Kermis at Hoboken

Pieter Bruegel created this detailed drawing as a design for an engraving. Celebrated for his vivid depictions of peasant life, Bruegel here shows revelers at a festival in the Flemish village of Hoboken. Amidst scenes of drinking and dancing and figures relieving themselves, an archery contest is precariously underway. The secular and the religious co-exist. At the upper left a chamber of rhetoric presents a performance whilst a statue of a saint is carried at the head of a religious procession.