Famous paintings | descriptions of the Ship of Fools

Fool's Ship

Picture information

Creator: Jeronimis Bosch

Created: 1490 - 1500 (aged 40)

Genre: Northern Renaissance style

Period: Renaissance

Subject: Religious painting

Material: oil painting, wooden board

Dimensions: 58 x 32 cm

Collection location: Louvre

< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > depictions of the painting</h1>

"The Fool's Ship" is Bosch's most famous masterpiece, but also the most puzzling work. In "The Fool's Boat", Bos imagines that the entire human race is sailing in the sea of time in a small boat, and the small boat is the symbol of human beings. Sadly, every "representative" is a fool. Bosch uses this painting to tell us that this is how we live: eating and drinking, flirting, cheating, playing stupid games, and pursuing goals that cannot be achieved. At the same time, small boats drift aimlessly and can never sail into a harbor where they can dock. These fools are not unaffiliated, because the most striking figures in the picture are a monk, a nun. But they all live in "ignorance." Early Bosch scholars mainly believed that the Ship of Fools represented a critique of morality and was a true portrayal of the decay and depravity of the church. But since 1914 the scholar Laverde recounted the relationship between the work and the Basel writer Brent's satirical novel The Fool's Ship, it was considered to be an imitation or illustration of the latter.