quite literally people ready to cast a stone at religious images.

Choosing “the Best Part” 187
Chapter 6
Choosing “the Best Part”: Christian Death and Life

in Bruegel’s Death of the Virgin
The original audience of Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery was most like-
ly limited, as the painting stayed in the Bruegel family. By contrast, viewership
of another grisaille, The Death of the Virgin, was much wider and exceptionally
well documented. The picture was first owned and possibly commissioned
by Abraham Ortelius.1 A decade after the creation of this grisaille, Ortelius
asked his and Bruegel’s mutual friend Philips Galle, a successful Antwerp
engraver, to reproduce it as a print (figure 31). Ortelius also wrote a sophisti-
cated inscription to accompany the image, which he then circulated among
his humanist friends. Remarkably, the print is composed in the same direc-
tion as the grisaille—it is its direct translation—meaning that it must have
been engraved in reverse.2 The engraving was received and admired by, among
others, Benedictus Montanus and Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert. Ortelius’s
inscription and the correspondence with his learned friends testify to the
artistic and spiritual appreciation of Bruegel’s inventiveness and his success
in redefining the pictorial idiom of meditative images. More specifically, as
I shall argue, Bruegel engaged in his grisaille with the tradition of ars moriendi,
to ultimately reflect upon the didactic potential of those images and the rituals
of “the good death.”
Bruegel imagines the chamber of the Virgin Mary’s death as a busy domestic
interior, crowded with people and objects. Around Mary’s bed, disciples are
attending to her bodily and spiritual needs: Mary Magdalene fixes the pillow
behind her back as Peter gives her the “candle of death,” while several men,
women, and children immersed in the darkness of the night hold vigil, pray,
and weep. Someone has already arranged a crucifix at the other end of the bed
so that the Virgin can look at the image of her crucified son. Against the front
of the bed stands a chest with a small bucket of holy water and an aspergillum,
placed next to two small jugs, possibly used to store oils of chrism for the
Anointment of the Sick. The room is gently lit and warmed by the fireplace to
1 Manfred Sellink, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, Drawings, and Prints (Ghent: Ludion, 2007),
194. The third known grisaille by Pieter Bruegel, which I do not discuss here, is The Three
Soldiers from ca. 1568 in the Frick Collection in New York.
2 Sellink, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, 194.

188 Chapter 6
Figure 31 Philips Galle after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Death of the Virgin, 1574, engrav-
ing, 31.5 × 42.4cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
the left, adorned with a figure of a saint and an extinguished candle, with some
books leaning against the upper wall of the mantel. Other elements of the gri-
saille are more firmly rooted in the earthly existence of Mary and the disciples:
a small round table in the foreground is packed with plates, bowls, cups, jugs,
and half-eaten meals and napkins; perhaps some of the containers hold restor-
atives for the sick and enfeebled Mary. This small, cramped table brilliantly
captures the atmosphere of a dying person’s room, where the fabric of mun-
dane life is hurriedly abandoned for matters of eternity. Slippers have been left
under the table, maybe by the Virgin, who would no longer need them, or by
the barefoot apostle kneeling between the bed and the table. A cat warms itself
in front of the fire, while a youthful man—traditionally identified as John—is
napping to the left of the mantel, comfortably covered with a blanket and giv-
ing the impression of someone who was supposed to keep watch, but could
not help falling asleep.
Figure 32 Hugo van der Goes, The Death of the Virgin, ca. 1480, oil on panel, 147.8 × 122.5cm,
Bruges, Groeninge Museum
Lukas—Art in Flanders VZW photo: Hugo Martens
The setting of Mary’s death—a Northern European domestic space—and

many of the furnishings and props introduced by Bruegel follow the iconog-
raphy used by Hugo van der Goes (figure 32), Martin Schongauer (figure 33),
and Albrecht Dürer (figure 34) in their versions of the theme. These pictorial
references would have been recognized by Abraham Ortelius and the recipi-
ents of Galle’s print. The composition’s artistic and art historical allusions, as
190 Chapter 6
Figure 33 Martin Schongauer, The Death of the Virgin, ca. 1470–75, engraving, 25.5 × 16.8cm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
Figure 34 Albrecht Dürer, The Death of the Virgin, from The Life of the Virgin, 1511, woodcut,
44 × 30cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet
192 Chapter 6
we shall see, form an important aspect of its religious appreciation. In addition

to the scenography and the positioning of Mary’s canopied bed, the attitudes
of many of the figures and the diversity of their facial expressions and body
language rely on German models. However, Bruegel subtly changes some of
the details, e.g., he transforms Dürer’s rectangular bedside table with just three
objects (a tankard, dish, and candlestick) into a rounded one crowded with dif-
ferent types of utensils, and moves it closer to the viewer. Likewise, the number
of devotional and domestic objects in the entire composition has been greatly
increased. Other changes appear to be even more emphatic and significant:
for instance, in Bruegel it is Peter, not John, who is at Mary’s side, and unlike
in the German prints, none of the disciples or witnesses reads from a religious
book—the only books present in the room are the one on the mantel and an-
other left behind on a small triangular chair close to the viewer’s space. Finally,
Mary’s death is depicted as a nocturnal scene, which allowed the artist to once
again experiment with the grisaille medium, achieving the virtuoso effects of
illuminating the room with the candles, as well as the fireplace, the lamp, and
the divine light behind the Virgin’s head, lending the scene, in the words of
Manfred Sellink, “a dramatic urgency and emotional intensity.”3
Both the similarities and differences between Bruegel’s grisaille and the ear-
lier works contribute to the construction of a discursive image that encourages
viewers to analyze it in the context of changing sixteenth-century attitudes
toward death and dying. One of the most striking differences is the number
of witnesses to the Virgin’s death in the small room. While the presence of the
disciples in these images aligns with what Jacobus de Voragine says about the
Virgin’s death in The Golden Legend, the multiplication of figures by Bruegel
touches upon the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century controversy over whether
death should be a private or a public affair. Humanists considered external,
public exhibition of grief indecorous; the actual practice could have not been
more different and, as Edward Muir concludes, “a proper death was just as
much a public event as a proper marriage.”4 Even with the changes brought
by the Reformation, departure from this world remained a social matter. The
persistence of that custom was brilliantly illustrated by the death on Febru-
ary 18, 1546 of Martin Luther, whose student Justus Jonas hurriedly assembled
3 Sellink, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, 195. Bruegel’s interpretation of Schongauer’s and
Dürer’s prototypes has often been analyzed by scholars: see, e.g., Walter S. Melion, “‘Ego enim
quasi obdormivi’: Salvation and Blessed Sleep in Philip Galle’s Death of the Virgin after Pieter
Bruegel,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 47 (1996): 17–19; and Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s
Historical Imagination, 135.
witnesses to gather around the dying Reformer so that they could testify to the
“holy” circumstances of his death that would be crucial for the future legacy of
the Reformation movement.5
Bruegel’s grisaille depicts a variety of features and attributes that the late
medieval and early sixteenth-century ars moriendi recommended as neces-
sary at a pious Christian’s death: the crucifix, the praying attendants, and in-
struments used in the last rites. The figure of Peter advocates the importance
of the church administering its sacraments to the dying: dressed in the man-
tum and accompanied by an acolyte holding the double-barred cross, Peter is
identified primarily as the first pope rather than as one of the twelve apostles.
In that capacity, he hands the Virgin the “candle of death” (taper) in the ritual
of commendatio animae.6
Because traditionally the Extreme Unction preceded the commendatio ani-
mae, in Bruegel’s grisaille it must have already been performed with the oils in
the two small jugs standing on the chest next to the aspergillum, perhaps by
the figure in a monk’s robe kneeling to the right of the chest, or perhaps by
Peter himself, who has now moved to Mary’s bedside. In the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, the arrival of a priest who was to administer the Extreme
Unction and the performance of this rite took the form of a complex and sol-
emn ceremony. A priest, wearing a surplice and stole, followed a cleric carrying
candles and holy water, and was followed by another attendant bearing the
holy oil and cloth used to wipe off the chrism (which would have been subse-
quently burnt). Lengthy prayers at the dying person’s bedside expressed hope
and asked God for healing of both the body and soul, and encouraged everyone
gathered together to pray for the sick. The prayers were accompanied by re-
peated sprinkling of the ill with the holy water, and finally anointing him or her
and administering communion. After blessing the whole household, the priest
would leave.7
All these sacramentals, included in the scenes of the death of the Virgin by
Bruegel and other Northern European artists, had ascribed symbolic and ritu-
alistic importance, grounded in the belief in their efficacy against sin and evil

6 The presentation of the “candle of death,” which symbolizes specifically the expectation of
Eternal Light, is also depicted in the prints by Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer, both
of whom relegate this task to Saint John. More in line with Bruegel’s composition is Hugo van
der Goes’ painting in Bruges from ca. 1480, in which it is the aged Saint Peter who is about to
give Mary the candle.
7 Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany
(Florence: Taylor & Francis, 1997), 135–37.
194 Chapter 6
and regarded by the laymen as “channels of divinity.”8 Among them, the most
perplexing is the handing of the candle to the sick. It is a ritual tied strictly to
the Marian devotion, as tapers were consecrated on February 2, the feast of the
purification of Mary. The functions of blessed candles were diverse and unmis-
takably powerful: they were lit in times of danger and natural disaster, accom-
panied rites of passage, and were brought not only to ill and dying people, but
also to the stalls of sick livestock. The variety of these occasions was accom-
modated by the broad symbolism of light in the Christian tradition. But while
numerous illustrations of ars moriendi and virtually all late medieval and Re-
naissance images of the death of the Virgin feature a taper, the reality was
probably much different than the pictorial ideal—giving a burning candle to a
person in agony, lying in bed in a more or less crowded chamber, is a rather
dangerous decision, and in many cases this custom must have been complete-
ly unfeasible.9 Bruegel seems to have understood this paradox well. His depic-
tion of Mary’s body and her gesture of receiving the candle display an incredible
sensitivity and understanding of an old, feeble, dying body: the Virgin Mary
reaches for the candle with a visible effort, moving her upper body as Mary
Magdalene helps her by raising the pillow behind her back, and weakly wraps
her fingers around it as Peter continues to hold it firmly with his right hand.
The scene playing out at the Virgin’s deathbed has the quality of an orches-
trated theatrical tableau whose purpose may be to provide Christian viewers
with an example of dying properly.10 However, the “proper death” in that case
may not necessarily align with the last rites commonly prescribed by the clergy
in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
The orchestrated commotion of the center and the right part of Bruegel’s
composition contrasts sharply with its left side. The room on this side appears
to be almost empty; no one pays attention to John or the abandoned utensils
on the table, or the cat in front of the fireplace. There is a certain calmness and
tranquility to this part of the grisaille, an aura of peaceful withdrawal from the
hectic world. Walter Melion, who interprets Bruegel’s composition and its
graphic reproduction by Galle as firmly rooted in the Catholic cult of Mary,
argues that the figure of John conveys the idea of the kinship between him and
8 Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 137.

10 As noted, the essential human assistance at a person’s final hour included a priest
listening to the dying person’s confession and offering consolation, then anointing the
body and administering the holy communion (viaticum), with other props such as the
“candle of death” and the display of a cross and images of the Virgin and saints by the bed.
These likenesses were intended to further assist the dying person with the passage to
eternity.
the Virgin, based on an event in John 19:26–27: “When Jesus therefore had seen
his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother:
Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother.
And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own.” The poses of Mary and
John are similar, both figures contrasting with the “absorptive states” of other
attendants, and his sleep is analogous to her death, as suggested by Saint Bridg-
et’s visions and a treatise by Petrus Canisius, De Maria Virgine.11
The placement of John by the fireplace provokes yet another type of picto-
rial association. In both versions of Pieter Aertsen’s painting Christ in the House
of Martha and Mary, the space by the mantel is occupied by the apostles. The
Rotterdam panel separates them more clearly from the teaching Christ than
does the painting in Vienna, as Peter and John mingle with the servant girls by
the fireplace to the right of the composition while Christ is teaching at the rear
of the house. The three disciples in the Vienna panel do not appear to be part
of Christ’s conversation with the two sisters either: youthful John stands to the
side of the fireplace, stretching his right arm toward the warm fire, as Peter sits
on the other side, trying to comfortably position himself against the decorative
caryatid supporting the mantel, and partially obstructing a third disciple in the
far background (figure 35). The mantel in the Vienna panel is inscribed with a
verse in Dutch from Luke—“Maria heeft wtercoren dat beste deel”—a passage
that would have been read in churches on August 15, when Catholics celebrate
Mary’s death and assumption. The story of Christ’s visit in Luke 10:38–42, dur-
ing which Martha is occupied with the preparation and serving of the food
while her sister sits at the feet of Christ, listening to his teaching, has been
traditionally interpreted as an illustration of vita activa and vita contemplativa.
Rather than scolding Mary for leaving Martha alone with the household
chores—as Martha would like Christ to do—he commends Mary for choosing
“the best part, which shall not be taken away from her,” as “one thing [only] is
necessary.” This gospel text has also been understood more specifically in refer-
ence to the Virgin Mary as illustrating two sides of her life and character, a
contemplative and an active one, even though she is not mentioned by Luke as
accompanying Christ during his visit to Bethania.12 Thus, the church directed
worshippers’ attention on August 15 not only to the assumption of the Virgin,
but also to her worldly life, which Christians were to imitate.
11 Petrus Canisius, De Maria Virgine incomparabili, et Dei Genitrice Sacrosancta, libri quinque
(Ingolstadt, 1577). See Melion, “Ego enim quasi obdormivi,” esp. 32–35.
12 See, for instance, Beth Kreitzer, Reforming Mary: Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in
Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004),
127–28.
196 Chapter 6
Figure 35 Pieter Aertsen, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1552, oil on panel,
60.5 × 101cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
The connection between the death of the Virgin and Luke’s text, established
by the church’s choice of the reading for August 15, and visually conveyed by
Bruegel by the compositional reference to Aertsen, invites an interpretation of
the panel in which John chooses “the best part, which shall not be taken away
from [him].” In the grisaille, while everyone else is occupied with helping the
Virgin—be it making her more comfortable, like Mary Magdalene, or enabling
a proper death, like Peter—John sleeps peacefully with his hands crossed, pas-
sive, oblivious to the solemn event. The apostle who was given the mission of
taking care of Mary by the dying Christ fails to even stay awake during her ag-
ony. This is a significant departure not only from Schongauer’s and Dürer’s
prints, but also from The Golden Legend, one of the most important sources
describing the death of the Virgin, in which John was the one who summoned
all the apostles to her deathbed.
The contrast between the busy crowd around Mary’s bed and the peace-
ful John may suggest a criticism of elaborate ceremonies of the ars moriendi.
In the late Middle Ages, the complexity of rites of a proper Christian death
stemmed from a profound anxiety about the uncertainty of salvation; if no
one could be confident in his or her prospects for eternal life, then everything
must have been done to increase the chances of entering heaven. The spirit of
“penitence and fear” that dominated the medieval culture of dying was much
different from the confidence and joy with which the first Christians awaited
their final hour.13 However, the early Reformation recovered that hopeful ap-
proach, emphasizing that since Christians are justified by faith alone, and sal-
vation is granted by Christ and his grace alone, one should not despair over
one’s destiny. This does not mean that the Reformers discouraged deathbed
sacraments altogether, but the doctrine of sola fides stripped them of their
status as indispensable instruments, leaving, for instance, the decision about
the confession to the initiative of the dying person.14 Similarly, a pastor was
to attend and console a dying person as “an informed professional and a com-
passionate neighbor within the parish” and not as an administrator of God’s
grace.15
The possible reading of the grisaille as a criticism of the deathbed ceremo-
nies would have been grounded in the sixteenth-century transformation of ap-
proaches to dying and the mentality it produced, which, while not ubiquitous,
would have been shared nonetheless by not only committed Protestants, but
also reform-minded, Erasmian Catholics. Ridiculing, as we saw in previous
chapters, various Catholic ceremonialae, Erasmus did not spare the ars morien-
di either:
When the last hour finally comes, certain ceremonies for the occasion are
already prepared. The dying man makes his general confession. He is
given Extreme Unction and the last sacrament. The candles and the holy
water are there. No chance of forgetting the indulgences! A papal bull is
unrolled before the dying man’s eyes; if necessary, it is even sold to him.
Then arrangements are made for the elaborate funeral service. A last sol-
emn promise is extracted from the dying man. Someone shouts in his ear
13 Austra Reinis, Reforming the Art of Dying: The “Ars Moriendi” in German Reformation
(1519–1528), (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 2–5. Philippe Ariès situates the beginnings of this
anxious approach to death in the Carolingian period, after which it continued to intensify
until the Renaissance, when it finally subsided. Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death: The
Classic History of Western Attitudes toward Death over the Last One Thousand Years (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 297.
14 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 48. However, toward the end of the sixteenth century
the Lutheran ars moriendi reevaluated the importance of the confession and the presence
of a pastor in a dying person’s room, making it once again highly desirable, at the very
least.
198 Chapter 6
and hastens his end, as often happens, either by excessive noise, of by a

breath that reeks of wine.16
These sarcastically summarized rites were prepared for George Balearicus, one
of the protagonists of Funus (The Funeral). Part dialogue, part narrative, the
text was first published by Johannes Froben in the 1526 Basel edition of Collo-
quia.17 The Funeral juxtaposes the elaborate ars moriendi rites of a wealthy
army commander, Balearicus, and a devout layman, Cornelius Montius, who
has no interest in such ceremonies. Montius’s is an example of a good death
embraced calmly by someone with a peaceful conscience; having led a virtu-
ous and pious life; there is no need for him to seek help in “quasi-magical for-
mulas for outwitting death.”18 By contrast, Balearicus’s departure from this
world is marked by quarrels, greed, and vainglorious ostentation, rendering it
an example of a “bad” death that reflects a mechanistic approach to salvation.
Balearicus’s death is accompanied by eight ritualistic moments, regarded by
traditional Catholics as crucial for the proper passage to the afterlife. First, the
commander seeks treatment, as otherwise his death would come dangerously
close to suicide; second, he confesses his sins to a Franciscan friar, which al-
lows a parish priest to perform the Extreme Unction. Having taken care of
these essential religious ceremonies, Balearicus attends to more mundane
matters, which to the members of the clergy are nonetheless of crucial impor-
tance: testamentary provision for his family, charitable bequests to religious
orders, and the design of an ostentatious funeral. Having completed these
steps, the dying man is assured of his salvation.
The four mendicant friars and the parish priest “consoling” him are the true
villains of the text, preoccupied with Balearicus’s will and funeral; it is this kind
of clergy that Erasmus does not hesitate to call “criminals and the supersti-
tious … those naïve ignoramuses who teach the faithful to rely upon such cer-
emonies and neglect the very things that transform us into true Christians.”19
In the final stages of his ars—one could add male—moriendi, Balearicus,
wrapped in a Franciscan cloak, is placed on a pallet strewn with ashes as he
receives a taper and a crucifix, amid the sounds of psalms chanted by some of
the attendants. Having secured the confirmation of George’s bequests, the
priest talks about absolution; in the light of late medieval Catholic practices,
16 Ariès, Hour of Our Death, 303.

17 For the modern edition, see Desiderius Erasmus. The Funeral, in Collected Works of Eras
mus, vol. 40: Colloquies, ed. Craig R. Thompson, 763–95. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1997.
the man is now ready to die.20 Montius, by contrast, dies peacefully, accompa-
nied by only one witness, whom he asks to read Psalms. In the early morning,
having kissed the crucifix and spoken the words “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,”
Montius takes his last breath.21
Beyond the potential abuses, the late medieval rituals of dying began to be
criticized in the early sixteenth century as they seemed to have sanctioned a
dissolute life; after all, the deathbed rites appeared to have had the power to
cleanse the dying of all their sins. By contrast, humanists and theologians
taught that rather than relying on these last-minute means, a true Christian
was to spend his whole life preparing for death by simply living in a pious and
honest fashion. Ars moriendi was, in their view, to be substituted by ars viven-
di. This transition might have influenced the reception of Bruegel’s Death of the
Virgin.
A description of such an exemplary approach to death—and life—can be
once again found in Erasmus’s writings. In the Shipwreck colloquy, the human-
ist juxtaposes the calmness and rationality of a perfectly composed young
woman with the panic of the rest of the passengers, who pray frantically for
divine intervention and the intercession of saints. Rather than crying for God’s
help, the woman simply continues with her usual prayer, and eventually lands
safely as the first one on the shore.22 Erasmus’s criticism in the Funus also
touches upon the Catholic belief in human agency in the dispensation of sal-
vation through instruments such as the candles, the holy water, and, above all,
indulgences. As such, it strikes a fundamentally Protestant note, hinting at yet
another reason why the medieval ars moriendi was suspicious. Both the writ-
ten manuals of the “art of dying well” and the accompanying images typically
envision a dying man in his bed between “two supernatural societies,”23 at one
side the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and saints and angels, including the dying
person’s guardian angel, and at the other, demons. In his final hour, a man had
to choose between these two forces as he was undergoing the temptation of
losing or renouncing his faith. The dying man’s hope rested upon the interces-
sion of the Virgin, who would plead for God’s mercy on his behalf.
20 Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 133. These last stages of Balearicus’s death correspond
with a belief widely popular among the “common folk,” but which to Erasmus seemed
absurd: namely, that dying people had to keep affirming their faith until they lost
consciousness, because otherwise a devil would snatch their souls. Karant-Nunn, Refor
mation of Ritual, 163. This was also one of the beliefs that shaped the deathbed iconography
of the late medieval ars moriendi.
21 Erasmus, Funeral, 779.
22 Desiderius Erasmus, A Shipwreck, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39: Colloquies, trans.
Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 352–66.
200 Chapter 6
The rejection of the role of Mary and saints as intercessors and of the cler-
gy’s functions as administrators of indispensable rites, as well as the criticism
of the Catholic theology of works, resulted in a clear transformation of rituals
of dying among Protestants. Most significantly, Lutherans eliminated Extreme
Unction and the sacramentals it required (chrism, holy water, candles, vest-
ments) but kept the Holy Communion; likewise, those praying at the bedside
of a dying person would continue to chant Psalm 130, De Profundis, but would
otherwise abandon penitential hymns, as those greatly increased the fearful
mood of the hour of death.24
This transformation of ars moriendi affected beliefs and behavior of reli-
gious moderates as well. An excellent insight into the changing approaches to
deathbed rituals in the Low Countries is provided by rhetoricians’ plays per-
formed at the 1539 landjuweel in Ghent.25 The main question of the contest,
“What is the dying man’s greatest consolation?,” allows us to evaluate popular
beliefs that would have been circulating among and addressed toward laymen
rather than highly educated theologians, as well as broader ideas on faith, sal-
vation, and justification that one should follow throughout one’s life in order to
approach death confidently and joyfully. Ghent spelen van sinne essentially de-
scribe which religious practices and teachings Christians should trust, espe-
cially those facing the end of their lives. The plays present a broad spectrum of
confessional beliefs, and quite a few dramas are rather idiosyncratic in nature,
but none of them appears to wholeheartedly defend the Catholic ars moriendi.
According to Gary Waite, only three spelen van zinne—performed by cham-
bers from Kaprijke, Leffinge, and Tienen—can be described as Catholic, and
even these are reluctant in their advocacy for the priesthood, church, and sac-
raments, and do not hesitate to indicate the abuses of the church.26 In the
Tienen play, a young Dying Man (Staervende Mensche) receives the Extreme
Unction, equipped with a staff of faith, a breastplate of love, an image of cruci-
fied Christ, and “a lantern of the light of charity.” Yet at the same time, he must
face two monks who, rather than help him, try to convince him to join their
order, hoping they will then inherit his possessions. Much as in Erasmus’s The
Funeral, monks are satirized villains in the Tienen drama, with their abuse of
ars moriendi particularly vilified.
Nine other plays—by the Antwerp Violieren and chambers from Bruges,
Mesen, Ypres, Nieuwkerke, Nieuwpoort, Brussels, Lo, and Edingen—take a
24 Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 160–61.

25 For the text and structural and linguistic analysis of the 1539 plays, see De Gentse spelen
van 1539, 2 vols., ed. B. H. Erné and L. M. van Dis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).
26 Waite, Reformers on Stage, 148.
more Lutheran stance and embrace, to different degrees, the doctrine of Sola
Fides, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura, and reject the authority of the pope and prac-
tices such as burial in a monk’s habit, indulgences, and the invocation of saints
in the hour of death.27 The Brussels play relies on late medieval imagery of the
fight between the angelic and the diabolic societies that takes place at the dy-
ing person’s bedside, but it uses a series of contrasting tableaux to show how
the Staervende Mensche receives grace in his hour of death. On the one hand,
the man is confronted by vices who advise him to follow ecclesiastical cus-
toms; on the other hand, eight images help him to understand the promises of
God. Church rituals only instill terror in the Dying Man’s heart, a reaction that,
as has already been mentioned, appears to have been ubiquitous in the late
medieval culture of dying. Such a reaction was in fact part of the vicious circle
of the ars moriendi: its elaborate rituals were meant to prepare a person for
death and help him or her to overcome fear, but in reality, they only increased
the terror and augmented the uncertainty of salvation. The eight images high-
light the true path to inner peace and tranquility discovered by the Staervende
Mensche after he cries for God’s help. First, he receives the gospel from Christ,
The Living Word; second, he—and the audience—see God cursing the serpent
and proclaiming the coming of Christ; third comes an illustration of the Lu-
theran doctrine of the law depicted as God’s promise to Abraham. The fourth
scene shows the crucifixion of Christ and his victory over death and Hell. (It is
with this image that the Dying Man begins to feel relieved.). The fifth and sixth
tableaux continue this theme with scenes of Hell breaking open and Satan be-
ing bound, as does the next image of a resurrected Christ who chases away
death. The series concludes with a painting of Christ seated at the right hand
of God, with the peaceful Staervende Mensche before him.28 These eight tab-
leaux are no less than a progressive, narrative version of the quintessentially
Lutheran images of the law and gospel, which juxtapose the Law of Moses and
the doctrine of the Catholic Church with the gospel, grace, and Christ’s sacrifi-
cial death as the only sources of salvation. In the play, their exposition causes
the allegorical figure of Human Understanding to throw away his books; “the
best part,” which he chooses, and “the best part” any dying person should
choose, are the promises of God alone.
Ten remaining plays performed in Ghent, which Waite classifies as “com
promising and spiritualistic,” display a similar focus on the importance of a
rested conscience, scriptural understanding, and the Holy Spirit in consoling
27 Waite, Reformers on Stage, 150–51.

28 Waite, Reformers on Stage, 151.
202 Chapter 6
the dying and achieving eternal happiness.29 Focusing on the ars moriendi, at
the 1539 competition rederijkers criticized ritualistic and doctrinal abuses by
the Roman Catholic Church and showed that there was indeed a more hopeful
alternative to man’s final hours on earth.
1 “Sweet Sleep” and the Transition from Vita Activa to Vita

Contemplativa in Bruegel’s Grisaille
Pieter Bruegel’s grisaille was created at a pivotal moment in the history of ars
moriendi, at the time when the rites surrounding physical death reached the
climactic point of their intensity and then began to subside. While popular
piety was still marked by elaborate ceremonies, to its critics “magical” and “su-
perstitious,” new approaches popularized by theologians and Reformers were
slowly making their way into society, as the plays performed in Ghent indicate.
The difference between Bruegel’s composition and prints by Schongauer and
Dürer aptly captures this moment: the number of witnesses to the Virgin’s
death has greatly increased, as has the number of religious and domestic ob-
jects. Schongauer’s engraving and especially Dürer’s woodcut include the most
common props of ars moriendi such as the cross, holy water and aspergillum,
incense, and candles, handled by the twelve apostles, whom Legenda Aurea
mentions as witnesses to the Virgin’s dormition, but neither exhausts the arse-
nal of sacramentals. Both prints remain relatively simple and, most important-
ly, with their limited number of witnesses, they present Mary’s death as a fairly
intimate event. Bruegel’s composition, on the other hand, offers a truly com-
prehensive compendium of the final rites—with the meaningful omission of
the actual reading of the Bible or other devotional texts—and depicts the Vir-
gin’s final hour as a social, even sensational event, with more and more people
rushing into the chamber.
As I have suggested before, the calm retreat of the sleeping figure of John
amid this multiplicity of people and objects is telling. Through this contrast,
Bruegel confronts his viewers with the question of what is truly necessary for
Christians and their pious death: what is “the best part, which shall not be
taken away” from them in their final hour. Despite his spatial separation from
the Virgin and apparent obliviousness to her agony, it is John who bears the
greatest resemblance to Mary. He is situated close to the picture plane, with his
body turned toward the viewer in a three-quarter view, with part of his torso
29 Waite, Reformers on Stage, 153–57.

and his lower body wrapped in a robe in the same way Mary is covered with a
blanket, his hands folded, mimicking her clasp of the candle. His position and
its similarity to Mary’s may further viewers’ theological understanding of her
death, which was much disputed in the sixteenth century. The parallel be-
tween the sleeping John and the dying Virgin brings to mind Petrus Canisius’s
explanation of her departure from this world as “the happy act of sleeping” or
a “sweet sleep,” a mild type of death granted to those who live a pious life or
suffer for Christ during their lifetime.30 According to Saint Bridget’s visions,
which were an important source for Canisius, the same kind of death, a peace-
ful obdormitio, was the privilege of John the Evangelist. Thus, in Bruegel’s im-
age, “John sleeps because his repose is a similitude of the Virgin’s dormition; he
is privileged to sleep because he like her has suffered with Christ, has tasted the
fruits of Christ’s love, and has remained a pure virgin.”31 The peaceful repose of
John and the peaceful death of the Virgin reinforce one another: her death is as
gentle as John’s slumber, while her mild obdormitio foretells his eventual de-
parture from this world.32 They are granted mild deaths because of their imita-
tion of Christ, and not through the agency of sacramentals and the last rites,
which in this context become superfluous.
In the Gospel of John, Christ himself approaches death and sleep as analo-
gous, as he speaks to his apostles about the death of Lazarus:
Lazarus our friend sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.
His disciples therefore said: Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. But Jesus
spoke of his death; and they thought that he spoke of the repose of sleep.
Then therefore Jesus said to them plainly: Lazarus is dead. And I am glad,
for your sakes, that I was not there, that you may believe: but let us go to
him (John 11:11–15).
John’s account, which culminates in Christ raising Lazarus from the dead, is
typically understood as a prefiguration of Christ’s own resurrection. However,
it also strengthens the relationship between Bruegel’s grisaille and Luke’s story
of Christ’s visit to Martha’s and Mary’s house: both women were Lazarus’s sis-
ters, and it was they who sent for Christ when Lazarus was sick. The themes of
Christian life, death, and choosing “the best part” are thus all united in the
person of John the Evangelist and his biblical testimony.
30 Melion, “Ego enim quasi obdormivi,” 32.

32 In Erasmus’s Funus, a man describing Montius’s death also comments that his departure
from this world was as calm as if “he had fallen asleep, not died.” Erasmus, Funeral, 779.
204 Chapter 6
John’s “blessed sleep,” symbolic of retirement from the world, can be under-
stood on yet another level. Beginning in the late 1560s, Ortelius’s correspon-
dence with his humanist friends and relatives—Christophe Plantin, Benedictus
Montanus, Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, and Emmanuel van Meteren—tes-
tifies to his increasing desire to withdraw from the world and dedicate himself
to spiritual matters instead. Ortelius’s correspondents shared his wish, and the
whole circle appears to have been brought together by the conviction “that
salvation, pursued among a community of friends, sought through a retreat
from worldly affairs … constitutes the true aim of Christian life.”33 Such with-
drawal from the world appears to have been a common longing among six-
teenth-century humanists. At the beginning of the century, around his fortieth
birthday, Erasmus wrote: “I keep turning over in my mind how I might devote
the time I have left to live (I don’t know how long it will be) entirely to piety
and to Christ.”34 Both John and Mary offer an example of the transition from
vita activa to vita contemplativa, to which these learned men aspired, while
other figures in the grisaille are still bound to the mundane life with its hasty
(and fruitless) business. Bruegel’s Death of the Virgin offers lessons not only in
Christian death, but in Christian life as well. Mary and John are resting, sleep-
ing calmly, having “chosen the best part” in their lives. Mary really has no need
for the traditional last rites, a conclusion that encourages viewers to reflect
upon their efficacy. While ostensibly continuing the tradition of images of ars
moriendi, Bruegel has in fact redefined this genre, and offered a discursive im-
age enriching the contemporary debate about the rituals of death, very much
in line with the transformation of ars moriendi into ars vivendi.
2 Artistry and Theological Truth in the Images of the Death of the

Virgin
Despite the popularity of images of the death of the Virgin among laymen, the
Roman Catholic Church—unlike the Orthodox Church—has never actually
ascribed much theological significance to the death of the Virgin, focusing in-
stead on her assumption. This was particularly true for Antwerp, where until
1566 the Feast of the Assumption was one of the most important holidays in
the city’s ritual calendar. The pamphlet accompanying the 1564 Assumption
procession includes the description of not only the new tableaux, as was cus-
tomary for these types of booklets, but also of civic and religious oude punten,

six of which were dedicated to the Virgin. These gheestelijcke poincten featured
the Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Christ, Adoration of the Magi, Seven Joys
and Seven Sorrows of Mary, and Assumption and Crowning as a Queen of
Heaven, and concluded with a Last Judgment scene. If this last tableau was
anything like the late medieval and early modern paintings and prints of the
Last Judgment—and there is no reason to believe it would not have been—it
must have featured Mary as an intercessor, pleading for mercy on behalf of sin-
ful humankind. The scene of Mary’s death was absent from the ommegang.35
While crucial for Catholics, among Protestants the Feast of the Assumption
was abandoned early on as lacking any scriptural basis and as founded upon
the unacceptable belief in Mary’s role as an intercessor. Luther ceased to
preach on the festival of Mary’s assumption—alongside the days commemo-
rating her conception and birth—in the early 1520s, and the 1543 Osnabrück
Constitution stated that “Mary’s Assumption shall not be celebrated, since
there is nothing certain about it in the Scriptures.”36 If later Protestant minis-
ters discussed the Virgin’s death, they adhered to its cautious interpretation;
for instance, in the sermons preached in 1541 and 1542, German theologian Jo-
hannes Brenz explained diverse beliefs about Mary’s status, which proposed
that either only her soul was taken into heaven or that she was assumed with
both her soul and her body, but one could not say how she achieved that “per-
petual happiness.”37
The changing perception of Mary’s death and assumption, and the impor-
tance of these events, provides an interesting context for their portrayal in the
visual arts. In the mid-sixteenth century, a Protestant citizen of Halle, Hans
Plock, who had been expelled from Catholic Mainz, collected drawings and
prints by German artists to decorate his copy of the Bible. Among these imag-
es, we find the celebrated Death of the Virgin by Schongauer, accompanied by
Plock’s commentary: “This image was judged in my youth to be the finest work
of art to have come out of Germany; therefore I pasted it into my Bible, not
because of the story, which may or may not be true.… The engraver was called
‘Hübsch Martin’ on account of his art.”38 Plock’s words that the story “may or
may not be true” are strikingly similar to the rhetoric employed by the Reform-
ers, who insisted that these events were “somewhat uncertain,” adding that it
35 Ordinantie inhoudende die Oude en Nieuwe Poincten, van onser Vrouwen Ommeganck, der
Stadt van Antwerpen, gheschiet inden Iare. 1564. Antwerp: Hans de Laet, 1564.
36 Kreitzer, Reforming Mary, 122.
38 David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1994), 52.
206 Chapter 6
was therefore not necessary to believe in them.39 Plock separates the artistic
merits of Schongauer’s print from its ability to convey the theological doctrine,
but nonetheless regards the former as a sufficient reason to have this image in
the Bible.
Praising Schongauer’s engraving, Plock then remarks in the same passage:
“however, once the unsurpassed engraver Dürer of Nuremberg began to make
his art, this [estimation of quality] no longer holds.”40 Such an assessment of
Schongauer’s excellence and Dürer’s artistic genius would have been shared by
many in the Low Countries. Celebrated around 1520 during his travel to the
Netherlands, Dürer enjoyed an intense revival in the 1560s. His works were
sought after, and people such as Christophe Plantin and Abraham Ortelius
would have sold his prints. Ortelius would also occasionally send Dürer’s prints
as gifts, as he later did with Galle’s engraving of The Death of the Virgin. In that
period, Ortelius assembled a large collection of Dürer’s woodcuts and engrav-
ings.41 Ortelius’s and his friends’ appreciation of the Bruegel-Galle image thus
occurs in the context of Dürer’s Renaissance. However, in his grisaille, Bruegel
also considers earlier Netherlandish images of the death of the Virgin. Such
simultaneous recognition of the German and Netherlandish tradition as fun-
damental for the art of Northern Europe was not uncommon in Antwerp, as
suggested by, for instance, the sculptural portraits of Jan van Eyck and Albrecht
Dürer decorating the façade of merchant and painter Cornelis van Dalem’s
house since 1563.42 Still, in the eyes of Coornhert and Ortelius, in The Death of
the Virgin Bruegel actually surpassed both the German and the Netherlandish
models.
Plock’s separation of artistic merit and theological truth is very different
from the appreciation of Bruegel’s grisaille among Ortelius’s learned friends.
Their understanding of this image, which they so admired, is epitomized by
Ortelius’s inscription to the reproductive engraving, worth quoting in its en-
tirety:
Virgin, when you sought the secure realms of your son, what great joys
filled your breast? What would have been sweeter for you than to migrate

40 Landau and Parshall, Renaissance Print, 52.
41 Iain Buchanan, “Dürer and Abraham Ortelius,” The Burlington Magazine 124, no. 957
(1982): 734. Porras suggests that Bruegel might have in fact seen Dürer’s woodcut in
Ortelius’s collection. Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 9.
42 Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination, 135. These famous busts were installed at
the time when Ortelius was assembling his collection of Dürer’s prints, and shortly before
Bruegel created his grisaille.
from the prison of the earth to the lofty temples of the longed-for heav-
ens? And when you left the sacred group [of followers of Christ] whose
mentor you had been, what sadness sprang up in you. How sad as well as
how joyful was that pious gathering of you and your son as they watched
you go? What was a greater joy for them than for you to reign [in heaven],
what greater sadness than to miss your appearance? This picture, created
by a skillful hand, shows the happy bearing of sadness on the faces of the
just.43
The brilliance of the Bruegel-Galle work derives, according to Ortelius, from

the artists’ ability to give a visual form to the paradoxes inherent in Mary’s
death: the joy of imminently joining her son and the sorrow caused by leaving
the apostles, who reciprocate her feeling of bliss and grief. Unlike Plock, who
separated the artistic value of Martin Schongauer’s engraving from its (dubi-
ous) theological message, for Ortelius the exquisite quality of the Bruegel-Gal-
le image served the purpose of telling a religious story, one that stimulated a
strongly emotional reaction in a viewer. Confronted with this event—or its
skillful depiction—a “just,” pious person should respond with a similar “joyful
sorrow” to physical death, whether one’s own or that of a relative or friend.44
As we have seen, a shift from the terror caused by the uncertainty of salvation
to a more peaceful and hopeful departure from this world was the essence of
the sixteenth-century transformation of the culture of death.
One of the recipients of the print, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, himself a
skilled, respected engraver, picked up in his answer to Ortelius’s letter the poe
tic convention and the rhetorical tropes of the addressee’s inscription:
Thinking back gratefully [upon prior gifts], I received your [latest] gift,
good Ortelius. Which from top to bottom I happily scanned with wonder,
both for its artful drawing and patient engraving. Bruegel and Galle have
surpassed themselves. Neither could, I believe, have done better. So did
the favor of their friend Abraham [Ortelius] incite their respective arts:
And so, this artful work shall gladden for all time, art-loving masters. Nev-
er have I seen (it seems to me) more able draftsmanship nor engraving to
match that in this sad chamber. But what am I saying? Seen? The ears
43 Sellink, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, 195.

44 Melion, “Ego enim quasi obdormivi,” 15–16.
208 Chapter 6
heard (so it seemed) the lamentations, the sighs, the tears, the miserable
cries … Though the chamber seemed deathly, it seemed, too, as if alive.45
For Coornhert, the unsurpassed artistry of the print transforms its viewing into
a multisensory experience. Bruegel’s excellent design and Galle’s skillful drafts-
manship transport the beholder to the Virgin’s room; it is this intersection of
the aesthetic appeal and religious subject matter of the print that stimulates
the response of “joyful sorrow.” The engraving becomes an efficacious medita-
tive instrument and actualizes for a viewer the legendary departure of the Vir-
gin from this world. But as Coornhert and Ortelius praise Bruegel and Galle for
their extraordinary ability to convey the mood of her death and her paradoxi-
cal emotions and those of the apostles, neither humanist actually describes
the composition. Their poetic comments are not ekphrastic in nature—they
do not bring the image before the eyes of the viewer in the manner in which
Lucian’s description of Apelles’s Calumny does. Both authors focus on Mary’s
and the apostles’ emotions stirred by her departure from this world, and Co-
ornhert’s letter is as much a response to Ortelius’s inscription as it is to the en-
graving itself.
While both Coornhert and Ortelius remained nominally Catholic through-
out their lives, their religiosity can be defined as nondenominational and
marked by open-mindedness rather than orthodoxy and orthopraxy.46 It is
significant, but not surprising, that they do not mention the sacramentals in-
cluded in the composition, as if they were accidental, and not essential to the
Virgin’s death. If this grisaille and the print after it were to be used medita-
tively, this process did not involve close examination of all the details of the
scene; rather, it simply encouraged compassion (in the full theological sense of
the term) for the dying Mary, the sleeping John, and the rest of the disciples.
That Bruegel’s skillful evocation of the mood of the “deathly chamber” is not
credited to the instruments of the last rites suggests that “in his works more is
always implied than is depicted.” It is in those words that Ortelius praised Brue-
gel in his Album Amicorum, comparing him to the most illustrious painters of
antiquity as praised by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History.47 This specific
45 Walter S. Melion, “Theory and Practice: Reproductive Engravings in the Sixteenth-Cen-

tury Netherlands,” in Graven Images: The Rise of Professional Printmakers in Antwerp and
Haarlem, 1540–1640, ed. Timothy Riggs and Larry Silver (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Uni
versity, 1993), 51.
46 See Harris, “The Religious Position of Abraham Ortelius”; Kaminska, “Looking beyond
Confessional Boundaries”; and others.
47 Ortelius began to compile entries in his Album in 1573, and continued to do so until 1596,
two years before his death. The volume is a true “who’s who” of sixteenth-century
passage is a quote from Pliny’s description of Timanthes’s Iphigenia, whose

themes of indescribable—and undepictable—grief relate to The Death of the
Virgin: “To return to Timanthes—he had a very high degree of genius. Orators
have sung the praises of his Iphigenia, who stands at the altar awaiting her
doom; the artist has shown all present full of sorrow, and especially her uncle,
and have exhausted all the indications of grief, yet has veiled the countenance
of her father himself, whom he was unable to adequately portray.… Indeed Ti-
manthes is the only artist in whose works more is always implied than is
depicted.”48 The expression of Iphigenia’s father was thus left to viewers’ imag-
ination; this, however, does not necessarily imply that they had to visualize his
face. Rather, it encouraged the mental exercise of experiencing the emotions
of a father who is about to sacrifice his daughter. To suffer with him and par-
ticipate in his torment did not require a detailed scrutiny of the horrific scene.
Bruegel’s eulogy, added by Ortelius to the Album Amicorum in 1574, further
compares him to classical models:49
The painter Eupompus, it is reported, when asked which of his predeces-

sors he followed, pointed to a crowd of people and said it was Nature
herself, not an artist, whom one ought to imitate. This applies also to our
friend Bruegel, of whose works I used to speak as hardly [sic] of works of
art, but as works of Nature. Nor should I call him the best of painters, but
intellectual and artistic life, including both entries authored by Ortelius commemorating
his friends, and inscriptions dedicated to him by others; their total number is 134. Among
the contributors to the Album, we find the names of Johannes Vivianus, Jacobus Rader
macher, Emmanuel van Meteren, Gerard Mercator, Justus Lipsius, Christophe Plantin,
and John Dee. The epitaph dedicated to Pieter Bruegel was added by Ortelius around 1574,
approximately five years after the painter’s death. See: Jan Muylle, “Pieter Bruegel en
Abraham Ortelius. Bijdrage tot de literaire receptie van Pieter Bruegels werk,” in Archivum
Artis Lovaniensis: Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de kundts der Nederlanden opgedragen
aan Prof. Em. J. K. Steppe, ed. Maurits Smeyeres (Louvain: Peeters), 319–37; Mark A.
Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs,” and the Practice of Rhetoric
(Zwolle: Waanders, 2002), 108–14.
48 Pliny the Elder, Natural History Libri XXXIII–XXXV (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1952), 74. The possible connection between the comparison to Timanthes in the entry in
the Album Amicorum and The Death of the Virgin, via Coornhert’s response to Galle’s
print, has been acknowledged before by Jan Muylle, “Pieter Bruegel en Abraham Ortelius,”
328.
49 As Muylle and Meadow observe, what is striking about Ortelius’s entry in the Album
Amicorum is the absence of references to Hieronymus Bosch, and terms such as “bizarre,”
“laughable,” and “strange,” which other authors—Lodovico Guicciardini, Giorgio Vasari,
Karel van Mander, and Dominicus Lampsonius—routinely employed when calling
Bruegel “the second Bosch.” Muylle, “Pieter Bruegel en Abraham Ortelius,” 333; Meadow,
“Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs,” 113–14.
210 Chapter 6
rather the very nature of painters. He is thus worthy, I claim, of being

imitated by them. Bruegel depicted many things that cannot be depicted,
as Pliny says of Apelles. In all his works more is always implied than is
depicted.50
As Mark Meadow points out, in the passage of Natural History imitated here by
Ortelius, Pliny describes Apelles’s image of Heracles with his face averted,
which is “so drawn that the picture more truly displays Heracles’ face than
merely suggests it to the imagination.”51 What is apparent from Ortelius’s
praise of Bruegel is that his art activates the viewer’s response—mental, intel-
lectual, and devotional—so that he transcends beyond what is represented,
connects to the deeper meanings of images, and completes them in his mind.
Ortelius was not the first humanist to compare a contemporary artist to
Apelles by referencing Pliny’s description of the latter as a painter who “de-
picted many things that cannot be depicted.” The same topos had already been
employed by Erasmus in his 1528 Dialogus de recta Latini Graecique sermonis
pronuntiatione in his praise of Albrecht Dürer—who, as we have seen, enjoyed
a great posthumous popularity at the time when the grisaille and the engrav-
ing were created.52 Ortelius’s appreciation of Bruegel as an artist who imitated
and ultimately surpassed his celebrated predecessors thus operates not only
within the context of artistic practice, but also artistic theory and historiog-
raphy, as in all likelihood he would have known Erasmus’s Dialogus. What is
more, his celebrated epitaph, and the references to Apelles and Timanthes in
particular, construct a praise of Bruegel similar to the one he wrote to accom-
pany Galle’s engraving: as I have noted, Bruegel’s greatest achievement in this
work was his ability to visually reconcile feelings of joy and sorrow, sweetness
and grief, which, while “impossible to depict,” would have been shared by the
image’s viewers.53
I concur with Porras that Bruegel’s grisailles articulate his eclectic approach
to classical and vernacular artistic traditions, and that The Death of the Virgin
in particular “directly competes with northern artistic models for the pleasure
of a connoisseurial audience.”54 However, artistic imitation and visual refer-
ences to Italian and Northern painters—including Bruegel’s contemporary Pi-
50 Abraham Ortelius, Album Amicorum (Antwerp, 1573–1596), 12v–13r. For this English trans
lation, see Meadow, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs,” 109–10.
51 Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs,” 112.
52 Muylle, “Pieter Bruegel en Abraham Ortelius,” 328.
53 Melion concludes that the inscription accompanying Galle’s print was similarly intended
as a eulogy praising the deceased Bruegel’s skills. Melion, “Ego enim quasi obdormivi,” 15.
eter Aertsen and even his own compositions, as in the case of the similarities
between The Calumny of Apelles and Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery—
do not merely serve the purpose of asserting his place in the history of art, but
are essential for the creation of the grisailles’ meaning. The fundamental func-
tion of Bruegel’s dialogue with the past here is the presentation of a religious
argument that can be fully understood only in reference to other works of art,
as in the case of the placement of John next to the fireplace and the radical
multiplication of figures and objects in The Death of the Virgin or the resem-
blance of the figures of the adulteress in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adul-
tery and Penitencia in the Calumny. In these small paintings Bruegel pursues
his ambition to redefine the idiom of religious imagery in a manner that seems
the most adequate for their sophisticated and confessionally open-minded
viewers: by actively reminding them of the celebrated works of the past, their
religious messages and functions, and the historiography and theory behind
them.
212 Epilogue Epilogue
Epilogue
In his 2011 movie The Mill and the Cross, director Lech Majewski enters the
worlds of Pieter Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary and sixteenth-century Ant
werp.1 As Bruegel sketches his composition, glimpses of the painting can be
seen from the windows of his house, and houses of other figures featured in
the panel, including Simon of Cyrene and anonymous marketgoers. Niclaes
Jonghelinck (Michael York), standing in front of The Tower of Babel and Hunt-
ers in the Snow—placed in his urban house at Kipdorp rather than Ter Beken—
observes Spanish soldiers leading heretics and Christ through the streets of
Antwerp before they reach the site of their execution outside the city walls.
The religious persecution of the Netherlandish subjects of Philip II is parallel
to the Passion of Christ; conversely, one could say that the Passion of Christ is
in fact part of religious persecution of heretics in the Netherlands. Following
Jonghelinck’s wishes, Bruegel’s Procession to Calvary expresses the horrors he
observes in his native land, which, in his words, are being carried out by “for-
eign mercenaries in their red tunics.” Jonghelinck’s religious and sociopolitical
agenda in Majewski’s vision is much more explicit than historical records allow
us to conclude, but he certainly voices an opinion of many of his contempo-
raries when he says: “I believe, and many others in this magnificent city [Ant-
werp] also believe, that good men of all confessions can come together in
peace and good understanding.” The film’s Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) is less vocal
in his discontent with the Spanish government, and focuses on designing a
composition that “will tell many stories. It should be large enough to hold ev-
erything. Everything, all the people.” Eventually, satisfied with his design, Brue-
gel tells Jonghelinck, “Now the stage is set” (figure 36). But the film does not
end here. It continues to show the events of the Passion of Christ and life in
Antwerp. Majewski enters the stage set by Bruegel and fills it with his interpre-
tation of historical events, depicting people’s reactions to the world around
them and their understanding of contemporary paintings.
The Mill and the Cross enacts precisely the experience Bruegel wished his
viewers to have: to activate his works in their imagination and share their opin-
ions in a learned convivial conversation. As have scholars before me, I have
observed in this book that we will never fully know how the banquets of the
Antwerp elite looked, nor what exactly those viewers said about the paintings
on the walls of their residences. To be sure, a number of examined sources—
Erasmus’s colloquia, Neo-Latin convivial treatises, architectural tracts, letters,
1 Lech Majewski, dir., Mlyn i krzyz (The Mill and the Cross), Angelus Silesius, 2011.

Epilogue 213
Figure 36 Lech Majewski, The Mill and the Cross, Angelus Silesius, 2011
photo: © Lech Majewski
probate inventories, tafelspelen—provide information that allows us to recon-

struct many aspects of those sixteenth-century feasts. And, of course, we have
the pictures themselves, which spark a desire for discussion as much in us as
they did in their Renaissance viewers.2 But the more we immerse ourselves
in the study of convivia, the more curious we become about their atmosphere,
participants’ emotions, and ritualistic efficacy. What kind of spiritual experi-
ence did they offer? How did they balance the sacred with the mundane? Did
they truly provide opportunities for inner transformation, in addition to social
and intellectual benefits?
Perhaps the best answer to these questions can be found not in Renaissance
sources, but once again in modern cinema. The 1987 film Babette’s Feast, based
on a short story by Karen Blixen, culminates in a scene of a lavish banquet
celebrated by a conservative congregation in honor of its deceased pastor (fig-
ure 37).3 As the dinner progresses, we observe the slow inner transformation
of the guests, who were initially hostile toward the very idea of the extravagant
dinner and, in many cases, toward each other. During the meal the lifelong
quarrels, grudges, and resentments are forgotten, and the congregation leaves

3 Gabriel Axel, dir., Babettes gæstebud (Babette’s Feast), Panorama Film A/S, Nordisk Film, and
Danish Film Institute, 1987.
214 Epilogue
Figure 37 Gabriel Axel, Babette’s Feast, Danish Film Institute, 1987

photo: © Peter Gabriel
in harmony, no longer overcome by spiritual anxiety but filled with a blissful

brotherly love. Food consumed together at the table by old friends and old
enemies, the ceremonial changes of courses in the atmosphere of ill-concealed
anticipation, and the endless servings of perfectly paired champagnes, spirits,
and wines all transform the “real French dinner” into a redemptive ritual. The
progression of the meal parallels the progression of the increasingly sincere
and open conversations, culminating in a rum sponge cake with figs for dessert
and the mutual confessions of old sins and declarations of friendship. The
feast offers the austere congregation something that traditional religious prac-
tices and their usual prayer meetings do not, and for the first time in many
years its elderly members share a truly touching spiritual moment.
I would like to propose that we can think of Netherlandish convivia and
their role as comparable, even if more modest and less emotionally intense,
to this fictitious meal. There is one exception: Antwerp banquets were also
a rich visual feast, nourishing the body, the mind, and the eyes of the guests
seated at the table or strolling around the room, contemplating the intricate
Epilogue 215
compositions and complex subjects of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Like the film’s Babette, Bruegel provided his fellow citizens with a novel means
of facilitating religious instruction and spiritual experience, a means that
exchanged the routine of liturgical and devotional practices—about which
much of the mid-sixteenth-century society felt lukewarm—for an exciting,
intellectually stimulating, and ultimately deeply religious conversation. His
paintings were nonsectarian, and thus kept both their author and their own-
ers safe from accusations of heresy and persecution. Bruegel’s patrons ranged
from Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle to Niclaes Jonghelinck and Jan
Noirot—about whose true religious beliefs we cannot be certain—to Abra-
ham Ortelius, for whom personal spirituality was more important than orga-
nized religion, and who felt as much at ease in the company of Gillis Hooftman
and Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert as he did in that of Benedictus Montanus.
The diversity of these personages testifies to the open-endedness of Bruegel’s
religious imagery. It should not surprise us that some of his viewers might have
found The Death of the Virgin an ambivalent commentary on the tradition of
ars moriendi, while others—as Walter Melion has suggested—would have
found in it affinity with contemporary Catholic treatises.
Bruegel created a niche for himself within which a positive resolution to the
image controversy was possible. His pictures renewed the agency of religious
art and became, as I have shown, an instrument of social cohesion. And al-
though they did not prevent the catastrophes that befell Antwerp in 1566 and
1585—I doubt either Bruegel or his viewers would ever have expected them to
do so—they certainly promoted reflection and individual and collective self-
examination in those troubled times. Bruegel’s contribution to mid-sixteenth-
century Netherlandish art went far beyond escaping iconoclasm on the one
hand, and evading suspicion of religious unorthodoxy on the other. His choice
of conversation pieces as a model for his religious paintings proved enduringly
successful among his and later generations, as we can judge from the contin-
ued popularity of reproductive prints, the inclusion of his pictures in the pres-
tigious kunstkammers of consummate collectors, and the large number of
Pieter Brueghel the Younger copies of his father’s compositions. Thus, while
the more immediate cause of Bruegel’s shift toward a discursive formula of
religious art might have been the image controversy, the idiom he introduced
was a product of the cosmopolitan, open-minded, curious, and self-aware cul-
ture of mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp. It may be therefore tempting to up-
date Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s old nickname of “Peasant Bruegel” to “Urban
Bruegel” or maybe “Convivial Bruegel,” but the richness of his art will continue
to escape such narrow categories. Instead, we should let his paintings tell us
many different stories. After all, there is no conversation more boring than one
in which everyone agrees.
216 Epilogue
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Index Index 237
Index
Pages with figures are in italic type. Nieuwe Beurs (New Exchange) 3, 26
Oosterlingehuis 26
Adams, Alison 138n78 Stadhuis (City Hall) 3, 26-27, 59-60, 69
Aelst, Pieter Coecke van 63n126, 66–67, 70, Stadswaag 55
94n58, 177 Tapissierspand 55, 76, 79
Aertsen, Pieter 22n10, 77, 108, 174–75, 211 = ’t Goed ter Beken (The Estate by the
Market Scene with Christ and the Adulter- Stream) 16, 32, 52–54, 212
ous Woman (Frankfurt) 153, 155, 174, Violieren 7, 61, 100, 130, 182, 200
176, 178–79, 183 Vrijdagmarkt 55, 78–79
Market Scene with Christ and the Adulter- Wilrijk 33, 53
ous Woman (Stockholm) 153, 156, Apelles of Kos 46, 50, 161–65, 168–69, 208,
177–79, 179n58, 183 210
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary Apostelspelen (Apostle Plays) 7n15, 100, 182
(Rotterdam) 119n29, 174, 175, 195 Aquinas, Thomas 169
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary Arras 63, 181
(Vienna) 195, 196 Ars moriendi 13, 187, 193–94, 196–202, 204,
Meat Stall (Raleigh) 24n16, 56n111, 123, 215
123n41, 124 Augustine 25, 91, 96
Agape 41, 123 Axel, Gabriel 213–14, 214
Alba, Duke Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y
Pimentel 4, 15, 23, 52, 94n59, 147 Beeringen, Hendrik van 76–77, 79
Alberti, Leon Battista 33, 34n40, 48, 126–27, Benedictus, Renatus 183, 183n74
161n17, 164n23, 165 Berchem, Hendrik van 34
Amstel, Jan van Berghe, Jan van den 125
Procession to Calvary 108n1, 125n43 Beuckelaer, Joachim 22n10, 77, 175
Andersson, Christiane 177n50 Bijns, Anna 114, 114n13, 114n14, 158–59
Antiphilus 163, 169 Bles, Herri met de 94n58, 96, 108n1, 122n38
Antwerp 1–9, 12, 15–17, 23n14, 24–27, 29n30, Blijde Inkomst (Joyous Entry; Joyeuse
31–38, 40, 40n58, 42, 45, 48–57, 59–64, Entrée) 63–64, 113
68–69, 71, 73–78, 80–92, 97–98, 100n69, Antwerp 1549 64–71
102n75, 103–108, 111–18, 121, 123, 128–33, Boge, Margareta 140
137, 139, 140–42, 147–49, 157, 173, 174n46, Borghini, Raffaello 36
179n58, 180, 182, 187, 204, 206, 212, 214, Bosch, Hieronymus 96, 209n50
215 Bosch, Hieronymus (follower of)
Berchem 33, 53, 140 Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery
Grote Markt 26, 57, 59–60, 64, 69, 71, 130 153, 154
Guild of Saint Luke (see also: Violieren) Botticelli, Sandro
7n15, 89 Calumny of Apelles 163
Guild of Saint Martin 78 Botzheim, Johann von (Abstemius) 48n83,
Hessenhuis 26 117-19
Leikwartier 2, 33, 35, 55 Bouchout, Niclaes van 139
Maagdenhuis 56n111, 83, 83n22 Brabant 3–4, 21, 23, 27, 51–53, 57, 61, 69, 82,
Margravelei 69 122, 173
Meir 26, 79 Bredesteyn, Michiel van 74, 74n3, 75, 98
Mint 48, 52–54, 139–40 Brenz, Johannes 205

238 Index
Broeke, Willem van den 26 Clovio, Giulio 1n2

Bruegel, Pieter the Elder 5–9, 13–17, 22–24, Cock, Hieronymus 29n30, 53n99, 129n53,
31n34, 35n45, 52–54, 61n120, 63, 74, 77, 161n17, 170
95n61, 99n68, 104, 111, 117, 121, 128, View of the Coliseum 29, 30
132n59, 149, 151, 151n1, 153, 168, 174, 184, Cock, Simon 60
186–87, 206, 208–212, 215 Colet, John 48n83
Calumny of Apelles 160, 160–70, 172, 174, Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus 33
185–86, 208, 211 Convivium 5, 8, 10, 12, 22, 28, 32, 37–47, 52,
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery 106, 126–28, 213
12, 12–13, 106, 150–51, 153, 155–61, 167–72, Cool, Jacob 103n79, 106
174, 176–80, 184–86, 211 Coornhert, Dirck Volkertszoon 94n58, 187,
Conversion of Saint Paul 9, 16, 72–77, 85, 204, 206–208, 209n49, 215
90–100, 103, 106–107, 125–26, 153, 171 Cornarius, Janus 37–38
Death of the Virgin 12–13, 13, 150–51, Corro, Antonio del 103n79
184–85, 187–89, 193–96, 199, 202–204, Cort, Cornelis 29n30, 53n99
206–208, 210–11 Cranach, Lucas the Elder 153n2, 176
The Months 17, 18–20, 21, 50, 108, 212 Cranach, Lucas the Younger 153n2, 176
Procession to Calvary 9, 10, 17, 41, 50,
99n68, 107–10, 122–28, 139, 142–49, 153, Daedalus 50
212 Dalem, Cornelis van 206
Sermon of Saint John the Baptist 9–10, 41, Danhoudere, Ioos de 60
80, 107, 111, 128, 139–45, 147–49 Dauxy, Philippe 89n43
Tower of Babel (Vienna) 1, 2, 3–4, 8, 15–17, Dee, John 209n48
21–24, 28–32, 49–50, 52, 54, 62–63, 69, Disgenootschap (see also: convivium) 42–43
71, 85, 98, 106–108, 130, 139, 153, 157, Druon Antigon 69, 70, 129, 171
159n13, 212 Duke, Alastair 134n71
Tower of Babel (Rotterdam) 2n2 Duncanus, Martinus 183
Brueghel, Pieter the Younger 215 Dürer, Albrecht 16, 53, 206, 210
Sermon of Saint John the Baptist Death of the Virgin 189, 191, 192, 192n3,
(Cracow) 11 193n6, 196, 202
Bruiloftspel (wedding play; see also tafels-
pel) 136 Eeckeren, Hester van 48
Bruges 63, 80, 142, 200 Elkerlijc (Elck, Everyman) 102, 102n75, 129
Brussels 5, 31n34, 59, 62, 84, 86, 94n59, Erasmus, Desiderius 22, 32, 35, 39, 41, 43–51,
99n69, 132, 140, 200–201 79, 95n61, 97n65, 111, 114–22, 124, 127–28,
Bruyne, Daniel de 16 138, 144, 147n27, 159, 169, 179–80,
Busleyden, Jeroen 48–51, 139 197–200, 203n33, 204, 210, 212
Estienne, Charles (Stevens, Kaerl) 21n6,
Canisius, Petrus 195, 203 33–35, 45, 58
Cast, David 161n17 Everaert, Cornelis 135
Castagno, Andrea del Everaert, Willem 79
Last Supper 45 Eyck, Jan van 108, 206
Cato, Publius Valerius 33
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 11, 60, Falkenburg, Reindert 124n2
63–65, 68, 71, 76–77, 81n16, 83–86, 88, Flavius Josephus 17, 20, 20n5
100n70, 113 Flie, Joos de la 78
Cicero 37 Florence 36, 59
Cleve, Marten van 140 Floris, Cornelis 26
Index 239
Floris, Frans 16, 50, 53, 53n99, 65, 65n130, 74, Iconoclasm 7, 23n13, 115n16, 120n33, 122, 130,
93n55, 108, 165 143, 149, 180–81, 184n78, 215
Awakening of the Arts 16, 17 Impegem, Lenaert van 139
Forchoudt, Gilliam 161 Irmscher, Günter 22n10
Fraet, Frans 130 Isabella [of Aragon], Queen of Portugal
Franckaert, Hans 52 81n16
Froben, Johannes 49n83, 198
Jeanneret, Michel 40
Galle, Philips 187 João III, King of Portugal 81n16, 83n21
Death of the Virgin 187, 188, 189, 194, Jonas, Justus 192
206–210 Jonghelinck, Jacques 52–54
Portrait of Abraham Ortelius 152 Jonghelinck, Niclaes 1, 2n2, 3–4, 14, 16,
Temperance 165, 166 21–22, 24, 29n28, 32–33, 35, 45, 50,
Ghent 23n13, 41, 41n62, 63, 84, 130, 134, 173, 52–55, 63, 74, 108, 121, 123, 139, 212, 215
200–202 Jonghelinck, Peter 52
Gillis, Jan 51, 91 Jonghelinck, Thomas 54
Gillis, Pieter 48, 49n83, 51–52 Jonckheere, Koenraad 7, 7n15, 29n29, 29n30,
155n7, 184, 185n80
Giot, Toussaint 74
Joyeuse entrée see Blijde Inkomst
Goes, Hugo van der
Joyous entry see Blijde Inkomst
Death of the Virgin 189, 193n6
Junius, Franciscus 180, 180n62
Goffman, Erving 73n2
Junius, Hadrianus 137, 138n77, 168n34
Góis, Damião de 90
Goldstein, Claudia 5, 46, 49n87, 93n55
Kavaler, Ethan Matt 5–6, 61n120, 179n58
Gramaye, Anna 52
Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de 52, 81, 81n17,
Keyser, Jan de 78–80
85, 215
Kingdom of France 113, 129
Grapheus, Cornelius 65, 68n133, 90
Kingdom of Portugal 81, 81n16, 82n20, 84
Guicciardini, Lodovico 15, 27, 57, 59, 61,
Kingdom of Spain 27, 64, 81n16, 113, 129
63n126, 209n50 Kint, An 27n25
Kooi, Christine 91n48
Haecht, Godevaert van 112n9, 113, 131–32, Kunstkammer 215
145–46, 148, 161n17
Haecht, Willem van 7n15, 100n69, 130, 182 Lampsonius, Domenicus 53n99, 209n50
Hamling, Tara 120n32 Landjuweel 36, 173–75
Heemskerck, Maarten van 94n58 Ghent 1539 130, 130n54, 134, 173, 200
The Vicissitudes of Human Affairs 29n30, Antwerp 1561 61, 173, 174n46
129n52, 170 Laurinus, Marcus 117
Heere, Lucas de 145 Lengaigne, Jacques de 75–76, 93n55, 98
Hedge-preaching (haagpreek, veltpredicatie) Leonardo da Vinci
80, 92, 139, 141–42, 144–48 Last Supper 45
Hencxthoven, Jacques 33, 54, 54n103 Leoni, Leone 52
Henry VIII, King of England 82 Leuven 48, 60, 81
Heyden, Michiel van der 33, 55, 57n112 Leyden, Lucas van 92n55, 165
Hogenberg, Frans Lipsius, Justus 209n48
Hedge-Preaching outside Antwerp 141 Lombard, Lambert 165
Hooftman, Gillis 6, 15, 42, 50n87, 103–106 London 41, 41n63, 104, 106
Houghton, Charlotte 24n16, 56n111, 123n41 Lopez, Merten 83n22
240 Index
Loughman, John 73n2 New Christians (see also: Marranos) 8, 15,

Louis of Nassau 132 71, 81–90, 92
Lucian 46n75, 161–65, 168–69, 186, 208 Nimrod, King of Sennaar 1, 20, 23, 28n27,
Lysippus 50 28n28, 39, 54, 62, 62n125, 69
Noirot, Jan 48, 50, 52, 54, 54n100, 74, 215
Maes, Jacob 56–60
Majewski, Lech 212–13, 213 Ommegang 122, 128–130, 132–33, 170, 205
Mander, Karel van 52, 93, 161, 161n16, 177n52, Onuf, Alexandra 33n36, 35n44
209n50 Ortelius, Abraham 6, 14–15, 103–104, 106, 151,
Mantegna, Andrea 157–59, 185, 187, 189, 204, 206–210, 215
Calumny of Apelles 163 Otium 36
Manuel I, King of Portugal 81n16 Ottoman Empire 83, 84n28
Margaret of Parma 52, 86, 88n42, 89n43,
94n59, 181 Paradin, Claude 104
Maria [of Aragon], Queen of Portugal 81n16 Patinir, Joachim 96
Marranos (see also: New Christians) 82n20, Charon Crossing the River Styx 96
83, 92n52 Peeters, Natasja 86n36
Marnef, Guido 77n9, 112n8 Pels, Aernout 52, 74
Martone, Thomas 95n60 Perrière, Guillaume de la 95n61
Mary of Hungary 56, 85 Philelphus, Franciscus 37, 39, 69
Meadow, Mark 5, 173, 173n41, 209n50, 210 Philip II, King of Spain 4, 11, 15, 52–54,
Mechelen 48, 60 63–65, 68–69, 71, 76–78, 80, 86–87,
Hof van Busleyden 48–51, 79, 117, 138 88n42, 94n59, 113, 149, 180, 212
Medici, Cosimo de 93n55 Philon 42
Meeren, Nikolaas van der 84–86 Plantin, Christophe 3, 15, 34, 34n43, 52, 104,
Meeus, Jacobuyne 78–80 133, 204, 206, 209n48
Melanchthon, Philip 161n17 Plato 37n54, 38
Melion, Walter 153n3, 155n5, 157, 167, 194, Pliny the Elder 208–10
210n54, 215 Plock, Hans 205–207
Mendes, Diego 82–83 Plutarch 37
Mercator, Gerard 209n48 Pollmann, Judith 11, 142n7, 143n16
Meteren, Emmanuel van 104, 157, 204, Porras, Stephanie 5, 29n29, 31n32, 99n68,
209n48 110n2, 151n1, 157n8, 160n15, 161n17,
Metsys, Quinten 163n22, 164, 164n23, 165, 206n42, 210
Crucifixion 90 Porthaise/Portesius, Jean 91
Montaigne, Michel 127n47 Praxiteles 50
Montanus, Benedictus 187, 204, 215 Presentspel (see also tafelspel) 136–38
Montias, John 73n2 Ptolemy IV Philopator, Pharoah 162–64
More, Thomas 48–50
Moxey, Keith 7, 119n29, 176n48 Radermacher, Jacobus 103n79, 104, 106,
Muir, Edward 128n51, 192 209n48
Muylle, Jan 35n45, 209n49, 209n50 Ramakers, Bart 110, 161n17, 164n23
Myron 50 Richardot, François 181, 184n76
Richardson, Todd 5, 40n58, 47n79, 91, 97n65
Naties (trading nations) 68–69, 71, 80, 81n15, Ripa, Cesare 164
82, 82n20, 85, 85n30, 88, 90 Roelants, Lucia 74
Negotium 36 Rome 54, 81n16, 93n55, 100n69
Index 241
Ruytinck, Jan 41n62 Vandenbroeck, Paul 42n65

Ruytinck, Simon 41–42, 106 Varietas (varietà) 126
Varro, Marcus Terentius 33, 95n61
Salviati, Francesco 93n55 Vasari, Giorgio 209n50
Sambucus, Johannes 61, 137 Veltpredicatie see hedge-preaching
Sandren, Cornelia 51 Veselaer, Joris 140
Sasbout, Adam 39 Vico, Enea 94n55
Scheldt 2, 4, 23–24, 68–69 Vierschaar (City Tribunal) 56
Schiappalaria, Stefano Ambrosio 65 Villa rustica 32, 34
Schlüter, Lucy 49n83 Villa suburbana 34
Schmidt, Ephraim 82n20 Villeggiatura 8, 32
Schongauer, Martin 168 Vierendeel, Adriaen 80
Death of the Virgin 189, 190, 192n3, 193n6, Vilvoorde 100
196, 202, 205–207 Virgil 33, 50
Schoonbeke, Gilbert van 35, 54–57, 59–60, Vita activa 195, 202, 204
62, 62n125, 76, 78, 83, 123n41 Vita contemplativa 195, 202, 204
Screech, Michael 41 Vitruvius 33
Selbstgerechtigkeit (self-justification) 177 Vives, Juan Luis 39, 47–48, 114, 116, 131
Sellink, Manfred 192 Vivianus, Johannes 209n48
Serlio, Sebastiano 27, 33 Volterra, Daniele de 182
Serrano, Emmanuel 84, 92 Voragine, Jacobus de 192
Silvius Brabo 27, 69, 71 Vos, Martin de 50n87, 105–106
Sinnekens 163, 163n21, 165, 174 Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas at Lystra
Speelhof (speelhuis) 33–36, 55 103
Spel van zinne 134, 137, 165–66, 173, 177, 200 Saint Paul and Silversmith Demetrius 103,
Staelen, Carolien de 77n9 104
Steenbergen, Gerardus 99n69 Saint Paul on Malta 103, 104, 105
Stevens, Kaerl see Estienne, Charles Vredeman de Vries, Hans 33
Stralen, Antoon van 52–53, 149 Vuystkinck, Johann 89n43
Stuckius, Johannes Gulielmus 37–38, 40n58,
43 Waite, Gary 100n70, 200–201
Sullivan, Margaret 22, 28n27, 179n58 Wasteels, Anthoinette 79
Werkheiligkeit (righteousness of
Tafelspel (table play; kamerspel) 133–38, 173, works) 25n20, 177
213 Weyden, Rogier van der
Tertullian 42 Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John
Timanthes 209–10 the Evangelist Mourning 108, 109
Toletanus, Petrus (Pedro Chacón) 37, 40n58 William of Orange 51, 132
Trading nations see naties Woltjer, Juliaan 115n16, 143, 180n62
Wouk, Edward 30n31, 53
Ursel, Lancelot van 51
Xenophon 37n54, 38
Vaernewijck, Marcus van 11, 23n13, 145–46
Vaille, Coenraet de 91 Ypres 63, 200

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﻿ i

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004408401_001

Art and Material Culture in

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/amce

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To my grandmother, Alicja Kaminska, and her nephew, Almar Miernik

1 Negotiating Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Antwerp: Pieter Bruegel’s

2 Conversion on Display: Imperial Politics, Religious Transformation, and

3 “In Their Houses”: Domestic Space and Religious Practices in Mid-

thoroughness of my primary research. I would like to extend my gratitude to

my beloved grandmother, who not only unknowingly encouraged me to pur-

27 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Calumny of Apelles, ca. 1565–69, drawing,

1 All biblical quotations come from the Douay-Rheims Bible.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004408401_002

By the mid-sixteenth century, Antwerp had developed into an international

where Jonghelinck’s villa was located—were created to accommodate an ever-

interpretations and were often deliberately ambiguous, which allowed—in

personages in chapters 2 and 6 of this book—who eagerly embraced the com-

Bruegel’s compositions visually articulate art theory tied specifically to the

creasing suspicion and hostility, which manifested itself in ordinances intend-

ward discursivity. These chapters analyze religious practices in private houses

important to simultaneously consider the human aspect of this troublesome

18 Pollmann, Catholic Identity, 67.

thus participated in the sixteenth-century transformation of religious culture

Negotiating Entrepreneurship in Early Modern

According to Lodovico Guicciardini’s Description of the Low Countries (1567),

1 Lodovico Guicciardini, Beschryvinghe van alle de Nederlanden, anderssins ghenoemt Neder-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004408401_003

broadly understood diversity in sixteenth-century Antwerp. I am interested in

The unusual circumstances in which the inventory of Jonghelinck’s pos-

9 Buchanan, “Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: II,” 549; Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appear­

12 Franciscus Philelphus, Conviviorum Francisci Philelphi (Cologne: Gymnicus, 1537), 139–40.

15 Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 3.

humanists familiar with architectural treatises published in the Low Coun-

interpretation of Genesis 11 when he wrote that “where the languages dif-

26 Luther, Sermons on Genesis, 214.

The only worrisome element of the composition is the architectural model

Coliseum and juxtaposing it with the thriving construction, Bruegel visualizes

2 Framing the Tower of Babel: Space, Conversation, People

discussion about them is incorporated meaningfully into religious reflection

involved in several simultaneous business ventures.44 Many wealthy urbanites

There are two implications of this admonition to temperance. First, since

49 Onuf, The “Small Landscape” Prints, 83.

against any norms of cultured conversation. This allowed for a multidimen-

53 Richardson, Pieter Bruegel, 69.

different countries, and different historical circumstances; for people of differ-

56 Stuckius, Antiquitates Conviviales, n.p.

improvement of dining habits among his contemporaries, he acknowledged

gatherings described by Philon and Tertullian, and, surprisingly enough, Mar-

64 Grell, “Calvinist Agape,” 38, 42.

66 Vandenbroeck, “Stadscultuur,” 78.

71 Erasmus, Godly Feast, 187.

population. The colloquium is especially relevant to the experience of the

custom [that] has much to recommend it, because by means of it one

company.”78 Religious art in the domestic setting no longer serves a traditional

i

9 Buchanan, “Collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: II,” 549; Goldstein, “Keeping Up Appear

precedence for the decoration of Niclaes Jonghelinck’s villa, in which Bruegel’s

religious dissidents were postponed because of insufficient number of schepe