The Dutch Proverbs (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the ElderGemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Pieter Bruegel the Elder is the senior satirist of Dutch art. His paintings are packed with richly allusive imagery, ranging from the sacred to the profane to the downright ridiculous. His Proverbs illustrates many pearls of wisdom, some which survive and some which seem odd...
Have you ever felt like you're "banging your head off a brick wall"? You're not alone.
To this day, someone who is jumpy or restless might be described as "sitting on hot coals". Ouch!
Bruegel's painting is so busy with detail that many different proverbs or idioms are often acted out in one moment. In our modern tongue, we recognize this soldier as being "armed to the teeth"...
...but maybe we're less familiar with what it means to "bell the cat". In Bruegel's Netherlands, this meant "to do something in an impractical or dangerous way". It's certainly difficult to hang a bell on a cat and come away un-scratched...
Bruegel's backgrounds are as detailed as the rest of his scenes. No corner of the painting is wasted. Up here, "when the corn lessens, the pigs grow" meaning that one man's gain is usually at another's expense.
Always one for the wacky and weird, Bruegel here shows that, sometimes, "the fox and the crane dine together", a proverb taken from Aesop's fables meaning that if you trick someone, expect them to take revenge! That's one tense dinner table.
And it only gets weirder. Here, in this shady corner, one man "confesses to the devil" (revealing your secrets to your enemy) while another "holds a candle to the devil" (engaging in unwise flattery, and making friends in the wrong places).
Bruegel's not too high-and-mighty for a poop joke. "To crap on the world" is to hate and criticize everything. Also notice that here "the world is turned upside down", a very modern idiom.
There are too many proverbs here to list! Can you spot the blind leading the blind? Do you know what "keeping your eye on the sail" means? Zoom into Bruegel's painting here for yourself, and see how many proverbs you can decipher. There are over 100!
