Hooded face with gappy teeth, three eyes and two noses, carved in wood late 1400s CE. Misericord on underside of choir stall seat in the Oude Kerk (Old Church), Amsterdam, Netherlands. Believed to be a comment on how drunken people tend to agree with each other about everything.
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: seeing double … old Dutch proverbs or sayings such “two drunks under one roof” and “two faces under one hood” are suggested sources for this startling misericord, sculpted between 1480 and 1500, beneath a tipping choir stall seat in Amsterdam’s oldest building, the former Roman Catholic Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Ouderkerksplein. The grotesque hooded male face with three eyes, two noses and a single, gap-toothed wide mouth is believed to be a comment on the mind-altering perils of drunkenness - not least the tendency of people befuddled by alcohol to agree with each other about everything; and also, perhaps, to express opinions when drunk that they then deny when sober. The wood carving is one of several ancient misericords in the church to have survived the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule, the switch from Catholicism to Calvinism under the Protestant Reformation - and incidents when the building was looted and defaced. The worst example of this occurred in 1566, when an iconoclastic mob destroyed most of the church’s art and fittings. Some pre-Reformation stained glass survived the assault and the misericords in the choir were also left unscathed. The Oude Kerk misericords are a mixture of late-15th century carvings mostly illustrating Dutch proverbs or sayings, plus a few modern examples, such as a draughtsman working at his drawing board, which was added to the collection in 1974. The former church is now a museum of architecture and art, although it still holds Protestant Sunday services.
Size: 3008px × 2000px
Location: Oude Kerk, Ouderkerksplein, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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