Pieter Bruegel Research Articles

The Panoramic Landscape of Human Suffering

T Old Masters were never wrong about suffering, wrote W.H. Auden. They understood how it takes place, “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along” (1). Auden was referring to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which dwelled on suffering, along with labor and merrymaking, the lot of simple folk. He painted them with such dedication it earned him the title “Peasant Bruegel.” He so delighted in the behavior of peasants, he disguised himself as one, and went out into the countryside to mingle with them during their feasts and weddings, “... brought gifts like the other guests, claiming relationship or kinship with the bride or groom.” He observed “how they ate, drank, danced, capered, or made love, all of which he was well able to reproduce cleverly and pleasantly,” wrote chronicler Karel van Mander, “... men and women of the Campine and elsewhere―naturally, as they really were” (2). So well did he represent them and through them all of humanity, that in the words of his friend the famed cartographer Abraham Ortelius, “he painted many things that cannot be painted” (3). He was held in high esteem by scholars of his day, among them poet and engraver Dierick Volckherzoon Coornhert, who once was so impressed by Bruegel’s work, he wrote, “I examined it with pleasure and admiration from top to bottom for the artistry of its drawing and the care of the engraving...methinks I heard moaning, groaning and screaming and the splashing of tears in this portrayal of sorrow” (3). What we know about the artist comes from Karel van Mander’s Painter’s Book, published in 1604, some 35 years after Bruegel’s death. He was likely born in the late 1520s in Breda (modern Netherlands); lived and worked in Antwerp and Brussels; and apprenticed with sculptor, architect, painter, designer of tapestry and stained glass Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose daughter he later married. The apprenticeship had little infl uence on his style but did introduce him to humanist circles and the work of Maria Verhulst Bessemers, his mother-in-law, a skilled miniaturist and illuminator who experimented with tempera on linen (4). After 1559, he dropped the “h” from his name, though his sons, Jan and Pieter the Younger, retained the original Brueghel spelling. Too young at the time of his death to learn from their father, the sons studied with their grandmother and became important artists in their own right, part of a brilliant legacy of four generations in the 16th and 17th centuries. Like many northern artists, Bruegel traveled to Italy. He visited Naples and Messina and lived in Rome, where he worked with Giulio Clovio, the “prince of miniaturists”

:Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments prologue Deciphering Bruegel chapter 1 The Commodity of Laughter in the Sixteenth Century chapter 2 Bruegel's Art of Laughter chapter 3 A Bankrupt and His Bruegels chapter 4 Rustic Revels chapter 5 Making Good Cheer chapter 6 The Devil's Nemesis: Griet and Her Sisters epilogue Taking Laughter Seriously Notes Select Bibliography Index

Painting life: the art of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder

Painting Life uniquely conveys the relevance of the paintings of the old Flemish master Pieter Bruegel, The Elder (1520/5-1590) for modern audiences. Based on extensive research and first-hand observation, Robert L. Bonn guides the reader through the scenes depicted in these remarkable works of art, including the something more so often imbedded in them - the social context in which they were painted, and how they relate to our lives today. Bonn clearly explains why Bruegel's paintings brilliantly capture the universal conditions of conflict, work, play, folly, and chaos, as well as innumerable pieces of biblical and folk wisdom. His paintings can be found in collections all over the world, including Madrid, Vienna, Brussels, Rome, and Prague, to name a few.

UTOPIA LOST: ALLEGORY, RUINS AND PIETER BRUEGEL'S TOWERS OF BABEL

Beginning with the ubiquity with which art history discusses Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work as allegorical – and the Tower of Babel paintings are no exception – I offer a reassessment of this by contributing to the ongoing debates within Breugel studies on methodology, and, until now, outside of them, on Walter Benjamin's theory of allegory. Through a close reading of the paintings, the art historical literature on the paintings, and a philosophical interpretation of the Tower of Babel narrative, I intervene in the methodological debates by proposing an alternative conception of the dialectical aspects of Bruegel's paintings. I then suggest how an understanding of the dialectical character of the paintings, and a necessarily overdetermined hermeneutics of them, can add to our knowledge of Bruegel's work, and put pressure on our comprehension of Benjamin's writings on allegory and ruins.

Bruegel’s Falling Figures

Reformation iconoclasm imposed intense pressure on the relation between pictorial images and their viewers. Medieval techniques used in the interpretation of biblical texts as well as processes of association involved in systems of mnemotechnics contributed to the process of redefining their function as images intended for spiritual meditation. This essay examines five paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (“Fall of the Rebel Angels,” “Conversion of Saul,” “Fall of Icarus,” “Parable of the Blind,” and “The Peasant and the Birdnester”). Each presents a moment of transformation associated with the biblical narrative of the Fall of Man. In this context, incomplete actions are held within a larger pattern of divine justice and promised redemption. During the turbulent 1560s, for a contemplative viewer, such representations of change as a phase in the cycle of becoming rather than an irredeemable rupture served to reaffirm the possibility of controlling spiritual and political chaos.

:Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric

:<i>Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric</i>

Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (review)

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 243 tradition and the tensions and anxiety to which Cynicism often gives rise, it does pro? vide a series of provocative 'lectures cyniques' of major Renaissance texts. These consist in reading a contrario, giving meaning to the apparently meaningless, as in Le Tiers Livre, or in viewing attacks on credulity as being in defence of true faith, as in Cymbalum mundi. This book will therefore be of interest to all those who are concerned with what is reminiscent of ancient Cynicism in the French Renaissance, which will by definition be most specialists. Oxford Brookes University Hugh Roberts Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel. Introduction by Michel Jeanneret; postface by Frederic Elsig. Geneva: Droz. 2004. 200pp. SwF24.6o;?i5.o7. ISBN 2600 -00533-1. First published in 1565, this work is a collection of 120 engravings, which the original, anonymous introduction attributed to Rabelais. They show various bizarre creatures: forexample, human beings with animal features, such as the face of an owl (no. 11); or human beings hybridized with material objects, such as a man with a lute for a torso (no. 96). Their very oddity and their lack of captions make these engravings difficult to interpret. The guidance offered by Michel Jeanneret and Frederic Elsig is all the more welcome. Elsig's approach is through history of art. He dismisses the attribution of the engravings to Rabelais and, following modern opinion, ascribes them to one Francois Desprez, known to have worked in Paris between 1565 and 1580. Elsig places the Songes in the tradition of 'droleries', whimsical drawings which often appeared in the margins of medieval manuscripts from northern France and the Low Countries, and which entered high art with Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. ('Droleries', as he underlines, are distinct from Renaissance grotesques inspired by ancient Roman murals.) He sees the Songes as a pattern-bookfor craftsmen, although, as he himself remarks, no example has been found of any figure taken directly from the book (pp. 192-93). For Elsig, the interest of the work is that, however modest its quality, it helps exemplify the 'culture visuelle' of the era (p. 196). Jeanneret, too, notes the art-historical interest of the work, but emphasizes that it reflects the con? temporary fascination with monsters. And, while ruling out direct involvement of Rabelais in the Songes , he sees in them a Rabelaisian ability to disarm the monstrous by laughter: 'Si les Songes doivent quelque chose a Rabelais [. . .] c'est peut-etre cela: danser sur la crete de l'abime, rire a la face du monstre' (p. 47). Jeanneret and Elsig thus adopt somewhat divergent perspectives. Given the nature of the book, however, such divergence is illuminating and healthy. On balance, the Songes hold perhaps only peripheral interest formost literary spe? cialists. But, be that as it may, gratitude is still due to Jeanneret and Elsig for their scholarship and open-mindedness, and also to the publisher formaking readily avail? able yet another little-known work. North Shields Ian R. Morrison Clement Marot et les metamorphoses de Vauteur a I'aube de la Renaissance. By Flo? rian Preisig. (Cahiers d'Humanismeet Renaissance, 71) Geneva: Droz. 2004. 192 pp. SwF 49.10; ?33.29. ISBN 2-600-00919-1. The project of this book is to chart the changes in notions of authorship brought about by Marot in his works. The firstchapter concentrates on his predecessors, the 244 Reviews Rhetoriqueurs, moving on to Marot and his contemporaries, showing how print culture brought about a new awareness of the power of the author, and new possibilities for him to manifest himself in his text. Stated another way, one might suggest, Marot and his generation were particularly good at self-advertisement and mutual congratulation in their texts and para-texts. If the demonstration in this chapter perhaps becomes a little heavy-handed, I found rather more interesting the discussion in Chapter 2 of the differentpersonae assumed by Marot in his poetry. Marot the buffoon is only one of many: Florian Preisig shows very pertinently the importance of the Marot/Maro parallel often used by the poet and his friends, which clearly conferred on him a singularly elevated status. Preisig also...

Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (review)

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 243 tradition and the tensions and anxiety to which Cynicism often gives rise, it does pro? vide a series of provocative 'lectures cyniques' of major Renaissance texts. These consist in reading a contrario, giving meaning to the apparently meaningless, as in Le Tiers Livre, or in viewing attacks on credulity as being in defence of true faith, as in Cymbalum mundi. This book will therefore be of interest to all those who are concerned with what is reminiscent of ancient Cynicism in the French Renaissance, which will by definition be most specialists. Oxford Brookes University Hugh Roberts Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel. Introduction by Michel Jeanneret; postface by Frederic Elsig. Geneva: Droz. 2004. 200pp. SwF24.6o;?i5.o7. ISBN 2600 -00533-1. First published in 1565, this work is a collection of 120 engravings, which the original, anonymous introduction attributed to Rabelais. They show various bizarre creatures: forexample, human beings with animal features, such as the face of an owl (no. 11); or human beings hybridized with material objects, such as a man with a lute for a torso (no. 96). Their very oddity and their lack of captions make these engravings difficult to interpret. The guidance offered by Michel Jeanneret and Frederic Elsig is all the more welcome. Elsig's approach is through history of art. He dismisses the attribution of the engravings to Rabelais and, following modern opinion, ascribes them to one Francois Desprez, known to have worked in Paris between 1565 and 1580. Elsig places the Songes in the tradition of 'droleries', whimsical drawings which often appeared in the margins of medieval manuscripts from northern France and the Low Countries, and which entered high art with Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. ('Droleries', as he underlines, are distinct from Renaissance grotesques inspired by ancient Roman murals.) He sees the Songes as a pattern-bookfor craftsmen, although, as he himself remarks, no example has been found of any figure taken directly from the book (pp. 192-93). For Elsig, the interest of the work is that, however modest its quality, it helps exemplify the 'culture visuelle' of the era (p. 196). Jeanneret, too, notes the art-historical interest of the work, but emphasizes that it reflects the con? temporary fascination with monsters. And, while ruling out direct involvement of Rabelais in the Songes , he sees in them a Rabelaisian ability to disarm the monstrous by laughter: 'Si les Songes doivent quelque chose a Rabelais [. . .] c'est peut-etre cela: danser sur la crete de l'abime, rire a la face du monstre' (p. 47). Jeanneret and Elsig thus adopt somewhat divergent perspectives. Given the nature of the book, however, such divergence is illuminating and healthy. On balance, the Songes hold perhaps only peripheral interest formost literary spe? cialists. But, be that as it may, gratitude is still due to Jeanneret and Elsig for their scholarship and open-mindedness, and also to the publisher formaking readily avail? able yet another little-known work. North Shields Ian R. Morrison Clement Marot et les metamorphoses de Vauteur a I'aube de la Renaissance. By Flo? rian Preisig. (Cahiers d'Humanismeet Renaissance, 71) Geneva: Droz. 2004. 192 pp. SwF 49.10; ?33.29. ISBN 2-600-00919-1. The project of this book is to chart the changes in notions of authorship brought about by Marot in his works. The firstchapter concentrates on his predecessors, the ...

Susan Wheeler, Five hundred years of medicine in art: an illustrated catalogue of prints and drawings from the Clements C. Fry Collection in the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, Ashgate Publishing, 2001, pp. xxviii, 363, £85.00, US$144.95 (hardback 0-8596-7992-6).

This catalogue lists and illustrates prints and drawings on medical themes from the Fry Collection at Yale University Medical Library. This wonderfully rich collection consists of about 2000 images gathered over almost thirty years by Dr Fry, who donated it to the library in 1955. The images span five centuries and include the work of over six hundred artists, including great masters such as Pieter Bruegel, Rembrandt van Rijn, Guercino, and Hendrick Goltzius. It is especially strong on French and British works, particularly images representing the interaction of doctors and patients, specific diseases and injuries, and therapeutic practices. Almost half of the works are satirical or humorous, including a large number of excellent caricatures by the French Honore Daumier (1808–1879) and the British Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827). Each item consists of a black-and-white reproduction of the work (all roughly the size of the 35-mm. negative from which they were printed, which makes a magnifying glass a necessary aid for most readers) and a textual entry identifying the artist, title, medium, dimensions, and inscription (if any). The catalogue is organized thematically, with ninety-nine subject groupings arranged into fourteen main topics dedicated to different medical professions and trades, institutions, practices, diseases, therapies, and so on. This arrangement allows for the comparison of contemporary representations of the same topic—for instance, a dozen depictions of grimacing faces ingesting medicines—or even a single subject—such as seven different portraits displaying the obesity of Mr Daniel Lambert of Leicester, c.1800; as well as the examination of continuities and changes in representation over time. (The thematic arrangement, however, is insensitive to differences in medium or genre.) The excellent indexes at the end of the catalogue allow the reader quickly to navigate the collection, searching by artist, title, publisher, name, and subject. The richness of the collection, the inclusion of a reproduction of every single item in it, and the care with which the catalogue has been edited and put together will make this a valuable tool for those interested in the intersection of art and medicine, as well as for those simply looking for striking images with which to illustrate their research or teaching.

The Flight of Form: Auden, Bruegel, and the Turn to Abstraction in the 1940s

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Flight of Form: Auden, Bruegel, and the Turn to Abstraction in the 1940sAlexander NemerovAlexander Nemerov Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 31, Number 4Summer 2005 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/444515 Views: 391Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref © 2005 by The University of Chicago.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jeanne Nuechterlein Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, (Mar 2017): 379–390.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119072034.ch26Marcel Sarot Transformative Poetry. A Case Study of W. H. Auden’s Musée Des Beaux Arts and General Conclusions, Perichoresis 14, no.22 (Oct 2016): 81–97.https://doi.org/10.1515/perc-2016-0012Marit J. MacArthur One World? The Poetics of Passenger Flight and the Perception of the Global, PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 127, no.22 (Oct 2020): 264–282.https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2012.127.2.264

Charcot Revisited

Since Jean-Martin Charcot's time, Pieter Bruegel has been invoked as a famous contributor to the iconography of chorea. This is based not on a picture by Bruegel himself but on a 19th century engraving declared by Charcot to depict St Vitus' dance or chorea germanorum, a form of mass hysteria. A search through the art history literature did not find chorea or St Vitus' dance as a subject of any of Bruegel's works. However, the picture presented by Charcot appeared to be based on a composition that features a pilgrimage of patients suffering from St John's disease or falling sickness, one of the many names applied to epilepsy. This study traces the history of Charcot's allusions to Bruegel's picture and explores the little-known works--drawings, engravings, and paintings--based on Bruegel's composition in the context of chorea, epilepsy, and hysteria. The conclusion of this study is that while Charcot ignored the precise details of Bruegel's composition, his overall interpretation was correct. Beyond any specific diagnosis, Bruegel's work remains universal, giving a unique and compelling picture of human suffering and of the plight of devoted caregivers.

The Flight of Form: Auden, Bruegel, and the Turn to Abstraction in the 1940s

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Flight of Form: Auden, Bruegel, and the Turn to Abstraction in the 1940sAlexander NemerovAlexander Nemerov Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 31, Number 4Summer 2005 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/444515 Views: 388Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref © 2005 by The University of Chicago.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jeanne Nuechterlein Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, (Mar 2017): 379–390.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119072034.ch26Marcel Sarot Transformative Poetry. A Case Study of W. H. Auden’s Musée Des Beaux Arts and General Conclusions, Perichoresis 14, no.22 (Oct 2016): 81–97.https://doi.org/10.1515/perc-2016-0012Marit J. MacArthur One World? The Poetics of Passenger Flight and the Perception of the Global, PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 127, no.22 (Oct 2020): 264–282.https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2012.127.2.264

A digital technique for art authentication.

We describe a computational technique for authenticating works of art, specifically paintings and drawings, from high-resolution digital scans of the original works. This approach builds a statistical model of an artist from the scans of a set of authenticated works against which new works then are compared. The statistical model consists of first- and higher-order wavelet statistics. We show preliminary results from our analysis of 13 drawings that at various times have been attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder; these results confirm expert authentications. We also apply these techniques to the problem of determining the number of artists that may have contributed to a painting attributed to Pietro Perugino and again achieve an analysis agreeing with expert opinion.

:From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550-1672

List of Illustrations Preface Introduction: The Dutch between Militarism and Anti-Militarism in the Century of the Part One (1550-1600): Spanish Herod, Dutch Innocents Ch. 1 Massacre of the Innocents in Literature and Art circa 1300 to 1550 Ch. 2 Vermeyen's Tapestry Series on the Conquest of Tunis by Charles V Ch. 3 The Great Repression under Charles V and Philip II Ch. 4 Two Massacres of the Innocents and a Census in Bethlehem by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Ch. 5 Maarten van Heemskerck: A Pacifist in Art Ch. 6 Spanish Herod, Dutch Innocents: Anti-Spanish Satires 1569-1578 Ch. 7 Massacres in France: The Roman Triumvirate, Saint Bartholomew's Day Ch. 8 Massacre and Plunder in Late Sixteenth-Century Landscape Ch. 9 Haarlem and the War 1578-1600: Patriotic Works by Goltzius, Jacques de Gheyn, Cornelis van Haarlem, and Karel van Mander Part Two (1600-1650): New War, Old Plundering Ch. 10 Plundering: The Written Record Ch. 11 New Landscape, Old Plundering Ch. 12 Transacting the Plunder Ch. 13 Rubens: Man of Peace or Man of War? Part Three (1600-1670): The Good Soldier (Soldier as Courtier) Ch. 14 The Soldier Redeemed: Siege Maps Ch. 15 The Magnanimous Soldier: The Continence of Scipio Africanus Ch. 16 The Ideal Soldier: The Civic Guard Company Paintings Ch. 17 The Gallant Soldier: Gerard Ter Borch in Deventer 1650s-60s Continuation: 1648-1998 Bibliography Index

Henry M. Luttikhuizen. Review of "Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric" by Mark A. Meadow.

Henry M. Luttikhuizen. Review of "Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric" by Mark A. Meadow.

Bruegel on Icarus: Inversions of the Fall

The writer discusses Pieter Bruegel the Elder's treatment of the traditional tragedy of Daedalus and Icarus in his painting The Fall of Icarus (Brussels, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts). This tragedy is best preserved by Ovid, mostly in the Metamorphoses, and Bruegel's painting clearly demonstrates his familiarity with Ovid. There are some anomalies in Bruegel's depiction of the story, however: There is an anonymous human corpse seen at the far left, for example; the three genre figures are the reverse of those characterized by Ovid, for they offer no notice of the fall of Icarus, who splashes into the sea in an obscure corner of the painting; and Daedalus is absent. The writer goes on to examine the visual and literary antecedents that Bruegel may have incorporated into the painting, arguing that his inverted use of traditional attitudes and elements would seem to be a satirical tactic used to focus on the disturbing aspect of apathy toward human suffering.

Bruegel's &lt;i&gt;Netherlandish proverbs&lt;/i&gt;and Correspond-ing Images in Old Japanese Art

Summary Among old Dutch proverbs and those in Japanese there are many similar views of life, wisdom and moral lessons, even though the phrasing may differ. The present author discusses twelve proverbs from Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) in Berlin and corresponding old Japanese proverbs and sayings in Japanese art to compare expressions, items of each proverb, meaning, degree of morality and other concerns. The present author also refers to some literary (Erasmus, Anna Bijns, Donaes Idinau and Carolus Tuiman and other literati) as well as visual background (misericords, engravings by Frans Hogenberg, Nicolaes Clock and other artists) before and after Bruegel's time as parallel examples. Proverbs in Ukiyoe, illustrations of proverb books, and cartoons by Japanese artists, such as those by Utagawa Toyokuni the Elder, Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Kawanabe Kyôsai, make good comparisons of Bruegel's work. Bruegel's representation of “Casting roses before swine”corresponds to Kuniyoshi's “Gold coins to a cat.”Both indicate almost the same meaning to give valuable advice or things to those who are unable to appreciate them. However, Bruegel's “He falls from the ox onto the ass”is meant to denote falling from a higher position to a lower one, while Kyôsai's “To jump from a cow to a horse”signifies the opposite situation; that is, a man exchanges his old wife for a young wife. In general, Japanese proverbial images give us the impression of a more comic and humorous sentiment than we find in Bruegel's didactic world.

Jan Miense Molenaer: painter of the Dutch golden age

One of Holland's most innovative painters of the seventeenth century, but long overshadowed by his more famous wife, painter Judith Leyster, Molenaer is a key link between Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jan Steen. His early work consists of colourful genre paintings, portraits, and portrayals of the playful world of children, followed by a concentration on scenes of peasant life, all displaying an inventive symbolism and humour. Contents: Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age; Molenaer in his Studio: Props, Models and Motifs; Jan Miense Molenaer in the Comic Mode; Catalogue of the Exhibition; Appendix: The 1668 Inventory of Molenaer's Possessions

The Problem with Looking at Pieter Bruegel's Elck

This essay concerns optical wit in Pieter Bruegel's Elck (1558). While scholars have treated this print as an earnest essay in human frailty, I focus instead on its playful negations both of knowledge and of one who would possess it. Building on Peter Parshall's earlier delineation of this paradoxical theme, I suggest that Elck uses a parallelism based in looking to implicate the viewer as one who would obtain a measure of understanding from, or apply it to, the printed image: as the protagonist Elck (Everyone) pores over worldly goods, and as his counterpart Niemant (Nobody) gazes foolishly into a mirror, so does the viewer assess the print. All look, but few – if any – truly see. The implications of this parallelism are crucial. The successful (that is, knowledgeable) interpreter must necessarily cease to exist, as knowledge is, according to the print, the sole province of Nobody; the other option, interpretive failure, associates us with Everyone, who patently lacks any knowledge whatsoever. Bruegel thus cleverly indicts the interpretive skills of his audience by denying the potential for anything but nonsensical reading. I suggest that the print thus disrupts traditional responses to the image and, consequently, calls into question the relationship between artist, object, and observer.

The Problem with Looking at Pieter Bruegel's Elck

This essay concerns optical wit in Pieter Bruegel's Elck (1558). While scholars have treated this print as an earnest essay in human frailty, I focus instead on its playful negations both of knowledge and of one who would possess it. Building on Peter Parshall's earlier delineation of this paradoxical theme, I suggest that Elck uses a parallelism based in looking to implicate the viewer as one who would obtain a measure of understanding from, or apply it to, the printed image: as the protagonist Elck (Everyone) pores over worldly goods, and as his counterpart Niemant (Nobody) gazes foolishly into a mirror, so does the viewer assess the print. All look, but few – if any – truly see. The implications of this parallelism are crucial. The successful (that is, knowledgeable) interpreter must necessarily cease to exist, as knowledge is, according to the print, the sole province of Nobody; the other option, interpretive failure, associates us with Everyone, who patently lacks any knowledge whatsoever. Bruegel thus cleverly indicts the interpretive skills of his audience by denying the potential for anything but nonsensical reading. I suggest that the print thus disrupts traditional responses to the image and, consequently, calls into question the relationship between artist, object, and observer.