Overleg:Chrispijn van den Broeck

Het schilderijtje dat is uitgekozen zal zeker graag gezien worden als een vroeg icoon voor de holebi's, maar dat is wel iets te enthousiast. Het kan hier gerust om broederlijke liefde gaan. De interpratie is een wishfull thinking van holebi's. Je moet zeer voorzichtig zijn in de interpratie van dit type schilderijen. --JohanB 19 sep 2005 18:03 (CEST)

At first glance it seems to be a straightforward double portrait of two prosperous looking, cheerful young men. They wear smart clothes, Italian in style but which could easily have been worn by men of fashion in the 16th century Netherlands. Their relationship is clearly a close one: they touch each other gently and unselfconsciously on the shoulder and forearm. One gazes and smiles at the other. In the centre their forefingers brush lightly but deliberately and the boy in black seems to be offering his friend an apple. At the same time he stares out and smiles at the viewer. His direct and friendly gaze involves us in the painting and yet we are separated from the pair, viewed as they are through a stone arch.

At the top left and right are the heads and wings of two putti, peeping over the edges of the arch at the young men. But more sinisterly and unexpectedly, within the white, cloudy background, a crow’s or raven’s head juts out from behind the head of the boy in red, while two dark, scarcely focused owl's faces peer over each shoulder of the boy in black.

In its motif of one figure offering another an apple, van den Broeck’s picture resembles representations of Adam and Eve. The apple from the Tree of Knowledge, which the serpent persuades Eve to eat, and which she then gives to Adam, was from an early time associated with sexual pleasure. Some Northern European depictions from this period explicitly show a naked Adam and Eve embracing while she hands him the fruit.

In classical art and myth the apple was closely associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She was awarded a golden apple by Paris, who judged her the most beautiful of the goddesses. This event, which caused the Trojan War, is shown in an early 17th century painting by Hendrik van Balen in the Fitzwilliam, left [416].

So given the well established erotic connotations of the apple, and taking into account the two boy's obvious mutual affection and physical intimacy, it might be tempting for the modern viewer to conclude that they are homosexual lovers. This is however unlikely. In Northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the civil and religious authorites were uncompromising in their condemnation of homosexuality. With their distinctive reddish hair and similarly shaped faces, the two young men are more likely to be brothers.

Death rather than sex is more clearly alluded to. The stone panel in the top centre of the picture, bearing the artist's initials, recalls funerary sculpture. And the owl and the raven carry morbid connotations. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, written c.1605, both birds are mentioned as ill omens and portents of death.

In Salvator Rosa’s L’Umana Fragilita in the Fitzwilliam, detail left [PD.53-1958], the owl that stares out of the shadows undoubtedly carries intimations of mortality. Perhaps van den Broeck’s painting bears a similar message: behind the carefree happiness of youth lies the chilly obscurity of death.

Zie [1]. Paul-MD 19 sep 2005 19:52 (CEST)

Brothers

de:Willem van den Broeck. --Kresspahl 25 nov 2008 00:54 (CET)