Night Banquet with Masqueraders,
1558

Museum Purchase
1998.5.3

Jan Sadeler I belonged to a productive and commercially astute family of printmakers that was involved internationally in printmaking and publishing for several generations. Jan I made prints after drawings by Joos van Winghe who, like Jan, had escaped from tyrannical Spanish rule over the Netherlands. Van Winghe was inspired by the slightly weird elegance of Italian Mannerism and Fontainbleu as well as the light sometimes flickering lusciousness of Venetian painting. Is the Night Banquet merely a warning to otherwise martial males against feminine wiles? The caption quotes Sirach 19: "Wine and women lead the intelligent astray, and one who consorts with harlots is very reckless." Or could the print be a celebration of wine, women, and song (of love and culture and commedia dell'arte) under the happier power of Venus, whose statue presides in the background? Is the choice between Mars and Venus? The Medieval feminist Christine de Pizan refers to the goddesses of the ancient world as if they were actually wise and powerful women who had invented human culture: "...thanks to women, that is, Minerva, Ceres, and Isis, so many beneficial things have come to men...from which they live and will live always...let all writers be silent who speak badly of women... It may also be worth mentioning that the passage about wine and women quoted from the Apocrypha is the voice of a divine female, Wisdom: Wisdom was created before all things...She dwells with all flesh...."