Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

uegel’s art of laughter 43
figure 19. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559. Berlin,
Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie.
course, alludes to the famous “Know thyself.” 43 The didactic lesson of Elck
is thus conveyed through a witty manipulation of proverbial material that
must have provoked viewers to laughter even as they reflected on its ultimately
serious message. 44
The same can be said for Bruegel’s Dulle Griet, as we shall see, and the
Netherlandish Proverbs in Berlin (Fig. 19), his most extensive treatment of
proverb images. This last painting contains between 85 and 126 proverbs
(scholars diªer as to the actual number), including the figure of the kaakspeler
( perched in a little tower just above the center of the composition),
acted out in a setting of village and countryside. 45 This teeming landscape
may indeed show des weerelts abuisen (deceptions of this world ), as