MONTREAL — The fool takes center stage in a Flemish painting show now on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Although the English title, Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools, leads with saints, it’s the folly that seems most timely. As the brazen foolishness of many world leaders and the mindless folly of social media foment a state of “ignorance is bliss,” perhaps we can glean some wisdom by looking back upon the fool’s guises in Flemish art between 1400 and 1700.
The exhibition draws from the Phoebus Foundation collection, which was recently inaugurated by Fernand Huts and Karine Van den heuvel. Their mission is to acquire Flemish art on the market, bring it back home to Belgium, and preserve it for posterity. In this iteration of the show (it was previously at the Denver Art Museum), the foundation’s loans are joined by several paintings from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts collection, along with nuanced changes to the hanging and thematic divisions of the rooms, masterminded by curator Chloé Pelletier.
The show’s rooms are organized thematically with religious art first, followed by portraits of aristocrats and fools in the second large space. The next suite of spaces explore mythological paintings, globalization, the war that broke out between Spain and its colonies in the low countries in the 16th century, and, finally, vanitas paintings. Although fools are centered in the second section, they are present in each of the different groupings. In some cases, we see a literal fool donning the iconic jester hat, with a wink to the viewer, while other works depict people abandoning themselves foolishly to vices or displaying flashes of toxic masculinity.
What is a fool? Fool in English and fou in French both derive from follis in classical Latin, which referred to an inflatable sack, or “windbag.” The metaphor played on the empty air puffing up that bag, as opposed to actual substance filling it up. In Dutch, the main noun for fool is geck, which derives from the verb gekken, to deceive or cheat.
Jan Massys’s painting “Riddle: The World Feeds Many Fools” (1530) comes closest in the exhibition to visually defining the fool. Two young men in an embrace wear jester hats with tips that mimic donkey ears, playing on the (incorrect) myth that the animals are unintelligent. An unhooded figure’s full head of boyish hair accentuates his immaturity.
Above them is a rebus that composes an aphorism: D for “de,” the Dutch article for “the”; an orb signifying the world; a foot, which plays on the Dutch verb “to feed” (the conjugated “hij/zij/het voedt” sounds a lot like “voet,” or foot); and the violin as a homonym — viol sounds like the Dutch word for many, “veel.” This puzzle tells us that the world feeds many fools. Or, put another way, nothing in the world will stop people from acting foolish except themselves.
As a royal court figure, the fool offered comic relief by saying in jest to the monarch what civilians could not. The most fascinating portrait in the entire show is Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s 1525 likeness of Elisabeth, the fool who entertained Queen Anne of Hungary (1503–1547) for many years. It is highly unusual to see a woman of advanced age donning the distinctive jester hat and robes, but it’s likely that Elisabeth’s wit and comic skill inspired the Queen to retain her position at court for so many years. We can’t know the exact circumstances of Elisabeth’s position because so many facets of her biography are lost to time. Likewise, the symbolism of the rings around her neck is unknown. Was the Queen so taken with her nonconformist fool that she commissioned a portrait? It is an image that raises more questions than it answers, but from a 21st-century perspective, it is a welcome revision to male-dominated histories of royal courts and jesters.
The fool also appears in peasant scenes once dubbed genre paintings — cautionary tales of unbridled desires in everyday people. Frans Verbeeck’s colossal “Mocking of Human Follies” (1550) (which broke records when it sold at auction 10 years ago) is composed of vignettes that depict self-destructive overindulgence. The revelry includes inebriated peasants spilling out from the tavern; a caged devil hanging above a circle of dancers; a nun kissing a man; and a woman mounting a man in plain sight. Over in a tree on the far right, the devil removes a pair of spectacles from an owl and climbs on the owl’s back as if about to take flight. The painting’s scenes establish a direct connection between foolish acts and the work of the devil.
The many permutations of folly represented in this exhibition go beyond the scope of one article, but paintings of subjects such as greedy tax collectors, hell, and lustful sailors (the latter a 1615–18 work by Peter Paul Rubens) could serve to deter onlookers from temptation.
The exhibition fittingly ends with the vanitas genre, which was intended to remind viewers of the emptiness of worldly goods. For example, death in the form of a skeleton tells a rich merchant that his money can’t stop the march of time in Frans Fracken II’s “Death and a Merchant” (1600–1620). Also on view here are “paintings of paintings,” demonstrating how early Flemish art was displayed. The irony is that collecting vanitas pictures was and is a form of conspicuous consumption in itself. The installation is a stroke of genius from curator Pelletier and makes for a far stronger conclusion than the cabinet of curiosities that closed the show’s Denver presentation, which replicated rather than indicted the curiosity cabinet’s inherent problems of globalization, race, and capitalism. In Montreal, Pelletier deftly holds up a mirror to the greed of the era.
Epicurus may have once observed that “the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.” But this show proves that no one really listened to him because fools have fun. The show’s final room cleverly demonstrates that the Flemish bourgeoisie — much like today’s 1% — chased after vanity and folly, even though they knew they should know better.
Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools: Three Hundred Years of Flemish Masterworks continues at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1380 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec) through October 20. The exhibition was curated by Chloé Pelletier.
