My prior Art posts can be found HERE.
How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..
Let’s study art history together.
Cutting the Stone
| Artist | Hieronymus Bosch |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1494 or later |
| Type | Oil on board |
| Dimensions | 48 cm × 35 cm (19 in × 14 in) |
| Location | Museo del Prado, Madrid |
To understand this painting, you need to understand the premise. There was at one point in history, a belief that mental maladies were the result of having a stone in one’s brain. In theory, then, if you could remove the stone, you could restore a mind to full health.
The stone in the brain is usually referred to as the stone of madness, or the stone of folly. The surgical extraction idea originated in the 15th century. The painting seems to indicate, though, that at least Bosch thought this was a silly theory.
The surgeon is wearing a funnel on his head – which is not a particularly learned look. The monk – who you might expect to oppose what is going on, instead looks on in avid interest. The woman at the table has a book sitting on uselessly on her head. Some of the finer points of the messaging might be lost in time, but broadly Bosch seems to be making fun of everyone involved.
The surgeon’s funnel hat reminds me of a hat debate, centered around John Duns Scotus. The medieval Scottish saint and scholar was a prominent and famous proponent of wearing pointy hats. He believed the hat functioned as something like a reverse funnel for the acquisition of knowledge. It is unclear whether Scotus inspired the popular image of a wizard in a pointy hat, or whether the pre-existent wizard imagery inspired Scotus. Either way, the look became associated with the man and his scholastic followers. However, by the 15th century, Scotus had fallen out of fashion and his hat became a a slur – “dunce cap” – a mark of ignorance and slow-learning.
Here in the painting, we have someone wearing a funnel on their head, doing something pretty foolish, so we might assume then that perhaps Bosch is taking a shot at Duns Scotus’s followers.
If you look closely at the painting, you’ll see that rather than a conventional stone being pulled from the patient’s head, flowers are being removed. It appears the the “stone” in question here is a flower bulb.
In any case, this is an odd painting, and its purpose seems to be mocking old ideas of how the world works, as foolish.
(more via wiki)
Cutting the Stone, also called The Extraction of the Stone of Madness or The Cure of Folly, is an oil-on-panel painting completed c.1494 or later by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. It is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
The painting depicts a surgeon, wearing a funnel hat, removing the stone of madness from a patient’s head by trepanation. An assistant, a monk bearing a tankard, stands nearby. Playing on the double-meaning of the word kei (stone or bulb), the stone appears as a flower bulb, while another flower rests on the table. A woman with a book balanced on her head looks on.
The inscription in gold-coloured Gothic script reads:
(Middle Dutch):
Meester snyt die keye ras
Myne name Is lubbert Das
(English):
Master, cut the stone out, fast.
My name is Lubbert Das.
Lubbert Das was a comical (foolish) character in Dutch literature.
Interpretations
It is possible that the flower hints that the doctor is a charlatan as does the funnel hat. The woman balancing a book on her head is thought by Skemer to be a satire of the Flemish custom of wearing amulets made out of books and scripture, a pictogram for the word phylactery. Otherwise, she is thought to depict folly.
For a great review of this painting, please let me direct you to the video below:
