Cutting the Stone

Cutting the Stone, also called The Extraction of the Stone of Madness or The Cure of Folly, is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch,[1] displayed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, completed around 1494 or later.

Cutting the Stone
Artist	Hieronymus Bosch
Year	c. 1494 or later
Type	Oil on board
Dimensions	48 cm × 35 cm (19 in × 14 in)
Location	Museo del Prado, Madrid

The painting depicts the extraction, by a man wearing a funnel hat, of the stone of madness, a "keye" (modern Dutch: kei) (in English a "stone" or "bulb") from a patient's head, using trepanation.[2] In the painting Bosch has exchanged the traditional "stone" as the object of extraction with the bulb of a flower. Another flower is on the table.

The inscription in gold-coloured Gothic script reads

(Middle Dutch):
Meester snyt die keye ras
Myne name Is lubbert Das

(English):
Master, quickly cut away the stone
my name is Lubbert Das

Lubbert Das was a comical (foolish) character in Dutch literature.

Interpretations

It is possible that the flower hints that the doctor is a charlatan as does the funnel hat. The woman balancing a book on her head is thought by Skemer to be a satire of the Flemish custom of wearing amulets made out of books and scripture, a pictogram for the word phylactery.[3] Otherwise, she is thought to depict folly.

Michel Foucault, in his History of Madness, says "Bosch's famous doctor is far more insane than the patient he is attempting to cure, and his false knowledge does nothing more than reveal the worst excesses of a madness immediately apparent to all but himself."

References

1. Ilsink, Matthijs; Koldeweij, Jos; Spronk, Ron; Hoogstede, Luuk (2016). Hieronymus Bosch: Painter and Draughtsman – Catalogue raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300-2201-48.
2. Povoledo, Elisabetta (October 27, 2008). "In Rome, a New Museum Invites a Hands-On Approach to Insanity". The Economist. Retrieved 2008-10-28. The logo of the Mind’s Museum is an overturned funnel. It is a reference to a 15th-century painting by Hieronymus Bosch that depicts a doctor using a scalpel to extract an object (the supposed “stone of madness”) from the skull of a patient. The doctor is wearing a funnel as a hat.
3. Skemer 2006:24.

Further reading

• (book on head) Binding Words Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. Skemer, Don C. PA: Penn State University Press, 2006. p. 24, 136n. ISBN 0-271-02722-3.