Lot 1219 Dα

In Karel van Mander's biography on Pieter Brueghel the Elder we read that he "studied closely the works of Hieronymus Bosch. That is the reason he painted so many spooky and amusing pictures." Bosch's phantastic world of pictures with its bizarre as well as humourous invented creatures inspired lesser known painters, but also Pieter Brueghel's imagination. His painting "Die tolle Grete" in Antwerp or "Der Sturz der gefangenen Engel" in Brussels are grandiose examples of his artistic appropriation, so are some of his woodcuts. Our picture unites motifs from a 1557/58 series "Die sieben Todsünden" (the seven deadly sins). Closest identicalness is to the sheet "Die Wollust". From this, our painter used the central motif of the hollowed tree stump with the lovers, and the shell impaled by the branches, and another pair of lovers. Here and again on other sheets of the series, the monkeys with the spread legs are seen. The creation of the woodcut in 1558 results in dating our picture "post quem", therefore to the second half of the 16th century.