Proverbs

Little is known of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s life. He was born in Brussels as the eldest son of the famous Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Because he was very young when his father died, he and his brother Jan I probably learnt the art of painting from their grandmother Mayken Verhulst. The art of Pieter II lay very much in the shadow of his father’s. He not only repeatedly copied many of his father’s works, but his father’s popular style is to be seen reflected in the paintings that came from his own inspiration. The Proverbs from the collection of the Rockox House is an excellent copy of the painting that Pieter Brueghel the Elder made in 1559 in Antwerp and that today hangs in Berlin. The more than one hundred proverbs can be split into two groups. The first illustrates the absurdity of human behavior and turns the world on its head, as symbolised by the globe with the cross set underneath it. Sinfulness could arise from this foolishness, and this forms the subject of the second category, symbolised in its turn by the unfaithful wife wrapping her husband in a blue cloak (i.e. deceiving him).