Pokorny 2019
“Man in een hopkorf met gierzwaluwen” (Erwin Pokorny)
[in: Matthijs Ilsink, Bram de Klerck, and Annemarieke Willemsen (eds.), Het einde van de middeleeuwen – Vijftig kunstwerken uit de tijd van Bosch en Erasmus. Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies – XXV, Uitgeverij Vantilt, Nijmegen, 2019, pp. 208-213]
Pokorny focuses on the Bosch drawing Man in a basket (Vienna, Albertina, inv. 7797). According to him, the basket in which the man with naked behind is kneeling is definitely not a beehive, but a hop basket. The hop plant was used to produce beer, and so this man is probably a drunkard. The birds which fly from his behind are identified as swifts (apus apus, German: Turmschwalbe / Spirschwalbe, Dutch: gierzwaluw, French: martinet). In the Middle Ages, this bird had diabolical connotations and could refer to avaritia (among other things). The Bosch drawing seems to point at intemperance and squandering. The birds then refer to the man’s craving for beer, which is being punished by the man on top of the basket who is hitting the naked behind with a lute. The woman to the left could be the drunkard’s wife, and the naked children who are chasing the birds possibly have to catch the money which the man in the basket is blowing into the wind in the shape of birds.
[explicit December 18, 2023]
