18th century, Denmark, Europe, fooleum, historical figure, painting, portrait, primary source
This portrait of a jester at the Danish court brought to my attention a jester I hadn’t yet encountered elsewhere.  The artist was German and was the Danish court painter from around 1719 onwards.  The portrait was done in 1727 and shows the jester, Otto Kyhl,...
19th century, Afghanistan, fooleum, historical figure, painting, primary source, quotes, watercolour
This watercolour was done by Vigne who travelled with a Lohani caravan between Multan and Kabul in the 1830s. Although the sketch is titled ‘Fool’, we know nothing more as he doesn’t mention anything related in his travel account.Who was this...
16th century, 17th century, bibliography, book chapter, engraving, Europe, fooleum, Germany, Netherlands, painting, print, research, woodcut
Kenneth Craig’s excellent paper takes a sweeping look at examples of fool-peeping-through-fingers paintings and prints, as presented in our Five Guys Named Moe series. Like Cavalli-Björkman’s earlier paper, but more comprehensively, it discusses the...
16th century, bibliography, Europe, fooleum, journal paper, Netherlands, painting, research
Cavalli-Björkman, at the time curator at the National Museum in Stockholm, wrote this paper when the museum acquired the ‘Laughing Jester’, the first in our ‘Five Guys Named Moe’ series of fool-peeping-through-fingers paintings, this one also...
16th century, Europe, fictive fool, fooleum, Netherlands, painting, primary source
The last in this series of paintings (for now, I keep stumbling across new ones) bears a striking resemblance to our mysterious Moe No. 4. This one, too, I found on an auction site. Said to be the work of the Master of 1537, who worked in Mechelen and whose name...
16th century, Europe, fictive fool, fooleum, German, Germany, primary source, woodcut
The latest in our series of fools peeping through their fingers, this one is a woodcut by Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger (1513-68), dated to around 1540 and so slightly later than the preceding paintings on the same theme.  He has the cap and bells complete with ass...
16th century, Europe, fictive fool, fooleum, painting, primary source
Another version of the peeping-through-fingers theme, this one closely resembling the second in our series, which we’ll call the Wellesley fool. It was sold by Christie’s in 2017 and they attributed it to a follower of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen...
16th century, Europe, fictive fool, fooleum, Netherlands, painting, primary source
The peeking through fingers stance is enigmatic, this we know. This version of it, apparently a pretty straightforward twin of the second in our series, if not a copy, is elusive. By chance I saw it on an online art mart. It has now disappeared and I know of no...
