The Rest of Bosch's Ship of Fools

In 1958 Lotte Brand Philip associated a small panel in the Rabinowitz Collection, Intemperance by Hieronymus Bosch (Fig. 1), with the Louvre's famous Ship of Fools by the same painter (Fig. 2) by suggesting that they probably originally belonged to the same altarpiece.2 Her suggestion was a logical one. The subjects of the two works are clearly analogous. The Louvre Ship, decked with greenery, filled with tipplers and barrels, and trailed by thirsty swimmers, is matched in the Rabinowitz panel by a burly trumpeter astride a barrel. He holds a branch of the same greenery and is escorted by swimmers who resemble those who follow the Louvre bark. Moreover, the hint of amorous relations between the two central figures in the Ship, a lute-playing nun and a monk bobbing for a pancake on either side of a board that bears a plate of cherries, is made more explicit in the Rabinowitz painting by a couple drinking within a tent.3 Previous scholars had remarked the striking stylistic similarities between the two paintings,4 and after the Rabinowitz panel was given to Yale in 1959,5 Charles Seymour advanced a concrete reconstruction (Fig. 3). He suggested that the Yale panel had originally formed the lower part of the Ship of Fools, and that since the dimensions resulting from such a combination matched almost exactly those of Bosch's Death and the Miser in the National Gallery in Washington (Fig. 4), this panel was probably originally a pendant to it.6 Seymour's reconstruction of the Yale and Louvre panels was subsequently supported by the scientific examination of both paintings under the auspices of the Centre National de Recherches Primitifs Flamands. H61ene Adh6mar concluded that the Ship of Fools had been shortened at the lower edge,7 and Colin Eisler, finding no barbe on any of the edges of the Yale panel, suggested that it is a fragment from a larger work.8 Both scholars endorsed Philip's and Seymour's association of the two panels, without, however, demonstrating conclusive proof.9 In a review of Eisler's book, Karl Arndt noted that certain elements along the upper edge of the Yale panel, the branch carried by the trumpeter, and the tip of his funnel cap, seem to continue on the lower edge of the X-radiograph of the Ship of Fools.10 He urged that investigation be pushed further, but until now no one has taken up the torch, and opinion remains divided on the validity of Seymour's hypothesis.11 In 1972 the Yale panel was cleaned. The cleaning brought to light a string of hitherto-invisible images that attest further to the fragmentary nature of the painting and that, combined with other evidence, furnish conclusive proof that Seymour's reconstruction of the Louvre and Yale panels is correct. The new evidence may be summarized as follows (Fig. 1). Along the upper edge of the panel, just to the right of center, a tilting helmet is emerging from the water. It probably belongs to a sea knight like those playing in the basin around the central fountain in the Garden of Earthly Delights.12 Farther to the right a swimmer seems to be going under, for all that remains above the water's surface is his lower leg and foot, apparently grasped by a hand (his?), and to the right of this, his corresponding thigh.13 Seen in isolation, this human jetsam seems merely to add to the debris that often litters Bosch's troubled waters. But when the upper edge of the Yale panel is compared with an X-radiograph of the lower edge of the Ship of Fools, the two edges may be seen to bind (Fig. 5). As intimated by Arndt, the top of the Yale trumpeter's branch and the tip of his funnel cap are visible in the X-radiograph. Further to the right, the sea knight seems to balance a tumbler on his helmet, and the foot and leg in the Yale panel terminate in a kneecap on the lower edge