Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

110 making good cheer
figure 62. Attributed to Cornelis de Zeeuw, Pierre de Moucheron and His
Family, 1563. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
sobriety in the presence of the divine. 19 This tendency probably received
strong reinforcement from the tradition of Roman portraiture, available
to the sixteenth century in the form of marble busts and coins, as well as
prints after both, which emphasized serious demeanor.
However that may be, the people of Bruegel’s day preferred to have
themselves depicted as straightfaced and stately (“stuer wijnbrouwigh en
statigh,” as Van Mander expressed it). Statigh and statelyc are old Netherlandish
words that, like their English cognate stately, vividly convey such
qualities as “distinguished,” “aristocratic,” “grave,” “dignified.” 20 It was precisely
one of these words, statigh, we may remember, that Van Mander used
to characterize the dignified man who is forced to smile in the presence
of Bruegel’s art. 21 And in his account of the lost painting by Frans Mostaert,
the Schetz brothers are received by the citizens of Hoboken in a seer statigh,
or “very solemn,” manner. 22 A similar gravity dominates, for example, the
portrait of the Antwerp merchant Pierre de Moucheron and his family
(Fig. 62), dated 1563 and attributed to Cornelis de Zeeuw. Of French origin,
De Moucheron was an ardent Calvinist, but this does not explain the
unrelieved sobriety with which both parents and children regard the
viewer. 23 In fact, had Miedema confined his dictum concerning laughter