The Prodigal Son Wasting His Substance (Luke 15:13)

Author: Albert J. Elen

By migrating north and settling in Holland, Hans Bol forged an important link between the Flemish and Dutch landscape traditions. Landscape art as an independent genre dates back to the early sixteenth century in the Southern Netherlands. Joachim Patinir is regarded as its founder. The characteristic jagged rocks in his landscapes were mostly figments of his imagination. Under the influence of Italian contemporaries, Pieter Bruegel developed a more realistic treatment of the landscape in which more attention is given to drawing in perspective. Reproduced as prints, Bruegel’s landscapes were widely distributed and imitated. The same applies to his renderings of rustic scenes from everyday life, to which he owed his nickname of ‘Peasant Bruegel’. In Bol’s work the two elements merge in his richly appointed and elegantly composed scenes. In addition to Bruegel’s examples, Bol was greatly influenced by prints – and possibly by drawings as well – of the Master of the Small Landscapes, a yet anonymous artist from the circle of Bruegel active in Antwerp around 1550-60.¹ In the present drawing this influence is particularly remarkable in the types of peasant houses and castle buildings.²

Scenes of a merry company were quite popular at the time, as such, as part of a visualization of the Month of May (see inv. no. MB 2005/T 2 e) or in the guise of a depiction of part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The richly dressed man reclining in a lady’s lap in the foreground, the youngest son wasting his part of his father’s estate which he had claimed and received (Luke 15:13), holding up his wine glass to be refilled, is a recurring motif, and so are the musicians standing by and the elegant couples strolling around. The company is holding a pick-nick in the gardens of a castle, servants attending them with food and wine. Although Bol succeeded in creating a convincing perspective with a vanishing point left to the village church in the centre, allowing a distant view of the landscape beyond, the figures are disproportionately large and the man pouring wine into the upheld glass is standing too far away.

Opposite the palatial compound and its entrance gate is the unpaved village street, where life is less pleasant. Here we see another scene with the prodigal son, which as such is not described in the parable. Having spent all his money and fallen into poverty (Luke 15:14), earning his living as swineherd, he is here seen being ousted from an inn.³ terwards, in despair, the son realizes his foolishness and returns to his father, who greets him with loving compassion and forgives him his sins, celebrating his return with a big feast, to the understandable disgust of his offended elder son.

The drawing is one of a set of four preserved designs for a small print series depicting the Parable of the Prodigal Son, engraved by Adriaen Collaert and published by Hans van Luyck.⁴ Three of the drawings, including ours, are dated 1584. The first, depicting the prodigal son leaving his father’s home, is dated 1585, which indicates that Bol did not make the drawings in their thematical sequence, or he replaced an earlier design afterwards. The composition of the print (ill. 1), measuring 132 x 180 mm, is somewhat larger at the bottom, which confirms the impression that the drawing was trimmed and lost some 8 mm along the lower margin, including the lower part of the inscribed year 1584. The series was also anonymously published in small circular engravings, attributed to Hans I Collaert (c.1525/1530-1580), with condensed compositions apparently based on the 1584 series.⁵ Bol designed another, different series of four consecutive scenes from this parable, in wide landscape format, in 1588, which was not engraved.⁶

Notwithstanding the perils during the siege of Antwerp by the Spanish troops, and Bol’s hastily departure and migration to the North just before the city was taken, the year 1584 was particularly fruitful as regards the production of drawings. In that year he also provided design drawings for a set of 24 prints of landscapes with Old and New Testament scenes and hunting scenes, engraved by Adriaen Collaert and published by Eduard van Hoeswinckel in Antwerp.⁷