![]() The monkey craze van der Heyden helped inspire was fuelled by his contemporary, Pieter van der Borcht. Dressed in human clothes, performing human actions, or actively intervening in human affairs, they were deployed to ridicule aspects of human life or specific people, often cruelly. Where they had previously been used mostly for metaphorical or ornamental purposes, they came to be more often found in parodies. The way monkeys were portrayed changed, too. So great was the demand that, within a few years, monkey-pictures came to be regarded as a distinct genre, later known as singerie (‘monkey games’). Dutch collectors clamoured for paintings and etchings. While it was not the first artistic depiction of monkeys – or even the first treatment of the Sleeping Peddler tale – its appearance marked the beginning of a veritable craze for simian art. Bruegel himself had made several studies of monkeys before tackling the Sleeping Peddler Beset by Monkeys, including one showing two chained colobus monkeys in a window overlooking the port of Antwerp, generally thought to be an allegory of passion restrained.īut van der Heyden’s etching marked the beginning of something new. In 1523, Albrecht Dürer had produced a print for his Protestant friends in Geneva showing a troupe of dancing monkeys and in 1540-45, the Vicentine engraver Niccolò Boldrini had produced a woodcut – probably after a design by Titian – of the recently rediscovered Laocoön, in which the human figures were replaced by apes. Following Columbus’ (re-)discovery of the New World in 1492, they had even enjoyed a ‘Renaissance’. ![]() They peek out from the margins of illuminated manuscripts and can even be found on the façades of Gothic cathedrals such as Rouen. They are found in the wall paintings of Egyptian tombs in Minoan frescoes on Crete and Akrotiri and in Roman sculptures and friezes. Since the earliest times they had appeared in artworks of all kinds – often as part of moralising allegories, to add decorative spice to otherwise humdrum scenes, or simply for the sake of amusement. ![]() This wasn’t the first time monkeys had appeared in European art. One is urinating in his hat another is searching for nits in his hair one is stealing from the purse hanging about his neck yet another is holding its nose while it exposes the poor man’s bottom. Meanwhile, members of the band torment the peddler himself. Another, sitting in a branch, is playing a flute, while its friends dance two more are having a hobby horse race. One tries on a pair of children’s trousers a second looks at its reflection in a mirror a third makes off with a set of knives. After rifling through the peddler’s basket, some amuse themselves with his wares. Small in size but with a distinctly human appearance, they get up to all kinds of mischief. As he is slumbering, however, he is fallen upon by a troop of monkeys. ![]() In the middle of the scene, a peddler lies sleeping beneath a tree. Modelled after a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, it depicted a well-known folk story. In 1562, an etching by Pieter van der Heyden turned the Dutch art world upside down. ![]()
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