Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

a bankrupt and his bruegels 71
figure 43. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Wedding Feast. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches
Museum.
Ortelius, not as tributes to Bruegel’s realism and depiction of human expression,
but as “a clear statement that Bruegel’s friends and associates
assumed there was a great deal of meaning inherent in the works [of the
artist].” 14 That precise “meaning” for Sullivan can be conveyed by a few
examples from her reading of the Kermis (Fig. 42). The male dancer entering
from the right, wearing what Sullivan characterizes as unusually
large shoes, would have recalled not only the appearance of contemporary
peasants but also certain classical proverbs and quotations from
Lucian and Horace that use the “large shoe” to signify the man who lives
beyond his means; Bruegel’s male peasant also resembles the blustering,
bullying bailiª described by Ausonius in his Espistles. The peasant’s black
coat, the apparently contorted position of his legs, and the profile view