Vandenbroeck 1984a
“Nieuw materiaal voor de studie van het Hooiwagenmotief” (Paul Vandenbroeck) 1984
[in: Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1984, pp. 39-65]
Vandenbroeck signals two depictions with a hay motif that have not been published before. The first one is a burin engraving (without the name of a designer, engraver or editor), closely related to the Al Hoy print which was edited by Bartholomeus de Mompere in 1559. A copy of this engraving is in the Kupferstichkabinet of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Basing himself on the style and on the captions which accompany the different scenes, Vandenbroeck dates the engraving ‘around or after 1550’. It probably originates from the Lower Rhine area and the captions can more than likely be traced back to an example originating from the Dutch language area (perhaps Utrecht, around 1500). In the engraving hay is associated with worldy possessions and all kinds of profane behaviour, but also with man himself who is tempted by these things in a sinful way.
The second depiction is an etching which is in the Print Room of the Brussels Royal Library and which is dated around 1550 by Vandenbroeck. The etching does not bear any captions but is supposed to represent a mountain of hay, with Christ sitting on top of it. In the lower region a mass of people is moving toward the mountain of hay. Vandenbroeck promises to give more details about the etching’s iconography elsewhere.
Vandenbroeck also signals three paintings with the haywain motif (by Gillis Mosatert, by an anonymous master from the Southern Netherlands around 1600 and by Adriaen van de Venne) and some five depictions of haywains which we only know because they are mentioned in seventeenth-century archives.
[explicit]
