Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Stultitiam patiuntur opes

Image not available
Otto van Veen
1556-1629

Stultitiam patiuntur opes

7 1/8 x 5 3/4 inches (181 x 145 mm)
Brush and off-white opaque watercolor, and pen and brown ink; on a paper prepared with a light brown ground of lead white tinted with yellow-brown ochre and a little red in oil medium.
Van Veen Album, folio 58

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.

Notes
Watermark: since the drawings are laid down, no watermarks, if any, are visible, even with fiber-optic light.
Engraved in reverse, 1607.
Also see records on Van Veen Album (III, 146-157).
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed on the album page below the design, in brown ink, "Stúltitiam patiúntúr opes (title) / Plútús divitiarúm Deus a Stúltitia cúcúllo indúitur, Divites / enim impúnè agúnt, at è contrâ. / Paúper amet caútè, timeat maledicere pauper" (Plutus, the god of riches, is being crowned with a fool's cap by Folly. The rich indeed can do anything with impunity; but on the other hand, let the poor man love with caution; let the poor man fear to speak harshly). The title is from Horace, "Epistles", Book I, 18, line 29; the last line is from Ovid, "The Art of Love", Book II, line 167. The source of the lines in between has not been identified.
Bibliography
Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Flemish drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library / Felice Stampfle ; with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. New York : The Library, 1991, p. 85, no. 170.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department