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From beggar to virtuoso: The street singer in the Netherlandish visual tradition, 1500–1600

2019; Wiley; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/rest.12532

1477-4658

Chriscinda Henry,

Historical Influence and Diplomacy

Abstract This essay surveys the iconography of street singers and musicians in sixteenth‐century Netherlandish painting. It examines the visual and social status of itinerant performers as they move between different roles in the urban marketplace: from sympathetic beggar deserving of charity to diabolical trickster and charlatan, to successful entrepreneur operating within a new market system. The representation of this marginal type extends from grotesque and comic portrayals in late medieval manuscript illuminations and the hallucinatory Hellscapes of Hieronymous Bosch and his followers, to sympathetic depictions as objects of charity in altarpieces of The Seven Works of Mercy , to more ambivalent figurations of pedlars hawking printed wares in serial paintings of biblical narratives in the marketplace by Antwerp‐based artists Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer. The portrait of the street singer that emerges in the highly urbanized Low Countries reflects the burgermoraal (bourgeois morality) of patrons and artists and their attitudes on the social role of the marketplace, the status of consumer capitalism versus civic charity, and most importantly the acceptance of marginal and itinerant individuals who operate outside the norms and regulations of cities and societies.