Focusing on the Replicas and similar statues of this artwork, analyze the Feud with Geraardsbergen about the In Belgium.
Feud with Geraardsbergen There is an ongoing dispute over which Manneken Pis is the oldest; the one in Brussels or the one in Geraardsbergen. According to tradition, Geraardsbergen was in a rebuilding phase after the devastating passage of Jean II de Croÿ's troops in the spring of 1452, during a war opposing the city of Ghent and the Burgundian duke Philip the Good. On that occasion, the spout from one of the city's fountains, in the shape of a copper lion's head, was taken by the people of Ghent. The aldermen of Geraardsbergen thus had their own Manneken Pis made in 1459 to replace it. The statue was cast in brass by Reinier Van Tienen, based on a model designed by Gillis Vander Jeught.
It can be assumed that the first version of Brussels' Manneken Pis, dating from before 1451, served as inspiration to Geraardsbergen's statue. Looking at the ages of the statues, both of them are replicas; the one in Brussels dating from 1965 and the one in Geraardsbergen from 1985. The design of Geraarsbergen's original statue, however, which dates from 1459, antedates that of Duquesnoy's statue, from 1619. It is on this basis that Geraardsbergen asserts that its Manneken Pis is the oldest, but since there was probably already a Manneken Pis in 1452 in Brussels, the tradition might be slightly older there.
Ghent Geraardsbergen brass Philip the Good Brussels Manneken Pis 4 Jean II de Croÿ