Grey Matters

The work can be associated with a group of nine other roundels produced by an Antwerp workshop active in the early 16th century currently in the collection of the University of Antwerp. Their shared provenance include the former convent of the Grey Sisters on the Lange Sint Annastraat in Antwerp since at least 1693.[2]  The present roundel reproduces a number of elements first believed to have been developed on a group of paintings on linen preserved in the Kunstmuseum in Basel (fig. 1), which depict scenes from the story of Sorgheloos.[3] The figure types employed in the Basel paintings were clearly extremely popular amongst painters and glaziers alike, since the figure in the foreground with her back turned towards the viewer reappears almost verbatim in quite a diverse group of contemporary stained-glass roundels and other paintings.

The subject of the roundel is the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15, 11:32). It is about a young man conned out of his inheritance by the false advances of female attendants and by his own irresponsible decisions. His tale offered a moral message that all strata of the late-medieval populace could understand, but it also allowed artists and their audiences freedom to play with sexual pun-making and themes that straddled the knife-edge of indecency.[1] The yellow-handled knife resting on the prodigal son’s plate is carefully positioned in order to double as a tongue-in-cheek reference to his genitals, in a manner reminiscent of the gold daggers worn suggestively by the attendants of Jean de Berry in the January miniature of the Très Riches Heures (fig. 2). Playing with the theme further, the attendant on the left rests her hand on her deck of cards but splays her fingers out towards the tip of its blade, as if reinforcing the notion that sexual promiscuity and the gambler’s art go hand in hand in the ruination of the individual.