The Bean King or The King Drinks

In a room an ebullient group is celebrating the Biblical feast of Epiphany [Visit of the Magi]. In the centre the 'king', a fat man with a king’s crown on his head, is raising his glass. On the right a woman is wiping the bottom of a child, while an old man reaches for her breast. On the left, from its mother’s lap, a child is urinating on to a dog standing near the table. A man is being sick. There are several paintings of this scene by Jordaens, among others in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg (Russia) and in the Royal Museum of Belgium in Brussels (Belgium). Paulus Pontius made this engraving after a modello (model) that is in the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts. However, Pontius replaced the Dutch caption by an admonishing text in Latin meaning: ‘Nothing is more like a lunatic than a drunkard’. At the bottom of the print it continues: ‘Do not entice those who are moderate with wine to drink, for wine has ruined many a person’.