A SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY

Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple
Unknown follower of Hieronymus Bosch, after 1569
Oil on panel, 101.7 x 155.3 cm
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

The temple, with its arched roof structures and its open façade, looks cavernous. It is a gloomy grotto amidst the city. The cavern refers to the earth, nature, sexuality and primitivism.

The grotto-like temple is a dark, suspicious place. It demonises an age-old feminine element. Since prehistoric times, cavity, curvature and enclosure have been symbols of the arcane feminine.

Two golden figures of Old Testament prophets – maybe Moses and Aron. One holds the the Ten Commandments. The representation is clearly fantastical, as the Jewish faith does not allow icons.

The crescent moon is a reference to paganism, wickedness, and sinfulness. Associated with Judaism and Islamism, it was also, in Bruegel's time, an emblem of fools, jesters and all who were seedy or raffish.

The Moon presided over lability and inconstancy, over earthly love and its slaves. Its representation on the temple characterises the edifice as anything but holy.

This odd column of idol is placed on top of figures baring their bottoms. This gesture was a prominent comical motif in late mediaeval inversion festivals such as Shrovetide and festival of fools.

Some mediaeval cities had representations of bare-bottomed figures at the city walls, to ward of evil. The column might be an apotropaic image, intended to provide protection to the temple.

In addition to the traders, there are numerous beggars asking for alms in front of the temple.

The elderly lady with a bandaged arm is dressed in rather a fine way. The reason she begs for alms is not because she is in need but because she is too lazy to work.

The child she has taken with her is meant to arouse compassion in people, from which she hopes to make a profit.

Pigs are considered unclean in Jewish culture, a fact that was often cynically exploited in anti-Semitic propaganda. In late Mediaeval Germany, the so-called Judensau was a popular motif.

A man is carrying a hide on a stick, heading towards the temple presumably to sell it. He is part of the group of traders trying to sell merchandise inside or around the Temple.

A half-naked child follows the man by hanging on to the hide. The child seems forlorn, as if dragged along in a maelstrom of adult impulses while holding on desperately to the hide.

A common woman sits with a child in her lap. She has bared the child’s bottom and raises her left hand. At first glance, we might think that she wants to dry the child’s bottom by the warm fire.

But notice the egg lying on the ground. Is the child being spanked for dropping it on the ground? If this is the case, the scene evokes a sense of attachment to possession, even if only an egg.

A condemned man is suspended in a basket over water. To free himself, he needs to cut the rope with which the basket has been suspended, but this inevitably means that he will fall into the water.

This punishment was a form of public shaming. The message of law and order that is conveyed here is quite clear: evil-doers will not escape worldly punishment.

A quack - a doctor who has not trained in medicine - carries out an operation in front of the audience. He has ‘cured’ a patient by pulling out the tooth that ached, but is leaving her bleeding.

A board with forged certificates and a defecating figure lays bare the intentions of the quack.
It is a word-play: in 16th-century Dutch the verb “beschijten“ had two meanings – to cheat and to shit.

The audience is made up of people representing different strata of society. One sees here peasants, noble figures but also a gypsy and an itinerant merchant.

A man is trying to steal the purse of an onlooker; a peasant carrying flat headgear and a bag with a goose. However, the theft has been noticed and the villain is being targeted!

When first viewing the four paintings of the Traders, it is easy to overlook the background, where a small-scale scene from the Passion of Christ is played out, almost illegible.

At the centre, we see the main theme: the scourging of those who have desecrated the Temple. However, as Christ says in the Bible: “Zeal for your house has consumed me”.

Jesus’ holy zeal is indeed punished, as seen in the top right: the carrying of the Cross. The painting suggests that society will inevitably take revenge on anyone striving for perfection.

After the account of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, the New Testament continues with the episode in the temple. The gospel of Matthew recounts: “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’, but you make it a den of robbers”.” (Math 21:12-13). The synoptic gospels are more or less in agreement (Mark 11:15-17 and Luke 19:45-46). In the gospel of John, the story is told in more detail: “The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me”.” (John 2: 13-17).

Beggars are ubiquitous in the art of Bosch and his followers, and are invariably portrayed in a negative light. The crescent moon, crowning the temple, was also the beggars’ sign worn on their clothes as small amulets. The contempt extended beyond the begging class too : many other groups on the fringes of society or the lowest rungs of the social ladder were thought to be guilty of eroding the pillars of (middle-class) society: idling, living at the expense of others, and squandering one’s possessions were shown as a danger to social order. Such folk were generally portrayed as poor from their own fault, lecherous, dim, foolish and antisocial. 

In the painting, avarice is associated not only with money-exchangers and merchants, but also with ordinary folk, craftsmen, peasants, shepherds and beggars. Most are trying to make money by selling goods or services inside the temple, while others are soliciting alms. Mankind and the lower classes in particular are portrayed as if they prefer impurity. This finds expression in, among other things, the urge for earthly possessions: through trade, money changing, usury, theft, deception and begging. This urge is so overriding that it even defiles the sacred space maintained by their own society. The message of the painting can be summed up as follows: in a world where material values and mundane pleasures dominate, people live in deception and are doomed; in this context the salvation offered by faith in Christ’s redemptive death will remain out of reach.

Avarice or greed is the central motif in Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple: the essence of the Bible passage is that Jesus drives the traders from the house of worship because their appetite for money has turned it into a place of commerce. The composition on which the four versions of the Traders painting are based seems quite close to Bosch – so close that it might originate from Bosch’s workshop, not too long after his death. In the following panels, you can explore the three other versions from Tallinn, Glasgow, and a private collection. 

Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple
Unknown (follower of Bosch), 1560's
Oil on panel, 91 x 150 cm
Art Museum of Estonia – Kadriorg Art Museum, Tallinn.

The Copenhagen painting was formerly attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In 1932, Max Friedländer suggested that it was an original painting by Pieter Bruegel from around 1556: “The overall impression, murky and heavy, provides no clear evidence for the great master. The individual figures that emerge from the brown fog, concise, expressive with bold and varied movements, betray Bruegel’s Gestaltungsart, and don’t leave any doubt with respect to originality and time.” In addition he noted that the clock with arm, ‘in the spirit of Bosch’, also appears on Bruegel's print of Desidia (Idleness or Sloth) from 1557.  A similar clock, with a full skeleton attached to the arm, is also prominently present on Bruegel's painting Triumph of Death in the Prado Museum. He considered the version of the Traders now in a private collection in London to be a copy.  Three years later Friedländer had changed his opinion, writing that the painting was an important and rich composition by Bosch in ‘a rather later execution’. Since then the attribution to Bruegel has had only few supporters, but the idea that the work shows influence by Bruegel remained quite strong.  

Relatively few details are known about the provenance of the Copenhagen painting. The painting was acquired by the New Carlsberg Foundation for Statens Museum for Kunst in 1931. According to the provenance data in the museum database, it was bought at Galerie Matthiesen in Berlin for 54,000 Danish kroner. Prior to the sale, the painting was exhibited in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1930. A label on the reverse of the painting, printed with Galerie Matthiesen’s details, reveals that at the time of the 1931 sale the painting was attributed to Hieronymus Bosch. However, Max Friedländer reattributed the newly acquired painting to Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the annual publication of Statens Museum for Kunst, "Kunstmuseets Aarsskrift" in 1932. Other scholars like Glück and Van Puyvelde upheld the attribution to Bruegel, but Charles Tolnay rejected it, followed by Genaille, Denis and all subsequent scholars.