Workshop of Frans Verbeeck I or II, praise of folly, early 17thC, oil on canvas, 106 x 115 cm Frans Verbeeck I (1510-1570) holds an important place in the history of Netherlandish painting as he falls between the activity of two of the greatest artists in that tradition, Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) and Pieter Bruegel I (c. 1525/30-1569). Karel van Mander records that Verbeeck was 'skilled in painting watercolour pieces in the manner of Bosch … From his hand, we have some amusing peasant weddings and similar pleasantries’ (K. van Mander, Het schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 228r: 'desen [Frans Verbeeck] was fraey van waterverwe te maken dinghen op zijn Ieroon Bos … Van hem ist datmen siet die drollige Boeren bruyloften en derghelijcke boosten’). Verbeeck’s reputation for originality has rivalled that of other Bosch followers, such as Pieter Huys and Jan Mandijn, since his earliest artistic production. Only one signed painting by Frans Verbeeck I is known, Fool’s Market (Belgium, private collection), and numerous works are attributed to him and his workshop, which appears to have flourished in Mechelen throughout the 16th century and into the first decades of the 17th century. Other members of the Verbeeck family include Jan Verbeeck I (1520-1569), Jan Verbeeck II (1545-after 1619), and Frans Verbeeck II (active in the 17th century). The 2003 exhibition, De zotte schilders. Moraalridders van het penseel rond Bosch, Bruegel en Brouwer (Mechelen, Centrum Voor Oude Kunst), made some strides in identifying individual hands associated with the workshop but compositions such as these remain in the canon of the overall workshop for the moment. Oil on canvas, 106 x 115 cm Description 'Laus Stultitiae' or 'The Praise of Folly'. This painting shows us the folly and even the Praise of folly, in the Erasmian spirit. It unites iconographic elements from both the world of Hieronymus Bosch and the ideas of Pieter Breughel the Elder. It brings the vices together around the central theme of the removal of the stone of folly by a trepanation, a theme from the visionary world of Hieronymus Bosch (Prado, Madrid). The pride (superbia), the avarice (avaritia), the envy (invidia), the wrath (ira), the unchastity (luxuria), the gluttony (gula), the sloth or laziness seem to be the main tone in an interior that seems in a bad inn or a quack's cabinet where we as spectators threaten to pay the price if folly should conquer reason and spirit. The central theme is the cutting of the stone, where an attempt is made to cut away the stone of folly by means of skull trepanation. Since such a stone does not exist, the surgeon in question and his cronies seem like quacks or worse, fools who want to heal fools. It is therefore no coincidence that the patient's right sleeve ends in an inverted fool's hood. To its right appears anger and rage, which can give rise to folly and intemperance, such as gluttony or drunkenness. The man dressed in a yellow jerkin, incidentally, has a cap on his head that is wearing two peacock feathers, which stands for vanity and illusion (vanitas). At the back, a raving couple seems to fall head over heels in the house. She carries her husband on her back who spills and spits a wine pitcher (prodigality), while the woman threatens to outwit the owl on the sofa, which represents wisdom, by pulling a dark hood over his open eyes, so that again foolishness and blindness can prevail. The charter, nailed to the brick wall of the interior, is blank and unwritten, which questions the whole validity of the foolish display. The patient on the far left and recovering from a cut in the skull, seated to the left of the owl, seems to sink into a long-suffering strange melancholy, the exhaustion that follows the folly. The figure that seems to be peeking in through a barred window at the back left is just like us, contemporary spectators, who look from the real world to the world of delusion, where only folly and stupidity seem to rule.