Ten Essays for a Friend: E. de Jongh 65 || Dutch Cheese: A Problem of Interpretation

Dutch Cheese: A Problem of InterpretationAuthor(s): Josua BruynSource: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 24, No. 2/3, Ten Essaysfor a Friend: E. de Jongh 65 (1996), pp. 201-208Published by: Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780838 .

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20I

Dutch cheese: a problem of interpretations

Josua Bruyn

It is not easy to make general statements about the meaning of the realistic products of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. The reason for this is well-known: the age itself does not provide us with any unequivocal statements about such pictures' "deeper meaning," aside from the information contained in emblem books, the validity of which is often far from certain. This did not prevent Eddy deJongh, in his recent collection of essays, from making several such pronouncements, drawing on his unparalleled experience and erudition.' The problem remains, however, that discerning the role played by the work of art and gaining a clear idea of what its "realistic" image was meant to convey to contemporary viewers are tasks beset with difficulties. In what areas of life, and at what level, should we seek to define its meaning? Almost inevitably our answer to such questions will be deter- mined on the one hand by our general conception of seventeenth-century thinking, and on the other hand by clues we believe we have detected in the works of art themselves-two variables that will always be subject to a certain amount of speculation. The following observa- tions ventured by de Jongh about game pieces and fish still lifes are worth considering in this context. "Ad- monitions of a moralizing nature account for only one of the various implications that these works might well be capable of containing. There are other possibilities. Paintings showing fish or other foods will undoubtedly have suggested associations with the national economy at that time (fishing and dairy-farming were important

sources of revenue), just as game-pieces will have borne some relation to social status (hunting being a pastime of the higher ranks)."' To someone who is convinced that the realistic mode of representation in the seventeenth century was chiefly nourished by images borrowed from lay piety and the popular imagination, such a notion is of course anathema, along with so many other post-Marx- ist, post-Freudian and sundry other ideas deriving from the social sciences which are foisted upon our seventeenth-century forefathers. Fish and game will be omitted from the following discussion,3 but I would like to venture some critical comments on the role that de Jongh ascribes to cheese.4

The motif of cut rounds of cheese, two or three gener- ally stacked on top of one another, occupies a key posi- tion in several very similar paintings, the majority of which were painted around i610-40, chiefly in Haarlem. The painters of these works, which are sometimes called-none too convincingly-"breakfast pieces," in- cluded Nicolaes Gillis, Floris van Dijck and Floris van Schooten (figs. i and 5). They must have been well ac- quainted with one another's work, given the close corre- spondence between all the paintings concerned in the choice of objects and their arrangement. Gillis may have been the oldest of the group-i6oi is the earliest date that appears on one of the few paintings we have by him. Van Dijck continued into the i620S to work in the same style, which had by then become rather old-fash- ioned, characterized by a high vantage point, even light-

* The publication of this article was made possible through generous support from Noortman of Maastricht, and was translated from the Dutch by BeverleyJackson.

I E. de Jongh, Kwesties van betekenis: thema en motief in de Neder- landse schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw, Leiden 1995. On the merits and relative value of iconological research, see especially the previously unpublished introductory chapter, "Opinies en bezwaren," pp. Io- I9.

2 Quoted from E. de Jongh, "The interpretation of still-life paintings; possibilities and limits," in E. de Jongh et al., exhib. cat. Still life in the age of Rembrandt, Auckland (Auckland City Art Gallery) I982,

pp. 27-37, esp. p. 34. It is published in Dutch in deJongh, op. cit. (note I), pp. 130-48, esp. p. I40.

3 The idea that representations of dead game were related to the pri- vileges and class-consciousness of the aristocracy, for which see, for example, S. A. Sullivan, "Rembrandt's Self-portrait with a dead bittern," The Art Bulletin 62 (i980), pp. 236-43, seems to me an anachronistic notion.

4 DeJongh in deJongh etal., op. cit. (note 2), pp. 64-69, in connection with a Still life with cheeses by Clara Peeters.



202 JOSUA BRUYN

ing and a dark background.5 What strikes us about van Schooten, on the other hand, is that while he kept return- ing to paint virtually the same objects over a span of some 20 years, he gradually introduced marked shifts of style, in both lighting and perspective.6 The unchanged repe- tition of motifs in the work of one or more artists could perhaps be explained in terms of a specific working pro- cedure or the practice of a particular studio, such as the use of model drawings, but where the motif recurs in a different form and style, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that iconological considerations also played a part.

Defining the meaning of these displays in general, and of the cheeses in particular, is a complex undertaking. Any solution must necessarily be based on certain as- sumptions about seventeenth-century responses to the painting in its entirety and to each of its constituent parts. As far as the latter is concerned, we obviously need to discover how well known the supposed source text of the visual metaphor was in the seventeenth century. If cheese is considered as analogous to milk, and conse- quently regarded as a eucharistic motif on the grounds that Tertullian, writing around AD ioo, refers to Christ as heavenly milk, the premises are shaky. It is highly questionable whether such an idea could have had any currency in seventeenth-century Holland, for one thing because it is very much a Roman Catholic metaphor.7

Approaching the problem from an entirely different angle, one can investigate the significance of cheese in this period as a foodstuff. De Jongh, deriving his argu- ments from economic history, points out that "for seven-

teenth-century Holland, cheese and butter were of great economic importance. Holland was the land of dairy products par excellence, and both of these foodstuffs be- longed to the most important articles of export."8 But to see pictures of cheeses, for this reason, as a mode of "promotion" for a national product, is a questionable conclusion. In the first place, this would assign to paintings a role that surely sits very ill with our conceptions of the seventeenth century. And in the second place, cheese had for centuries been associated with ideas that were at best contradictory. Segal has pointed out that "in the en- cyclopedic works of the Middle Ages and the Renais- sance cheese is often regarded as an indigestible food, in particular old cheese."9 There was something terrifying about this substance, coagulated as it was by some mys- terious process, which generated fears of the monstrous powers supposed to be lurking within it.'0 The sponta- neous birth, for so it was believed to be, of maggots, out

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5 On Gillis and van Dijck see, for example, B. Haak in exhib. cat. I7e-eeuwse schilderijen nit de verzameling Willem Russell, Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) I970, nrs. 37, 25. The work by van Dijck at Haarlem, reproduced in fig. I (Frans Hals Museum, inv. nr. 79, panel, 49.5 X 77 cm, signed with monogram and dated i613) is a faithful replica of a painting, also signed but dated i6io, 49 X 77.7 cm, in a private collection; see S. Segal, exhib. cat. A prosperous past, Delf (Het Prinsenhof), Cambridge (Fogg Art Museum), Fort Worth (Kim- bell Art Museum) & The Hague i 988, pp. 73 and 230, nr. I I.

6 See P. Gammelbo, "Floris Gerritsz van Schooten," Nederlands Kunsehiseorisch aarboek 17 (i966), pp. 105-42, esp. nrs. 5i (Otterlo Krbller-Mtiller Museum, inv. nr. 593-I 8; ca. I 610), 56 (private collection, dated i617), 53 (Pads, Muste du Louvre, inv. nr. M.N.R. 708; ca. i 620), 66 (Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, inv. nr. 488, ca. I 630) and 73 (Hamburg, Kunsthalle, inv. nr. 75; ca. i630). All these pieces have a joint of meat in the center, stacked cheeses to the right, amid a very similar array of other kinds of food. It is clear from these works that it is incorrect to suggest that this type of still life never displays meat, as done by de Jongh et al., op. cit. (note 2), p. 65; cf. Haak, op. cit. (note 5), p. 52.



Dutch cheese 203

I Floris van Dijk, Banquet piece. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum

of material created by means of decay and putrefaction, could even serve in the sixteenth century, in Italy, as a heretical image for God and the angels coming forth out of chaos." By the seventeenth century, the misgivings surrounding cheese had by no means vanished. The old cheese in Johan de Brune's Emblemata of i 624 (fig. 2) is infested with maggots, used here as an image of decay re- sulting from too much sharpness (of anything from taste

to wit): "That which most excels frequently has the most flaws."'2 More in general, the smell associated with decay and decomposition inclined people to imagine that their physical and mental health might be in jeopardy, that the substance might have a pernicious impact on the four bodily humors by means of vermin which would further exacerbate the existing putrefaction.'3

The views expressed by Dutch physicians were far

7 See de Jongh's rejection of this interpretation, op. cit. (note 2), p. 67, which originated with J. Lammers, "Fasten und Genuss: die ange- richtete Tafel als Thema des Stillebens," in exhib. cat. Stilleben in Europa, Miinster (Westfilisches Landesmuseum ffir Kunst und Kul- turgeschichte) & Baden-Baden (Staatliche Kunsthalle) 1979, pp. 402- 29, 587-88, esp. p. 406.

8 DeJongh et at., op. cit. (note 2), p. 67. Quoted and endorsed by P. Hecht in his review of the exhibition The dawn of the Golden Age, Am- sterdam 1993-94, in The Burlington Magazine 136 (1994), p. '98.

9 Segal, op. cit. (note 5), p. 73. Io See ch. is, "Le fromage maudit," in P. Camporesi, L'ojicine des

sens: une anthropologie baroque, Paris I989 (originally published as Le officine dei sensi, Milan i985). In addition to the largely Italian and Ger- man sources quoted here, there are also Dutch publications on the subject of cheese: P. Paaw, De lacte, caseo, sereo, butyro, coagula disputatio, Rostock I 588, and the treatise by Martinus Schoockius (see note I5). For both of these titles I am indebted to a letter from Dr R. Breugel-

mans of Leiden to the NRC Handelsblad (io December 1994). i I C. Ginzburg, The cheese and the worms: the cosmos of a sixteenth-

century miller, Baltimore & London ig80, pp. 53ff. (Originally published as Ilformaggio e i vermi. II cosmo di on mugniaio del '5OO, Turin 1976).

I2 J. de Brune, Emblemata of zinne-werck, Amsterdam i624, emblem vii: "Jae meest wat meest uyt-muyt, de meeste feylen heeft." The motto "Al te scherp maackt schaerdigh" ("Too much sharpness will maim") derived from a saying about the sharpening of knives: a knife that is sharpened too much will become chipped. The knife- sharpening image occurs neither in the picture nor in the commentary.

13 Camporesi, op. cit. (note io), pp. 13-i8, in particular on the authority ofj. P. Lotichius, De casei nequitia tractatus medico-philologi- cus novus, Frankfurt i643. In particular, it was believed that cheese caused constipation and thickened the bodily fluids, clogging up the liver and creating kidney stones; see Camporesi, p. 35.



204 JOSUA BRUYN

3 Hieronymus Francken the Younger, The poor man's meal, 1599 (?). Brussels, Mus~es Royaux des Beaux-Arts

more measured, with the well-known physician Johan van Beverwyck, for instance, going no further than to describe old cheese as unwholesome.'4 Yet the general public remained mistrustful. As late as the mid-seventeenth century, Martinus Schoockius, professor of logic and physical science at the university of Groningen, wrote on the subject of "that vexed problem because of which many people not only reject cheese as a foodstuff but almost curse it," as the subtitle of his treatise ran. Schoockius discusses "that idiosyncrasy by which a great many people have an aversion to cheese, even though it is a very familiar and common foodstuff; this is especially prevalent precisely in Holland [i.e. the present-day pro- vinces of North and South Holland] which yet attracts praise even from abroad, more than any other land, on

account of its cheeses. Some estimate that a good many people are averse to eating cheese because they are convinced that it is deadly and that its consumption breeds diseases that may lead to death." In conclusion, the author observes that this idiosyncrasy used here in the sense of an innate aversion should be seen as an individual rather than a general phenomenon.'5 Perhaps we may see this as marking a tuming-point in attitudes to cheese; views became noticeably more moderate during this period. In i643, the German physician Johannes Petrus Lotichius was still referring to cheese as the cause of thousands of types of disease,'6 but in i669 Johann Joachim Becker became the first to distinguish between putrefaction and fermentation, clearing the way for the gradual development of more modern notions.17 Could

14 J. van Beverwyck, Scha t der gesontheydt, Utrecht i65I, p. 136. Quoted by deJongh et al., op. cit. (note 2), p. 68. Cf. also the sober discussion by Paaw, op. cit. (note io), paras. 4I -42. This passage enumer- ates several negative effects attributed to the consumption of old cheese, but concludes that it should not be omitted from the diet as it is good for the digestive system, particularly after eating too much sweet or greasy food.

a5 M. Schoockius, Exercitatio academica de aversatione cases. Qua accurate expenditur vexatumn illud problems: Cur plurimi homines casum Ut cibum, non modo adversentur verum parum quin execrentur?, Gronin- gen i658 (second edition published as Diatriba de aversatione casei, Groningen i664), p. 12 (III): "... propositum nobis deinceps est, agere

de illa k6loavyKpaaid, qua quam plurimi abhorrent & casco, cibo licet familiari, & quotidiano; quales in ipsa Hollandia, a caseis suis alias inter exteros quoque celebrari solita, si ullibi, quam plurimi inveniuntur"; p. I9 (vi): "Secundo, quidam existimant, praeterea, quam plurimos ab esu casei abhorrere, quod persuasum habeant, ejus esum lethalem esse, atque per illius usum tales in corpore concitari morbos, qui viam ad mortem muniunt"; and p. 6i (xxiv): "Quando vero hic mentionem fa- cimus a0zoavyKpairag, non existimamus, eam intellegi ulla ratione posse secundum speciem verum solummodo indivualiter, quum si Sifl- gularis, sive particularis quaedam affectio individuum certum, ob indi- vidualem quandam disposiiionem certo modo efficiens."



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it possibly be related to developments of this kind that cheese, unlike fruit and other kinds of food, disappeared from the repertoire of Dutch still lifes around the mid- seventeenth century?

Of course, we have yet to establish the significance of the unfavorable beliefs about cheese, which persisted throughout the sixteenth and well into the seventeenth century, in relation to the prominent role of cheese in the iconography of the group of still lifes described above. DeJongh has located this significance in the combination of pieces of cheese with a saucer of butter, which indeed occurs on several occasions. He concludes that this combination was seen as objectionable, and probably over-indulgent, and suggests that pictures containing these two dairy products may have expressed a critique of excess alongside a reference to their economic importance.i8 The combination of butter and cheese may in

fact have had various connotations,19 but even if we fol- low this line of thought we soon discover that butter is often absent (see e.g. fig. i), suggesting that we should retrace our steps.

How likely is it that cheese, in the contextofthe still lifes in which it appears, is the bearer of the same unfavorable significance that was attributed to it in reality? It would seem that we can only answer this question if we take as our point ofdeparturewhat early seventeenth-century still lifes in general, and those containing food in particular, can teach us about the function and significance of the genre. Among the earliest pieces are the five known versions of a single display, some ofwhich bear the signature (varying in clarity) of the Antwerp artist Hieronymus Francken and the dates 1599, i6oo and i6oi (fig. 3).7 They display the elements of a simple meal-salted herring, black bread, buckwheat biscuits and porridge with ale, in a rough earth-

i6 Lotichius, op. cit. (note 13), quoted by Camporesi, op. cit. (note io), p. I6.

17 J.J. Becherius, Physica subterranea, profundam subterraneorum genesim, e principiis hucusque ignotis ostendens, Leipzig 1733 (ed. princ. r669), quoted in Camporesi, op. cit. (note io) p. 13.

i8 DeJongh et al., op. cit. (note 2), p. 68. 19 In Lotichius's De casei nequitia (see note 13), butter is described as

the good part of milk, pure, a divine delicacy, "lovis medulla," whereas

cheese is reviled as filthy, worthless food, fit only for gravediggers and the poor, "fossores et proletarios"; quoted in Camporesi, op. cit. (note IO), p. I4.

2o The panels, all roughly 36 x 46 cn, are in private collections and the museums of Antwerp (inv. nr. 846), Brussels (inv. nr. 3357) and Rotterdam (inv. nr. z288). See Segal, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 39-41, 50 (pl. i) and 227 (nr. i). I am grateful to Dr Segal for providing me with the photographs that are reproduced as figs. 3 and 4 in this article.



206 JOSUA BRUYN

enware bowl and tankard. Attached to the background wall is a drawing or print of a mirror in which we can see an owl. At the top of the print is a drinking toast ("goeden dach bruer," meaning roughly "Good health, brother") and at the bottom the words "vvilen spieghel" (owl-glass, probably a pun on the name of Tyl Uilenspiegel, a well-known literary scoundrel). In a similar picture, also by Hierony- mus Francken, appears a saying-still in use in later times-that may be rendered "Although it has a candle and glasses, [the] owl simply refuses to see."" There can be little doubt that the owl in the mirror is the viewer him- self, who is thus reckoned among the blessed "poor in spir- it" (Matthew 5:3). Segal has persuasively related this still life to what might be called a pendant, a picture of which there are likewise five versions, which he has called The rich man 's meal, as opposed to The poor man's meal just described; two of the five are signed Hieronimo Francken and dated i 59and i6o(? i)(fig. 4).22Theydisplayasump- tuous spread of food and drink, a pewter wine jug and plates containing white bread and fruit (including lemon slices), grapes, olives, sweetmeats and a gilt goblet. The connection between this still life and The poor man 's meal is confirmed by the fact that both include-one on the left and the other on the right-a glimpse ofa vista in the background. This is an occasional feature of later still lifes as well, and the motif thus glimpsed undoubtedly contri- butes to the significance of the painting as a whole. In the case of The rich man 's meal there is a view of a broad tree- lined avenue, along which a richly-dressed couple are walking. Segal rightly notes that these vistas are related to older religious images,23 in particular those in which we recognize the narrow and the broad ways described in Matthew 7: I 3-I4: "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and

few there be that find it." The narrow way is the theme of the vista glimpsed in Thepoorman 'smeal; it winds through a barren hilly landscape, with a gallows to the left and a windmill to the right. In the distance we can make out the buildings of a town, which Segal has convincingly identi- fied as the New Jerusalem; a couple in rustic apparel are walking that way. The gallows is an obvious sign of death in sixteenth and seventeenth-century paintings, while the windmill should probablybe seen as a symbol of Christ, or more specifically of divine grace.24

These two incunabula of the seventeenth-century in- dependent still life clearly indicate the context in which the genre should be placed. It is the religious truth, con- veyed by various biblical narratives, that earthly riches lead to Hell, poverty to a state of bliss. This lesson is ex- pressly alluded to in a few pieces with similar vistas showing episodes from the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus in Luke i6, which was universally known and often addressed in both word and image throughout the sixteenth century. Such glosses in still lifes are apparently only found in the sumptuous pronk- stillevens, scenes showing either luxurious items of food "The rich man's meal"-or precious objects and other attributes of earthly riches.25 In general, Fran- cken's Rich man 's meal seems to have been far more influ- ential than its "poor" counterpart. It can be no coin- cidence that the earliest known work by Nicolaes Gillis, who may have come from the southern Netherlands, is dated i6oi, and that it bears a strong resemblance in both composition and motifs (with some new additions such as Chinese porcelain) to Hieronymus Francken's scene.26 The latter was extremely popular, as is clear from the number of versions still extant. It must have been so well known that Gillis's work did not need a landscape inset by way of clarification. He could omit the vista from the dark background without-we may as-

21 Panel, 26.2 X 36.3 cm, signed and dated Anno i604 Jeronimus Francken: Antwerp, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. nr. 934 (as Hieronymus Francken the Elder). Text on a print or drawing on the wall depicting an owl flanked by a pair of spectacles and a burning candle: "Al heeft hij kaers en bril, [de] uyl niet sien en wil." See Segal, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 39-40.

22 Panels, all approximately 34 X 44 to 37.5 cm (one has evidently been cropped on the right), all in private collections. See Segal, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 41-43, and Haak, op. cit. (note 5), nr. 33 (as by Hans An- toni Francoi).

23 Segal, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 42-45. See also L. von Baldass, "Sit- tenbild und Stilleben im Rahmen des niederlandischen Romanismus,"

Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen SammIungen in Wien 36 (I923), pp. 15- 46.

24 According to two emblems cited in P. Picinellus, Mundus symbo- licus in emblematum universitateformatus, Cologne i695, pt. 2, bk. XVI,

ch. xii, nrs. ii2 and ii8, pp. 68-69. 25 For example, a still life with earthly riches and pawn tickets (a

true allegory of Avarice) by Hieronymus Francken, versions of which are to be found in Hartford (Conn.), Budapest, Groningen and Valen- ciennes (Segal, op. cit. [note 5], pp. 45-47 and fig. 3.5) and a rich man's meal by the somewhat younger Antwerp artist Osias Beert, in a private collection (Segal, pp. 59, 65, and p. 229, nr. 6).

26 Panel, 45 x 56 cm, twice signed and dated i6oi. Private collection, Germany; see Segal, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 70-7i and fig. 4.9.



Dutch cheese 207

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5 Nicolaes Gillis, Banquetpiece. Private collection

sume-the still life losing its meaning.27 The banquet piece alone could convey the stock warning that earthly riches are the inevitable harbingers of hell-fire. This is not to say, of course, that individual motifs may not have had, within the framework of lethal luxury, a meaning of their own, but it is difficult to establish such meanings with any certainty. Are the glasswork and porcelain merely a sign of riches, or do they also symbolize the fra- gility of mortal life? Are the fruit to be seen as expensive items, or should they be construed as vulnerable to decay, as Roemer Visscher's Sinnepoppen (1614) portrays

them in the emblem "Soon ripe, soon rotten"7?28 Such possibilities are obviously not mutually exclusive.

Very little is known about the life of Nicolaes Gillis. He is not recorded in Haarlem before i 622, but must have been active there well before then. A large Banquet piece with his signature and the date i612 (fig. 5)29 fol- lows closely after a work by Floris van Dyck dated i6io (cf. fig. ),3? the first known example in which the center of the composition is made up of two stacked slabs of cheese-apparently an old Gouda and a smaller piece of green Edam. Which of the two artists was responsible for

27 I am aware that not everyone agrees with this. De Jongh has re- peatedly maintained that a specific motif is needed to clarify the under- lying significance. The difficulty, of course, is in determining what was seen as significant in the seventeenth century.

28 L. Brummel (ed.), Sinnepoppen van Roemer Visscher, The Hague 1949, emblem xxvii.

29 Panel, 59 x 79 cm, signed and dated (in yellow paint on a dark background) i6i2. Private collection. See Haak, op. cit. (note 5), nr. 37 (with color plate), and Segal, op. cit. (note 5), p. 70 and p. 230, nr. I0.

30 This is the painting referred to in note 5, in a private collection, of which the version dated i6I3 in Haarlem (fig. i) is a replica.



208

introducing this motif is impossible to say, but it is likely to have been a Haarlem addition to an Antwerp type of still life, one that would be adopted in a whole series of works.3' But what might this addition have signified?

In the first place, we may assume that the motif of the stacked cheeses was related to the general import of the picture, and hence represented impious luxury. This is not entirely obvious, as cheese did not in general belong to the class of expensive or exclusive foodstuffs. The North Holland rioters of I491-92 had in fact been dubbed the "bread-and-cheese men," and in Germany cheese was regarded as a proletarian food.32 But whether this verdict would have applied to old Dutch cheese is open to question, and the large slabs of this kind of cheese displayed in the Haarlem banquet pieces may indeed be taken to signify luxury. They go well with the distinctly expensive and exquisite articles and foodstuffs around them.

This said, however, cheese in the seventeenth century had by no means dispelled the misgivings that clung to it. Like the fruit portrayed, it evoked thoughts of decay, and even of disease and death. Though not yet at the stage of putrefaction-or does the Gouda cheese in Gillis have a dark patch in the middle?-the motif recalled the maggots that represent decay in de Brune's emblem (fig. 2).

For all excess leads to decay, as the emblem's accompa- nying lines of verse warn:

Cheese shows this too (though dissolute folk, Their taste depraved, the vermin crave) The best is all with maggots crawling.33

Thus cheese could make its own contribution, in the midst of the other objects symbolizing luxury and tran- sience, to the ambiguity of the fine appearances that earthly pleasures and riches had to offer. In this connection one speaks of the moralizing nature of "realistic" seventeenth-century paintings, and in the case of ostenta- tious still lifes in particular, an exhortation to practice the cardinal virtue of temperance. However, this should be seen not so much as a lesson to be applied in everyday life, but rather as a religious truth that was regularly im- pressed upon all Christians-Catholics and Protestants alike. The idea of the rich man's meal in Luke i6, and his torments in hell, was the point of departure for a new genre, in which cheese acquired its own peculiar role to play.

AMSTERDAM

31 A Still life with cheeses by Clara Peeters in a private collection, see deJongh et al., op. cit. (note 2), nr. 4, does not contradict this. Though she can be regarded as an Antwerp artist, she probably also worked in the northern Netherlands.

32 "Kaas-en-broodvolk" was the name given to rebellious peasants

in the north of Holland in I491-92. On cheese as proletarian food see note 19.

33 "Dit leert ons oock de kaes (hoe-wel de dertel' menschen, Door een verdorven smaeck, naer 't ongedierte wenschen) De beste die-men vind van maajen leeft en krielt."



Documents

Ten Essays for a Friend: E. de Jongh 65 || Dutch Cheese: A Problem of Interpretation