Parlevinker (Bumboat Vendor)

A parlevinker was a real and humble trade, the floating grocer who rowed out to sell bread, tobacco and gin to passing ships, and the word is still Dutch for a waterborne pedlar. Wiedijk turns the little boat into a drifting cornucopia on a pond of water lilies, fruit and bottles and a pumpkin and a llama heaped around the vendor, a Snoopy toy perched among the goods. On the sail floats a green-haired Medusa holding her cheeks, and that is no accident: the Gorgon's face was set on shields and ship's prows for centuries to turn away evil, and Caravaggio famously painted her on a ceremonial shield. So the humblest commerce imaginable sails out under the guard of an ancient myth, kitsch and the sacred sharing a single boat.