Of course, this operation was never performed: since early 16th century and during the first half of the 17th century its representation stood for human stupidity. 

 

Jacob van Spreeuwen was one of the so-called Leiden Fine Painters.

He was influenced by both Rembrandt and Dou. In the past it has been sugested that he had been a pupil of Gerrit Dou, Rembrandt’s first pupil, or even of Rembrandt himself.

 

 

Dutch painter

Leiden 1609/10 – after 1650

 

Rare painter of genre scenes and occasionally of history subjects (also set in interiors) and of portraits.

 

Jacob(us) signed his paintings with “Spreu”, “Spreuwen” or “Spreeuwen”; at his marriage in 1639 his name is again spelt “Spreeuwen”.

Jacob’s father was a baker on the Noordeinde in Leiden. He came originally from Middelburg in Zeeland; he spelt his own name as “Cornelis Jorisz. Sprey”.

Van Spreeuwen was one of the so-called Leiden Fine Painters. It has been suggested during the 18th century that van Spreeuwen was a pupil of Gerrit Dou in 1643, but there is no supporting documentation. Still it is very plausible that van Spreeuwen worked in Dou’s workshop around that time, just as his brother-in-law, Arent van Dam, might have. 

Dou was Rembrandt’s very first pupil. There has been further speculation that van Spreeuwen worked in Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam between 1640 and 1650, but this too cannot be substantiated. 

Not a great deal is known about van Spreeuwen, except for the obvious influence of these two great masters, the body of his work being concealed under wrong attributions.

Van Spreeuwen’s first wife died in 1646 in Leiden and Jacob remarried in 1649 in Scheveningen the widow of the Amsterdam genre painter Pieter Quast.

 

In 1648 he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in Leiden. 

His place and date of death are unknown.

 

 

During the 16th and 17th century the stone operation was a piece of

quackery in which the patient was supposedly cured of his stupidity

through the removal of the stone of madness from his head. Fortunately, it was performed only in fiction, not in fact, for in literary examples of this theme it generally left the patient worse off than before.

 

This subject is a reflection on folly and human madness. Popular tradition associated madness with a stone lodged in the brain. Taking the metaphor in its most literal sense, gullible people tried to liberate themselves from this supposed stone by having it removed. 

 

Paintings representing the extraction of the stone of madness were regularly painted in Flanders and Holland during the 16th and the first half of the 17th century. A rare number of them still exists. In fact almost all of these paintings are today kept in museums, so that their subject is rather well-known to the general public, though their number is very limited. 

 

The extraction of the stone of madness is called:

- in French “l’extraction de la pierre de folie”

- in Dutch “de keisnijding” or “de verwijdering van de steen der dwaasheid”.

 

Interior scenes representing doctors, alchemists, pharmacists, dentists and quack doctors at work remained popular subjects of Dutch and Flemish 17th and 18th century genre scene painters. All of them were represented as men of science. Alchemists and quackdoctors, such as ours were not treated like fools or charlatans, but as artisinal, scholarly researchers.

 

 

Because it is an absolutely marvelous, ageless subject about the absurd idiocy of mankind.