Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

chapter four
rustic revels
=ã
Nothing divides burgher and peasant other than the [city] wall.
johannes agricola, 1529
How would Jean Noirot, Niclaes Jonghelinck, Cardinal Granvelle, and
their peers have responded to Bruegel’s peasant revels? Did they view them
as visual sermons, as it were, on human folly? We cannot exclude such a
possibility, since the peasants had traditionally been mocked in literature
and drama for their loutish, uncouth ways, and their antics formed the
plot of many a rederijker farce. 1 The peasant couple Bruegel contributed
to Aert Molckeman’s mural was equally uncouth, as we have seen. 2 Peasant
festivities were also often criticized in real life for their drunkeness
and violence; as a speaker in Erasmus’s Colloquies says of an upcoming
kermis: “Tomorrow this entire village will ring with carousings, dances,
games, quarrels, and fights.” 3
The citizens of Antwerp, however, had long encountered peasants and
their celebrations on what were essentially positive occasions. 4 We know
that the city folk made excursions into the surrounding countryside on
Sundays and holidays; indeed, one illustration in a costume book first
published at Antwerp in 1577 shows the appropriate dress for a “Mulier
Antwerpiana extra muros prodeambulans” ( lady of Antwerp walking outside
the walls of the city). 5 Once in the country, city people strolled, refreshed
themselves with beer at the country inns—the tax on beer was
77