Wine Barrels, Bonfires, and Battling Beggars

Abstract

Among the many scenes of seasonal festivity by Netherlandish artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are a number that portray Martinmas, the November 11 feast of St. Martin of Tours, a late harvest festival and something of a mini carnival before the penitential season of Advent. These scenes are usually marked by the inclusion of the “Charity of St. Martin,” the venerable icon of a young soldier slicing his mantle in two with a sword to share it with a naked beggar, an image that is variously manipulated and often compromised. This article catalogs these artworks in various media (paintings, drawings, engravings, and tapestries) and attempts to ascertain the degree of documentary evidence (“genre interest”), as opposed to satiric/moralistic appropriation, that can be gleaned from the various festive motifs presented. Editorial Note: Except where otherwise noted, content within this article and the Journal of Festive Studies is licensed under a CC BY NC ND 3.0 license. Please note that fig. 9, provided to us by the Trustees of the British Museum, is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.