Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

griet and her sisters 141
symbolic meaning. 56 The exception singled out by Grauls is the monster
on the right in the picture (see Fig. 70) that ladles out from its egg-shaped
posterior coins that are caught by several housewives below. 57 Like the
distaª, the large spoon or ladle was a traditional attribute of the housewife
and could even serve as a weapon in her struggle with the infernal
horde (see Fig. 76 ). But a devil wielding this domestic utensil is a distinct
novelty. Grauls suggested that this figure was inspired by the expression
“to ladle with a big spoon,” signifying excessive liberality, waste,
and prodigality, an expression that he found in Satorius’s Adagorium Chiliades
Tres of 1561. 58 Taken together with the boat balanced on the monster’s
back, which he identified as the notorious blauwe schuit, or Blue Boat
filled with the good-for-nothings of this world, Grauls concluded that
this group alludes to drunkards, revelers, and their ilk who “ladle with
the big spoon,” that is, waste their money in frivolous living. But how these
wastrels fit into Bruegel’s apotheosis of shrewish women is unclear, and
Grauls’s explanation becomes all the more doubtful when we realize that
the “big spoon” also has a long handle, which was proverbially recommended
for dining with the Devil. Chaucer, for example, tells us, “‘Therefore
bihoveth hire a ful long spoon / That shal ete with a feend,’ thus herde
I seye.” 59 The reason for this caution is suggested in an English play of
1584: “He that eats with the deuil without a long spoone, his fare will be
ill.” 60 However, this expression fits but uneasily with the general subject
of Bruegel’s picture, and even if he was in fact inspired by some form of
the “long spoon” proverb, his monster with the ladle could simply be another
example of pererga.
Bruegel may have painted the Dulle Griet for his own enjoyment, but
given its complexity, it was more likely done for a patron. What occasioned
this particular commission, however, we shall never know. Perhaps
it was inspired by the unusual independence that Netherlandish women
seem to have enjoyed during Bruegel’s lifetime. This freedom impressed
Lodovico Guicciardini. In his description of the Netherlands of 1567,
Guicciardini noted that women were much freer there than elsewhere to
conduct their own business aªairs. 61 They are very sober and active, he