See Martin de Vos.
| Das Pfeiflein macht gar süsses Speil | The little flute must make the sweetest sound |
| Wenn es den Vogel fangen will. | If it wants to catch the bird. |
Sunt Asini cantare rudes, tammen oss a ministrantBelow, a commentary by Schoonhovious implies that older, professional men should offer financial support to younger ones. In a remarkable twist, an almost identical construction in Jacob Cats', Ex morte levamen (1618 & 1627) engraved by Jan Gerritsz Sweelinck, serves as an emblem of the humiliation and evil of love and marriage between the very old and the young. Another adaptation of Cats' emblem appears in the alchemical Mineral Cabinet published by Goossen van Vreeswyk (1675) where the flautist bears the alchemical symbol for Sulphur, associated in the 17th century with the Expansive forces in Nature: Dissolution and Evaporation.
Que fistulis aptissima;
Sic quibus estres ampla domi, tenues studiosus
Opibus juvare convenit.
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel has two prints (Munich RIdm 1999, Kksg 127 and Kksg 129) of a boy sitting under a willow tree trying out a pipe he has just made, but these are normal shepherds' pipes and do not have any recorder characteristic. Notes by Anthony Rowland-Jones (pers. comm., 1999).
Rowland-Jones (1996: 19-20) observes that the instrument is held with the wrists well below the instrument, which is not the most natural position for playing the six-holed pipe, and that it shows beside the little finger of the lowest hand an additional hole which appears to be plugged, possibly with wax. The latter is difficult to see from the reproductions cited above, but is clear enough in a studio photograph provided by Rowland-Jones.
This painting has recently been restored (Angelo Zaniol, pers. comm. 2004) very crudely, its seems and some of the features observed above (ie before restoration) have been obscured.
If you download some of these images you are requested to send 20 DM/picture to the following address:
C. Mollenhauer GmbH
Sparkasse Fulda
BLZ 530 501 80
Kto-Nr. 40 010 823
Note: for Marius Spanka
The money will be given to the artist.