The Hurdy-Gurdy Player

Entry

This lively village scene centres around the perverse delight of children in the sorry lot of the hurdy-gurdy man and in the death struggles of a pig. The scene takes place in a wintry setting, for the slaughtering of pigs was traditionally depicted as an autumn or winter activity, often in the framework of a series of the Twelve Months or the Four Seasons.¹ The old couple in the doorway can be regarded as a typical personification of winter,² which is also alluded to by the almost leafless trees in the background. Several of the children around the musician have tucked their hands inside their clothes, which in addition to being a reference to the cold of wintertime has also been interpreted as a sign of idleness.³ In this context it could be the idleness of the hurdy-gurdy man and his wife that is being contrasted with the activities of the villagers, who are hard at work preparing themselves for the harsh winter that lies ahead. The little boy and girl in the right foreground appear to be highlighting this, for while the girl points at the musician the boy is turning to look at the slaughter scene and is pointing towards that.

Vinckboons painted several versions of The Hurdy-Gurdy Player, and also developed a number of variants.⁴ His earliest version of the Amsterdam composition dates from 1606 (fig. a). That one was undoubtedly the point of departure for the Rijksmuseum painting, for several details from it were included in the underdrawing of the latter but were altered on the picture surface. This applies to the trough in the right foreground, which is wider in The Hurdy-Gurdy Player of 1606, as it is in the underdrawing of the Rijksmuseum picture. In addition, one of the children behind the hurdy-gurdy man in the former version is holding its left arm out in front of the face of another child. That face has been omitted here, although it was suggested with a single line in the underdrawing. The version in the Rijksmuseum is thus probably of a slightly later date. Changes were also made to the background figures, and the index finger of the boy in the right foreground pointing towards the slaughter scene was added.

The hurdy-gurdy man was evidently a popular subject, given the many versions of it, most of them by artists around Pieter Brueghel the Younger. There are some 19 versions from his workshop or circle.⁵ Glück believed that Pieter Brueghel the Younger should be regarded as the inventor of the composition.⁶ However, since Brueghel’s oeuvre is not very original, Goossens rightly identified Vinckboons as the inventor. A convincing argument for this is that the theme evolved in Vinckboons’s oeuvre. Moreover, several other hurdy-gurdy men by or after Vinckboons are mentioned in probate inventories.⁷ Ertz needlessly complicated the discussion recently by saying that although Vinckboons might be the inventor, the composition was influenced by Brueghel the Younger as regards the slaughtering of the pig, the background scene and the seated peasant in the left foreground. Either that, or both artists worked together on the composition.⁸ It is totally unclear how any such collaboration could have come about.

Yvette Bruijnen, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 312.