Triumph of Death

Triumph of Death is the title of a famous painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. It is also the title of the most recent large painting by Thomassen . The influence of Bruegel can be seen in the similar high skyline and also the many figures that are often seen in his paintings. But why did Thomassen copy so finely small parts of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings in his Triumph of Death as well? The reason is that Museum Slager in ‘sHertogenbosch - known colloquially as Den Bosch, was founded on a site in the Choorstraat that used to be a graveyard. It is certain that the body of Hieronymus Bosch lies somewhere under this building. Triumph of Deathis full of mystery. It is very confusing for the spectator exactly where he or she is standing in the landscape. Thomassen created something very unusual with the painting, and it is without doubt one of his finest works. As well as his other paintings, Thomassen worked on Triumph of Deathalmost every hour of the day for over a year to get it finished. The miniature faces featuring many well-known people in the bottom left of the painting are remarkable in their detail (190). Thomassen has excellent eyesight and did not use a magnifying glass to paint the very small faces. It is as though the people are standing below the viewer, or emerging from the depths. Could they even represent the dead coming back to life? They all have a striking resemblance to people known from photographs. The artist himself is seen twice – as an old man with his palette, and again standing at the side of Ine Veen as he was when he was in his twenties. Thomassen’s grandparents and parents are depicted, as well as the Tielman Brothers and the Chinese baby that is known from three other paintings . There are lookalikes of Vince Taylor,

Marilyn Monroe and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) who was admired by the artist for songs like Big Bopper’s wedding, Little Red Riding Hoodand Chantilly Lace. He is wearing his stetson hat and smiling whilst showing a paper with the well-known phrase -Let me in Honey, this is The Big Bopper knocking! A sign above the crowd notes a movie being shown in the Thalia Theater in The Hague – it looks like a creepy movie, or is it a part of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch? To the right of the crowd, on the piers of an arched bridge, are two finely detailed stamps. The one on the left shows Ine portrayed as Queen Nefertiti(see p. 169, 175), here reproduced in miniature. The red stamp on the right is a splendid copy, at actual size, of the stamp with Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter (1607-1676), one of the famous admirals in Dutch History. Why is it here? The stamp depicting Mciiel Adriaanszoon was used during the Second World War. It almost looks as though the stamps are floating on the painting, so deep is the shadow cast by them both. The painting demonstrates clearly why Thomassen is so widely considered to be both the master of absurd painting and a genius in miniature painting. In his Dutch autobiography 1900 en gisteren, de absurd realiteit, Thomassen writes that this stamp showing Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter made a deep impression on him as a little child. He saw it on old envelopes of loveletters from his parents, from which, as young children, he and his brother removed the stamps during their sudden passion of collecting stamps in the mid-1950s. Triumph of Deathof course has autobiographical elements and also shows us impressions of the life of the artist himself - such as Museum Slager, once the headquarters of a fire insurance company, that held a Restrospective of Thomassen’s work in 2019.* According a sign written on a sign above two doorways it is now a company that wants to promote setting the Netherlands on fire. The compartments of the museum are held together with clothes pegs in front of the Cathedral of Den Bosch that is burning. The Cathedral, the largest catholic one in the Netherlands, is partly made of colour pencils (191) and the top of the tower seems to been blown up and is rocketing towards space. Triumph of Deathcontains countless tiny details, the significance of which may not be immediately obvious. The wreck of a pirate ship called the Van Leusden and Sonk is very prominent. These are the names of two notorious slave ships that were sunk deliberately to claim insurance money; the chained slaves within were all drowned. This was a dark page in Dutch history. Some sailors are drowning and fighting, while others manage to leave the ship on a raft that recalls that of Medusa, a famous painting, The Raft of Medusa, by Th éodore Géricault (1791-1824) now to be found in the Louvre, Paris. Triumph of Deathà la Thomassen is of course full of nonsense such as the five nude women on a flying carpet (192). “They are from the fanclub of Jack the Ripper” Thomassen says. On the right are the Deadcar Races. In one of the cars we recognize a few heads from the famous Bosch painting called The Ship of Fools. The red car seems to be riddled with bullet holes and is crashing against a yellow car with ape-like figures that will fall down at any moment in to fully radioactive water. In front of the burning Cathedral of Den Bosch is burning is a statue of Jeroen Bosch . Thomassen notes that there is a rareerror on this statue. The type of palette held in his hand was not used in those days and is a type from the 17th Century. Above a pair of copulating toads that are part of The Toad Nasty Porn Show, is the The Wayfarer of Hieronymus Bosch in a strange hallway on his way to nowhere. By way of a conclusion Thomassen comments: “This sure is the last time I will tell anything about my work. You must not explain a painting. People must be hypnotized by seeing it. Perhaps they will think about what they actually see, and if they look at it for longer then ten seconds then I am very happy”.