Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

notes to pages 127–128 219
name, whom he referred to as “my Xanthippe,” after the shrewish wife of
Socrates (ibid., pp. 159–160).
7. Grauls 1957, p. 39, who notes later cannons bearing similar names.
8. Kamper spreekwoorden 1959, p. 52, no. 21; Goedthals 1568, p. 54. In De Laet
1962, p. 24, no. 399, it is given as the Flemish equivalent of a French
proverb; see p. 139 below. See also Grauls 1957, p. 44.
9. Lambrecht 1945, p. 165, s.v., “Roof.”
10. Grauls’s identification of the main figure was anticipated by several perceptive
observations of Leo van Puyvelde, Pieter Bruegel: The Dulle Griet,
trans. Robin Fedden, Gallery Books (London: P. Lund Humphries,
1946 ), pp. 3–4. Just why the plundering takes place before Hell, rather than
within it, is unclear, unless it was because no one who entered Hell ever
escaped. Cf., for example, a song of the Netherlandish nobles rebelling
against Spain, in which the men pledge to follow their leader “to the suburb
of Hell. / There profit and freedom are to be gained [Tot dat in de voorstad
van de hel. / Daer winst en vryheid is to halen]”; see Grauls 1957, p. 44. Nevertheless,
in several folk tales, as we shall see, the Devil does take a woman
to his domain but quickly is all too eager to restore her to earth.
11. For summaries of earlier scholarly opinion on the Dulle Griet, see Grauls
1957, p. 49 and passim; De Coo 1978, pp. 33–40, with an excellent bibliography;
and Hughes and Bianconi 1967, pp. 96–97, cat. no. 27. In addition
to Serebrennikov 1993, more recent interpretations of the painting
include Thierry Boucquey, “Bruegel, intertexte fou de la farce: choréographie
de La Fete [sic] des Fous et Dulle Griet,” Word and Image 5 (1989):
227–259; Gibson 1979; René Graziani, “Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Dulle Griet’ and
Dante,” Burlington Magazine 115 (1973): 209–219; Panse and Schmidt
1967; Yona Pinson, “Folly and Vanity in Bruegel’s Dulle Griet: Proverbial
Metaphors and Their Relationship to Bosch’s Imagery,” Studies in Iconography
20 (1991): 185–213; Margaret A. Sullivan, “Madness and Folly:
Peter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet,” Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 55–66; and
Irving C. Zupnick, “Bruegel and the Revolt of the Netherlands,” Art Journal
23 (1964): 283–289.
12. In the factie of the Lischbloemen chamber; see E. van Autenboer, Volksfeesten
en rederijkers te Mechelen (1400–1600) (Ghent: Koninklijke Vlaamse
Academie voor Taal-en Letterkunde, 1962), p. 248.
13. Kamper spreekwoorden 1959, nos. 17–20 and 29. Grauls oªers no comment