Ship of Fools (painting)

[1] The Ship of Fools was painted on one of the wings of the altarpiece, and is about two-thirds of its original length.

The bottom third of the panel belongs to Yale University Art Gallery and is exhibited under the title Allegory of Gluttony.

The other wing, which has more or less retained its full length, is the Death and the Miser, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Dendrochronological study has dated the wood to 1491, and it is tempting to see the painting as a response to Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff or even the illustrations of the first edition of 1493.

The two to eight years between the felling of the tree and its use as a painting substrate allows The Ship of Fools to be a direct satire of a frontispiece[4] of Sebastian Brant's book.

A reconstruction of the left and right wings of the triptych: at upper left The Ship of Fools (before restoration); at lower left: Allegory of Gluttony and Lust . Panel at right is Death and the Miser . At bottom "The Wayfarer" which would have been on the outside of the triptych.