Our ancestors of the 16th and 17th centuries took just as much delight in the amusing antics and imitative behavior of monkeys as we do today. Although these creatures were still something of a novelty in northern Europe, images of monkeys soon acquired a special place in artistic tradition.
Bert Schepers (Centrum Rubenianum and University of Leuven) is working on a PhD on the genre of monkey satires or singeries in Flemish painting, a subject that has scarcely been studied to date.