Antoon Claeissens

[1] He was a member of the Claeissens family of painters which played an important role in the art world in Bruges in the 16th century.

Antoon became a pupil of Pieter Pourbus, a leading history and portrait painter active in Bruges.

[2] The Claeissens family workshop gained a monopolistic grip on official painting commissions in Bruges with their enormous output in the late 16th century.

In the center, a man wearing antique armor has his right foot on a lying creature with donkey ears.

He is surrounded by seven women engaged in various activities (taking measurements on a globe, playing the flute, writing in a book or on a slate...).

To the right, an eighth woman, carrying a painter's palette and a hand rest is lead towards the group by another man in armor.

The women in the picture appear to personify the liberal arts, which were the disciplines taught in medieval schools and universities.

Whereas in contemporary compositions of the seven liberal arts, the goddess Minerva takes centre stage, this position is here taken by a male figure.

If it is Mars, the god of war, then his role is here reversed from traditional depictions which see him as a threat to, rather than a protector of, the arts and crafts.

One hypothesis holds that the work conceals a political meaning and evokes the triumph over Protestantism", symbolized by the donkey-eared figure which represents Ignorance.

Upon learning that a judge called Sisamnes had accepted a bribe to influence a verdict, he had him promptly arrested and sentenced to be flayed alive.

The story of Sisamnes was clearly still relevant in Claeissens' time and his painting would have served as a warning to the judges who heard court cases in the Bruges city hall.