Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

ustic revels 87
figure 49. Joachim Beuckelaer, Village Kermis, 1563. St. Petersburg, The
State Hermitage Museum.
inhabitants of city and country mingled, it is not surprising that fashionably
dressed urbanites appear in many Flemish paintings of rustic festivities
produced during the second half of the sixteenth century. Already
in Pieter Aertsen’s Peasant Festival of 1550 (Fig. 48), the earliest Flemish
painting of such a subject known to us, a distinguished bearded gentleman
sits at the table within the little building, possibly a tavern, in the
middle ground, while in the right middle distance one city man joins a
country dance, while another one, seated against the wall, dallies with a
village girl. 54 Similar amorous exchanges between courtly gallants and
shepherd lasses had occasionally appeared in earlier Flemish tapestries, 55
but in the peasant scenes by Aertsen’s successors, the city folk generally
conduct themselves with greater propriety. 56
In Joachim Beuckelaer’s Village Kermis of 1563 (Fig. 49), several fash