Against a white ribboned ground, a man and a woman flank a display of two shields. Standing on the left, dressed in dark colors, the man holds a hammer in his right hand. The demi-man surmounting the helm turns towards the left and holds a similar hammer. On the right, the woman holds a beaker in her outstretched right hand. She is dressed in a long, elegant gown with raised sleeves. Her blue skirt parts to reveal a gold damask underskirt. At her feet a boy plays with a pan and spoon. A dog watches. The scene is framed by green columns with blue capitals supporting a violet architrave. A green boss with an emblem of an angel’s face accents the center and swags of leaves and fruit hang below. At the bottom of the panel an inscription panel is framed by gold and blue. In the center is a coat of arms repeating the one to the left in the scene above. Above the architrave six monkeys engage in various stages of metalwork, From the left to the right, one uses a bellows to heat the fire under the smelting a pot, another uses a crank to express metal, another uses a hammer to beat a cup into form, the next winds a metal wire, another hammers a design on a plate, and the last monkey washes the completed product.

In the center are the arms of Hans Ludwig Hanelutz and his wife Elizabeth Kölbin of Colmar, a city in the Alsace region, close to the northern border of Switzerland. The town was highly prosperous due to its surrounding vineyards. Colmar adopted the Protestant Reformation in 1572, six years before the date of this panel. The two shields are canting arms, with the device on the shield being a visual pun on the name of the family. In the case of Hanelutz, the interpretation of the cockerel is associated with Hahn (cock), and lütt or lüttje dialect for small), hence, little cock, or cockerel. The wife's last name of Kölbin can be pronounced Kolben, which means mace or club, as seen in the coat of arms. A shield of the husband’s device appears in the center of the inscription panel, whose text identifies him as a goldsmith.

Above are scenes in grisaille and silver yellow of monkeys working at the goldsmith’s trade. The Hanelutz and Kölbin panel relates to the later–medieval transformation of the image of the ape into a parody of human behavior. As phrased by Janson, “The increasingly tolerant attitude towards the ape that emerges during the later Middle Ages may be seen not only in the shift of emphasis from the ‘simian sinner’ to the ‘simian fool’ but also a more sympathetic view of the animal’s psychological and physiological qualities” (Janson, 1976, p. 239). Janson specifically mentions the Hanelutz and Kölbin panel, describing the scene as “innocent merriment” and suggesting that the panel would have been made for display in the local Zunfthaus of the goldsmith’s guild (Janson, 1976, p. 191).

In many early printed Books of Hours that contain the astrological image showing the Four Humors, that of sanguine, and the element of air, is personified by a well-dressed young man carrying a hawk and accompanied by a monkey. Planetary Man, printed in Paris, ca. 1534, by Germain Hardouyn, contains hand-painted metalcuts by Jean Pichore (Philadelphia, Temple University Libraries). The page shows the upper French texts describing the choleric and sanguine humors exchanged; The choleric humor has a lion, the melancholic a ram, and the phlegmatic a pig (Janson, 1976, pp. 248–50). Monkeys are also in glass, for example at the bottom of York Minister’s famous Pilgrimage Window (nXXV), dated about 1325. The lower border includes a funeral procession of monkeys who act as a cross-bearer, a bell-ringer, and pall-bearers carrying a bier. The long tradition of monkeys robbing a sleeping peddler, delightfully represented on the enameled “monkey” cup in the Cloisters Museum, may have some marginal relevance (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Flemish-Burgundian, 1425–50, no. 52.50; Young, 1968, pp. 441–52). Most versions of the story, however, are scatological, the peddler a victim, and the simians frequently associated with human abuse and exploitation, such as the action of corrupt prelates (See Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Peddler Pillaged by Apes, 1562, B 148, Berlin, Deutsches Museum: Janson, 1976, XLIIb).

The tradition continued had developed through the sixteenth-century, as exemplified by the Antwerp engraver Pieter van der Borcht, who produced an album of eighteen prints around 1562 where monkeys parody human activities including hunting, experimenting with alchemy, practicing the trade of a barber, cooking, doing laundry, or at home, engaged with caring for children and other domestic duties (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1891-A-16317; Janson, 1976, pp. 308–309). David Teniers the Younger’s paintings and prints of monkeys aping human activities between the 1630s and 1660s exemplifies the abiding interest in the subject. In the mid-eighteenth century, the theme may have achieved its visual apex with the decoration of the Grand Singerie (Monkey Room), the salon of the Château de Chantilly. Christophe Huet created a vast and fanciful scheme showing monkeys dressed in the fashions of the day engaging in the arts and the sciences of the Enlightenment: painting, sculpture, music, chemistry, geography, astronomy, and geometry (Garnier-Pelle, Forray-Carlier, & Anselm, 2011.

Cited in:
Hayward, 1989, p.70.
Raguin, 2024, vol. 1, pp. 42, 162–65.