Kermis

Vinckboons was responsive to Pieter Bruegel’s peasant imagery, especially his depictions of peasant fairs and related festivities. This theme was enormously popular during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and was (and still is) generally known by its Dutch title, Kermis.

Vinckboons’s Kermis of around 1605 is an outstanding representation of this theme, one of many he produced during his three-decade career. The picture shows peasant merrymaking in connection with the feast day of St George, who is portrayed on the banner hanging from the ramshackle building at the right. The peasant figures of the painting urinate, drink, and vomit with wild abandon.