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Netherlandish Proverbs
Pieter Bruegel the Elder · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569)
- Date
- 1559
- Dimensions
- 117 x 163 cm
- Medium
- Oil on oak panel
- Location
- Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany
Netherlandish Proverbs shows a crowded village square in which the inhabitants act out, quite literally, around a hundred proverbs and idioms of the Dutch language of the time. It was originally titled The Blue Cloak, or The Folly of the World.
A closer look
At the centre a young woman drapes a blue cloak over her husband, meaning she is deceiving him. Elsewhere a man bangs his head against a brick wall, another fills in the well after the calf has drowned, someone casts roses before swine, and a man tries to tie a bell on a cat. A figure on the left is literally armed to the teeth, while on the roof someone has his roof tiled with tarts, a sign of great wealth. Read together, the scenes form a satirical catalogue of human foolishness, stubbornness and sin.
More by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
In this gallery
Famous works elsewhere
- Dull Gret 1563
- The Peasant Dance 1568
- Two Chained Monkeys 1562
- The Triumph of Death 1560
- The Blind Leading the Blind 1568
- The Magpie on the Gallows 1568