Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

chapter five
making good cheer
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Eating and drinking hold soul and life together.
netherlandish proverb
If you look at the manners of everyday life, there is no race
more open to humanity or kindness [than the Netherlanders]
. . . and not prone to any serious vices, except that it is a
little given to pleasure, especially to feasting.
erasmus
As we have seen, Jean Noirot displayed three of Bruegel’s rustic celebrations
in his dining room, specifically his “small, back dining room.”
To judge from contemporary records of work done on his residence, the
walls of this particular chamber had been marbleized in green, with black
baseboards and some wall paintings. 1 Against this presumably subdued
background, Noirot’s Bruegels, if they were anything like the Detroit and
Vienna panels, must have glowed with life and color. At first sight, the
placement of these pictures was not so remarkable; because a family ’s social
activity tended to center on the dining room, its decoration was often
more elaborate and costly than that of other rooms. 2 But more than their
decorative qualities may have prompted Noirot to embellish his dining
room with Bruegel’s peasant scenes—if the hanging of pictures in a
sixteenth-century Antwerp house was not simply haphazard, dictated
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