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Original fileIn a sparsely furnished bedroom, a man obsessed with his legal battles works through the night as a rooster crows on his bedframe. To the right, a haggard woman representing Anxious Care brandishes a scourge and a bat to chase a fleeing youth named Sweet Sleep from the room. The figure of Restlessness stands behind the man, holding an hourglass to signify the relentless passage of time for the worried mind.
This print reflects the Northern Humanist preoccupation with the psychological state of the individual, drawing on Stoic ideals of 'ataraxia' (tranquility) versus worldly attachment. It uses classical personification and biblical citations from Ecclesiastes and Proverbs to illustrate the spiritual and physical toll of litigation and greed.
Onrust des herten craeyt wacker den pleyter verstuyt .6. Door ancxtige sorge, die den zoeten slaep verdryft Peccatori autem dedit afflictionem et curam superfluam. Ecclesiastes. 2. Non rapitur somnus ab eis nisi supplantauerint. Prouerb. 4. Est homo qui diebus ac noctibus somnum non capit oculis Ecclesiastes. 8. Cuncti dies eius doloribus et aerumnis pleni sunt, nec p nocte mente requiescit: Eccls. 2. Dem sunder aber gibt er muy und kumber. Kein slaaf sicht sy an, sy habind dann vor einen unfall angerichtet. Es ist ein mensch der weder tag noch nacht seine augen keinen schlaaff gunnet. Das er alle seine tag mit traurigkeit, mitleid und iamer vertreibt, das auch sein hertz bei nacht keines hat.
Translation
Restlessness of the heart cries awake, scaring away the slumber. 6. Through anxious care, which drives away sweet sleep. But to the sinner he hath given vexation and superfluous care. Ecclesiastes 2. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief. Proverbs 4. There is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes. Ecclesiastes 8. All his days are full of sorrows and miseries, nor doth he take rest by night in his mind. Ecclesiastes 2. But to the sinner he gives toil and sorrow. No sleep looks upon them, unless they have first caused a misfortune. There is a man who grants his eyes no sleep, neither day nor night. That he passes all his days in sadness, pity, and misery, and that his heart also has none by night.
Hendrick Goltzius
Goltzius was the master of the Haarlem Mannerists, whose work frequently encoded complex moral and philosophical allegories using late Renaissance visual language.
Object
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
paper
height 181 mm x width 226 mm
allegory
Linked Data
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