Gilles and Sauvage

Four figures are depicted on Gilles and Sauvage, including the main characters Gilles and Sauvage. Who are these two protagonists? Are they imaginary figures or historical characters? Three hypotheses can be tested. An impetus for this was given in the note to the technical description of the work in the catalogue of my oeuvre of Ensor's paintings.

First hypothesis:

The two characters could be the French chroniclers Nicole Gilles (142?-1503) and Denis Sauvage (1520?-1587). Nicole Gilles was treasurer of the French king Charles VIII and wrote Chronique et Annales de France which was probably first published in 1525 in Paris. During the reign of the French king Henry II, Denis Sauvage was active as historian, translator, philologist and author of Chronique de Flandre which probably was published for the first time in 1561. For the 1553 edition, Sauvage would have updated Gilles' Chronique et Annales de France.

Second hypothesis:

The characters depicted by Ensor could be Pieter Gillis ("Gilles", 1486-1553) and Jean Le Sauvage ("Sauvage", ?-1518). Pieter Gillis from Antwerp - also known as Petrus Aegidius - was a humanist and friend of Erasmus and Thomas More. He published Summa Sive Argentum Legum Imperatorum with the famous printer Dirk Martens in 1517 in which he described Le Sauvage as "a man of peace". During the same year, Gillis Pauli published Sententiae Receptae. He was also responsible for the publication of Utopia (1516) by Thomas More. At the beginning of Utopia, Gillis appears on stage: at the foot of the cathedral of Antwerp he meets the fictitious world traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus, who has just returned from Utopia. Gillis was also friends with Quinten Metsys, who made a portrait of him for Thomas More in 1517 (together with one of Erasmus) as a token of their mutual friendship.

After a successful career as a member of the Council of Flanders and of the chancellery of Brabant, Jean Le Sauvage was appointed in 1515 as the first and only Fleming to be chancellor of Charles V of Burgundy, later Emperor Charles V. Both Pieter Gillis and Jean Le Sauvage were active in humanist circles. That their relationship was confidential is shown by a letter from February 1517 from Gillis to Jean Sylvanius (Jean Le Sauvage) that is depicted on the reverse of the title page of Pauli Sententiae Receptae.

Third hypothesis:

Gilles and Sauvage refer to figures from the late medieval popular theatre ("cluyten"), such as Valentine and Ourson, the "wild man". These two characters are the subject of a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and of an anonymous print after Bruegel from 1566. The scene is found in Bruegel's painting The Fight of Carnival and Lent (1559, Vienna, Art History Museum). Ensor was inspired by Breugel in terms of content and style on several occasions, such as in the paintings The Sermon of St. Babylon (1892, current location unknown) and The Execution (1893, Hamburg, Kunsthalle, on long-term loan from Klaus Hegewisch). The grotesque and carnivalesque figures in François Rabelais' Pantagruel et Gargantua may also have inspired Ensor. He praised Bruegel and Rabelais in his numerous writings.

However, the question of why James Ensor painted this scene remains unanswered. What were his sources? Did he get information about "Denis" and "Sauvage" from third parties? Who are the other two figures in the painting? The character on the far left of the composition is reminiscent of an "Indian". The scene seems to depict the meeting between the popular figure "Gilles" and the "noble savage".