Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

70 a bankrupt and his bruegels
figure 42. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Kermis. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches
Museum.
Christophe Plantin and Abraham Ortelius, which included many classical
scholars engaged in editing the ancient Greek and Latin texts that
Plantin published. Members of this scholarly circle, sharing a philosophy
of life, aimed “to achieve serenity through reason and self-restraint,”as
Sullivan says, partly paraphrasing Ortelius, by “devoting themselves to
work, friendship, studying the ‘whole of the Universe,’ and meditating
on its Creator.” 13 Their profound knowledge of classical literature, and
the literature of their own time that it inspired, Sullivan tells us, would
have led them to respond to Bruegel’s rustic revels as allegories of human
folly, in which figural poses, details of costumes, and the like were
interpreted according to various ancient texts. According to Ortelius,
Bruegel “depicted many things that cannot be painted” and “often gives
something beneath what he paints.” Sullivan understands these words of