Description
Attributed to Cornelis SAFTLEVEN (1607-1681) The Madness of the World Canvas 62 x 83 cm Restoration. This painting is set in a world devastated by religious quarrels, and in the literary milieu of Erasmus' home town of Rotterdam. In 1511, Erasmus published The Praise of Folly, a pamphlet denouncing human folly and calling for greater virtue and wisdom. The madman wearing a donkey-eared bonnet will long remain a familiar motif in Northern painting. Here, he calls out to us, mocking the fools that we are, and leaves this woman in the spotlight to argue with the political power that judges her, like an inquisitor. She's dressed in yellow, a color associated with the devil the devil, lies and madness. Cornelis Safteleven, known for the originality of his satirical works, mocks the misbehavior of his contemporaries in a canvas signed and dated 1663 (Christie's London, December 8, 1995, lot 28). In it, he depicts the vanity of power in the form of an upside-down globe, translucent and fragile. Here, the globe, with its stars and flute and cistre, may represent the vanity of the moons, which can generate "lunacy by lunation". Ignorance, blindfolded, is denied access, while the pope points to the old man studying a book covered in cabalistic signs. Perhaps this is an allusion to Pope Urban VIII's condemnation of Galileo as a heretic in 1638.
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Attributed to Cornelis SAFTLEVEN (1607-1681) The Madness of the World Canvas 62 x 83 cm Restoration. This painting is set in a world devastated by religious quarrels, and in the literary milieu of Erasmus' home town of Rotterdam. In 1511, Erasmus published The Praise of Folly, a pamphlet denouncing human folly and calling for greater virtue and wisdom. The madman wearing a donkey-eared bonnet will long remain a familiar motif in Northern painting. Here, he calls out to us, mocking the fools that we are, and leaves this woman in the spotlight to argue with the political power that judges her, like an inquisitor. She's dressed in yellow, a color associated with the devil the devil, lies and madness. Cornelis Safteleven, known for the originality of his satirical works, mocks the misbehavior of his contemporaries in a canvas signed and dated 1663 (Christie's London, December 8, 1995, lot 28). In it, he depicts the vanity of power in the form of an upside-down globe, translucent and fragile. Here, the globe, with its stars and flute and cistre, may represent the vanity of the moons, which can generate "lunacy by lunation". Ignorance, blindfolded, is denied access, while the pope points to the old man studying a book covered in cabalistic signs. Perhaps this is an allusion to Pope Urban VIII's condemnation of Galileo as a heretic in 1638.
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