The Ship of Fools | |
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Artist | Hieronymus Bosch |
Year | c. 1490–1500 |
Medium | Oil on wood |
Dimensions | 58 cm × 33 cm (22.8 in × 13.0 in) |
Location | Louvre, Paris |
Ship of Fools (painted c. 1490–1500) is a painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Camille Benoit donated it in 1918. The Louvre restored it in 2015. The surviving painting is a fragment of a triptych that was cut into several parts. This piece, originally part of a larger body of work relating to the seven deadly sins, depicts the sin of gluttony.[1] The Ship of Fools was painted on one of the wings of the altarpiece, and is about two-thirds of its original length. The bottom third of the panel belongs to Yale University Art Gallery and is exhibited under the title Allegory of Gluttony. The other wing, which has more or less retained its full length, is the Death and the Miser, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The two panels together would have represented the two extremes of prodigality and miserliness, condemning and caricaturing both. The Wayfarer (Rotterdam) was painted on the right panel rear of the triptych. The central panel, if it existed, is unknown.