Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

34 bruegel’s art of laughter
figure 13. Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Allegory
of Sloth, engraving and etching, 1558. Washington D.C., National Gallery of
Art, Rosenwald Collection.
identify several other prints after Bruegel, the Temptation of St. Anthony
(Sainct Anthonie drolerie) and the Patience (Pacience drolerie). 16 While the word
drolerie in earlier centuries had the sense of the demonic or evil, by
Bruegel’s time it had acquired strong overtones of the humorous. 17 In the
case of Bruegel’s “droll sins,” it is surely the humor that dominates, as it
did, for example, for Giorgio Vasari, who described Bruegel’s Seven Vices
series as showing “demons of various forms, which was a fantastic and
laughable work [che furono cosa fantastica e da ridere].” 18 For Dominicus Lampsonius,
in his verses accompanying the E‹gies, a collection of artists’ por-