Al-Arm

Adriaen van de Venne, a prollific and multi-talented artist active during the early seventeenth century, painted, drew, designed book illustrations, and wrote poems. Among his best known works are his many illustrations of proverbs and expressions which he executed on large sheets and small panels in grisaille and red chalk. The Met has a drawing in red chalk showing an elegant couple with death entitled on a banderolle at the bottom "To Each His Own Pastime." The present, equally large, sheet depicts a complimentary aspect of Van de Venne's work, his images of peasants and beggars dancing and fighting. This drawing is entitled on a banderolle at the bottom "All-arm," meaning "All Poor" but also a pun on the word alarm. As with most of his images of beggars fighting, the chaotic scene is indeed alarming - a man with a knife is about to stab another below him with a man with a peg leg behind him is about to hit him with his crutch. People run over from all directions and on the left a woman and a man kneeling are making noise from the side. Depictions of peasants and beggars fighting goes back to Sebald Beham in early 16th c. Nuremberg and to artists around the time of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. By the time Van de Venne picked it up, it was a well established subject that presented the theme with caricatured types.

The purpose of these large red chalk drawings by the artist are a question. They often reproduce grisaille paintings by the artist and are about the same size, so Edwin Buijsen has proposed that they served as ricordi of a sort for the artist. No corresponding painting for this composition, or our other drawing for that matter, exists although there are numerous works entitled All-Arm.