Saint Martin with His Horse on a Ship (c. 1561): Art, History and Details

Saint Martin with His Horse on a Ship (c. 1561) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Johannes I van Doetecum (d. 1605); Lucas van Doetecum (active 1554–1572); Hieronymous Bosch (Netherlandish, c. 1450–1516).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

During the 16th century, November 11 brought the feast day of Saint Martin in Northern Europe, accompanied by boisterous parties and drinking “St. Martin’s wine.” This print depicts one such feast gone awry, with the sins of gluttony, greed, and sloth on full display among the crowd of beggars and devils who fight for their chance at the wine, or for no apparent reason. In the center of the scene, Saint Martin stands ready to divide his cloak in order to share it with a beggar, the single act of charity in the scene.

Object facts

• Title: Saint Martin with His Horse on a Ship
• Date: c. 1561
• Creator attribution: Johannes I van Doetecum (d. 1605); Lucas van Doetecum (active 1554–1572); Hieronymous Bosch (Netherlandish, c. 1450–1516)
• Culture: Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching on laid paper
• Dimensions: Platemark: 34.3 x 43 cm (13 1/2 x 16 15/16 in.); Sheet: 34.9 x 43.5 cm (13 3/4 x 17 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2020.99

A detail from the museum

The artist of this boisterous scene combined a saint’s charitable act with all manner of excessive behaviors that takes place in a contemporary coastal city much like that where the print was made.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Grieken, Joris van, Ger Luijten, and Jan van der Stock. Hieronymus Cock: The Renaissance in Print. Brussels, Belgium: Mercatorfonds, 2013.
• Walsh, Martin W. “The Satirical Charity of Saint Martin from Bosch to the German Baroque: A Drawing by Michael Herri,” Notes in the History of Art, Vo. 33/No. 2 (Winter 2014)

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.