The Blue Boat
Pieter van der Heyden (Dutch, ca. 1530–ca. 1575) after Hieronymus Bosch (Dutch, ca. 1450–1516), 1559, Engraving
Together with Pieter Bruegel and Jacques Callot, Hieronymus Bosch was one of the most important historical sources for The Great Mirror of Folly’s artistic representations of the bubbles. The tall, skinny skipper of fools pictured in van der Heyden’s print is the source for the figure featured in the far left of “Many Have Stones in Their Heads.” Lodged inside the sort of earthenware wine pitcher from which Bosch’s revelers have swigged, the figure is reframed as a victim of the poverty that is the consequence of his intoxication with trading in stocks. “See how slender are all my members/That is how I’ve been cut from the stone/My only possession is lack...,” a nearby inscription laments.
: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs
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