Cutting the Stone
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 |
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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] Otherwise, she is thought to depict folly.
Michel Foucault, in his 1961 book History of Madness, says "Bosch's famous doctor is far more insane than the patient he is attempting to cure, and his false knowledge does nothing more than reveal the worst excesses of a madness immediately apparent to all but himself."
See also
References
- ^ Ilsink, Matthijs; Koldeweij, Jos; Spronk, Ron; Hoogstede, Luuk (2016). Hieronymus Bosch: Painter and Draughtsman – Catalogue raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300-2201-48.
- ^ Povoledo, Elisabetta (October 27, 2008). "In Rome, a New Museum Invites a Hands-On Approach to Insanity". The Economist. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
- ^ Skemer 2006:24.
Further reading
- (book on head) Binding Words Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. Skemer, Don C. PA: Penn State University Press, 2006. p. 24, 136n. ISBN 0-271-02722-3.
- "Extracting the Stone of Madness in perspective: the cultural and historical development of an enigmatic visual motif from Hieronymus Bosch: a critical status quaestionis at academia.edu
- "A Stone Never Cut for: A New Interpretation of The Cure of Folly by Jheronimus Bosch" in Urologia Internationalis
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- List of paintings
- Adoration of the Magi (New York, c. 1475)
- Christ Child with a Walking Frame (1480s)
- St. Jerome at Prayer (c. 1482)
- Ecce Homo (Frankfurt, c. 1475–1485)
- Crucifixion with a Donor (c. 1480–1485)
- St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness (c. 1489)
- St. John the Evangelist on Patmos/Scenes from the Passion of Christ (c. 1489)
- Hell (after 1490)
- Cutting the Stone (c. 1494)
- Allegory of Gluttony and Lust (c. 1490–1500)
- Christ Carrying the Cross (Vienna, c. 1490–1500)
- Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child (c. 1490–1500)
- Ship of Fools (c. 1490–1500)
- Head of a Woman (c. 1500)
- The Wayfarer (c. 1500)
- The Conjurer (c. 1502; disputed)
- Christ Carrying the Cross (Madrid, c. 1505–1507)
- Christ Crowned with Thorns (London, c. 1510)
- Death and the Miser (c. 1490–1516)
- Flood Panels (c. 1514; attributed)
- The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (c. 1500; disputed)
- The Temptation of St Anthony (Kansas City, c. 1500–1510)
- The Temptation of St Anthony (Madrid, c. 1505–1525; disputed)
- The Last Judgment (Vienna, c. 1482)
- The Hermit Saints (c. 1493)
- The Crucifixion of Saint Wilgefortis (c. 1497)
- Adoration of the Magi (Madrid, c. 1485–1500)
- Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1501)
- The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1510)
- The Haywain Triptych (c. 1516)
- Fall of the Damned into Hell (before 1490)
- Ascent of the Blessed (c. 1505–1515)
- The Last Judgment (Bruges, c. 1486; with workshop)
- Terrestrial Paradise (c. 1490–1516)
- Adoration of the Magi (Philadelphia, c. 1499)
- Head of a Halberdier (1490s – after 1500)
- The Last Judgment (Munich, c. 1506–1508)
- Ecce Homo (Indianapolis, 1510s)
- The Temptation of St Anthony (Utrecht, c. 1525–1530)
- Christ Crowned with Thorns (El Escorial, 1530s)
- Christ Carrying the Cross (Ghent, c. 1510–1535)
- Concert in the Egg (c. 1561)
- Adoration of the Christ Child (c. 1568)
- Death of the Reprobate
- Two Male Heads (c. 1480–1485)
- The Marriage Feast at Cana (after 1550)
- The Owls' Nest (c. 1505–1516)
- Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil (2015 documentary film)
- Jheronimus Bosch—Visions of Genius (2016 exhibition)