Gerlach 1967g
“Jeroen Bosch in Den Bosch – De ‘Blauwe Schuit’ van Sint Frans en Sinte Clara” (P. Gerlach O.F.M. Cap.) 1967
[in: Bisdomblad, 15th September 1967]
[Reprinted in Tijdschrift St. Antonius, 70 (1967), pp. 137-140]
[Reprinted in Spiegel der Historie, 9 (1967), pp. 653-655]
[Reprinted in Gerlach 1988: 119-122]
[Also mentioned in Gibson 1983: 114 (E241)]
The so-called Ship of Fools (Paris, Louvre) has a wrong title: it is not a ‘ship of fools’, we can only see one fool. Gerlach is inclined to interpret the painting as a ‘farce of St Francis and St Claire’. Elsewhere he hopes to give further arguments in favour of this hypothesis.
Gerlach does not want to interpret the cherries lying between the monk and the nun as sexual symbols because an archival source tells us that in the annual ’s-Hertogenbosch procession the Jesus Child on the shoulder of St Christopher also ate cherries (in Bosch’s times).
[explicit]
