The Dutch Proverbs

In 1567, Lodovico Guicciardini referred to the creator of the Netherlandish Proverbs as “Pietro Brueghel di Breda”, suggesting an origin in Breda, but also that the artist grew up in a town rather than in the countryside. Bruegel was probably born between 1525 and 1530. The Emperor Charles V (1500–58), who ruled over the
Netherlands, was 30 years old at the time, and Philip I (1527–98) had just come into the world. During this period, the Netherlands was enjoying an unaccustomed degree of prosperity. When Bruegel died, the country was being plundered by the Duke of Alba’s mercenaries, while the common people took up weapons to defend
themselves. The creative achievement of Pieter Bruegel – the most important and gifted artist of his time – developed against the backdrop of this eventful history.
In 1551, Bruegel was accepted into the Antwerp painters’ guild as an independent master. Shortly thereafter, he travelled to Italy, where he stayed for several years. It was not, however, the art of antiquity or of the Italian painters that left the most profound impression on him, but instead the grandiose scenery of the Alps, the
Ticino Valley, and the area around Saint Gotthard, which decisively influenced his landscape art. By 1555, Bruegel was back in Antwerp, where he supplied drawings for the publisher Hieronymus Cock, works that received wide dissemination in print form. In Brussels in 1563, Bruegel married the daughter of the painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, who was – according to a report by Karel van Mander (1604) – his painting teacher. Bruegel left behind numerous friends in Antwerp. Among them was the humanist and geographer Abraham Ortelius (1527–98), who had introduced Bruegel to his social circle, consisting of Catholics influenced by the worldview of Erasmus, who condemned the intolerance of both state and church with profound conviction. The spirit of tolerance and humanism that speaks from the works of Bruegel, and which continues to touch us directly even today, was deepened in the circle of his Antwerp friends. But Bruegel soon found new supporters in Brussels as well. Among them was no less a figure than Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvella (1517–86), the confidant of Philip II of Spain, and an advisor to Margaret of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands.
Art-lovers of his time regarded Bruegel as a congenial successor to Hieronymus Bosch, who had died in 1516. Around 1573, Abraham Ortelius paid homage to his prematurely deceased friend in a tribute composed in Latin, which reads in part: “Revered by the ancestral spirits, Pieter Bruegel was undoubtedly the greatest painter of his time, something no one would dare to deny, or at most jealous people, or rivals, or someone who knows nothing of the art of this master. In order to say it all, I would even repeat that not only is he the greatest painter, but that he alone embodies the entire world of pictures. And this Bruegel, whom I eulogise here, painted many things which could not be painted, as Pliny once said when speaking of Apelles. In all of his works, he always aspires to suggest more than what is directly presented to view.”
The years 1559 and 1560 represent a decisive turning point in Bruegel’s creative production. Dating from these years is the Netherlandish Proverbs, as well as two paintings now preserved in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum), namely the Fight Between Carnival and Lent and Children’s Games. The first of his masterpieces, they stand at the beginning of the richly productive period that established Bruegel’s renown, and which continues to excite the admiration of viewers today.
During Bruegel’s lifetime, the Dutch language had a far larger repertoire of proverbs at its command than is the case today. Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Adagiorum Collectanea, his celebrated collection of Latin sayings, is one of the most beautiful examples of this predilection for proverbs, one shared by Bruegel as well, and one that assumes genuinely encyclopaedic dimensions in his depiction of the Netherlandish Proverbs.
Just before he completed this painting, Bruegel produced a drawing that depicts the “Elck”, which is to say, the proverbial “Everyman”, who is shown with a lantern in his hand, rummaging through barrels, baskets, and sacks. He thinks only of his own gain, not unlike those men who pull doggedly at the end of a length of cloth.
In the inscription that accompanies the print created after this drawing, we read: “Everywhere in the world, one sees only one’s self, and in all things, strives to find oneself. How can anyone find himself, when everyone seeks himself? Each seeks only his own advantage (the long end), the one from above, the other from below.
Almost no one knows himself. He who recognises this will witness great wonders.” There can be little doubt that the perception contained in these words furnishes one of the crucial points of departure for understanding Bruegel’s painting.
In an unprecedented way, this picture brings together more than 100 proverbs and sayings, providing them with a setting that is as convincingly real as the forms of human behaviour, which these nuggets of folk wisdom expose so succinctly and pointedly. The individual scenes play themselves out simultaneously, juxtaposed
without any obvious interdependence between them – just as they might occur by happenstance in the course of human life. Forming a spacious stage for the apparently ordinary occupations of the inhabitants is a village set on the banks of a river, not far from the sea. A farmhouse, dilapidated cottages, a stone bridge with pillory and tower, a village square at the centre of all of these goings-on, and a farmstead set amidst fields of grain near a forest provide the scenery for the hustle and bustle. Stretching out into the distance is the open sea, which gleams brightly with the dazzling sun of a day in late summer.
The diverse scenes are linked to one another through the subtle colour scheme. Colourful red and blue tones form the composition’s chromatic fulcrum. Dominating the centre of the scene is the blue of a cloak which a young woman – who herself wears a brilliant red dress – hangs on her frail, elderly husband. One of this painting’s oldest names is derived from the motif of the blue cloak, a common emblem for deceit. The same name is found on an engraving which appeared in Antwerp in 1558, and which may have furnished a stimulus for Bruegel’s picture. The (originally rhyming) inscription to this engraving reads: “It’s generally called the blue cloak, better to call it the foolishness of the world.” The notion that foolishness and self-deception usher in misfortune was endowed with tangible expression in Erasmus of Rotterdam’s In Praise of Folly (1511).
The earlier name of our picture, i.e. The World Upside Down, can be traced back to a motif of an inverted globe, depicted here by Bruegel as a striking emblem and suspended on the front of the house on the left hand side of the picture. It makes quite clear that we find ourselves in an inverted world. The people here – meaning
Bruegel’s figures – are characterised as typical representatives of the various estates, not however as individuals. Like soulless marionettes, they move upon the stage, without any genuine awareness of their surroundings. Here is a spectacle whose theatrics are reminiscent of Pantagruel’s journey, related by Rabelais in 1564, into the “realm of the quintessential”, whose subjects embody such proverbial absurdities through their fantastical doings.
In Bruegel’s composition as well, depictions of the inconsistencies, absurdities, and foolishness of human behaviour are given broad scope under the leitmotif of the world upside down. Here, a spring is filled in after the calf has drowned, and light is carried into the light of day in a basket. Other proverbs contain allusions to the
Seven Deadly Sins. Deception, lying, and hypocrisy are among the negative human traits documented so emphatically by the proverbs. Here is a world where one serves not God, but instead the devil. Even the representatives of the ecclesiastical estate are no exception, when they hang a flaxen beard on the Lord.
Against this background, it becomes clear that in fact, Bruegel’s picture embodies penetrating criticism, and is moreover pessimistic in tone. All the same, there is more to be seen here than a mere exposition of the seemingly immutable spectacle of human activity. Instead, Bruegel sought to enable his contemporaries to recognize the preposterousness of their behaviour, to grasp it in all of its magnitude. In this respect, his message has lost very little of its currency today. R. Grosshans