Netherlandish Proverbs
The Dutch proverbs or The Flemish Proverbs is a known oil painting Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The 1559 resulting work consists of over 100 Dutch sayings and phrases. Today it is in the Picture Gallery of the State Museums of Berlin ( Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation ).
The painting
Construction
The position of the observer is located at mid-height, so the overview remains intact and details are clearly visible. The height level rises back to ( gallows and sailboat are head- painted ). By this angular displacement it produces an impression of additional spatial depth. The major axis is the number of times at Bruegel, traversing the picture from the lower left to the upper right corner. The " falsely " frontal painted pancakes (top left) are probably a conscious perspective deviation.
Content and interpretation
Portrayed is ostensibly the everyday hustle and bustle in a village on the sea coast. On the left side hangs on a wall a topsy-turvy world globe, it symbolizes the perverted, wicked world in the likeness of men fools follow their worldly bustle. Below the image center recognizes one color lifted out a woman in a red dress that hanging around his neck her husband a blue coat; it symbolizes the fact that she is cheating on him. In the center of the image of the devil sitting under a blue canopy, and it can hardly be a doubt that he is the ruler of the world of images.
Bruegel's painting takes up in his view of the world to the idea of his time, to understand the world as sinful, wicked and foolish. Deception and self-deception, malice and weakness go hand in hand. Literally the topic is equally portrayed vividly in Sebastian Brant's " Ship of Fools " and Erasmus of Rotterdam in " Praise of Folly ".
In the 17th century, was titled the picture historical sources, also in "The Blue Coat " and " Topsy-Turvy World ".
Background
Collections of proverbs were common practice to Bruegel's time. Erasmus of Rotterdam was already published in 1500 sayings and phrases Latin authors, and Rabelais describes in his 1564 novel, Pantagruel, inter alia, proverbs island. Also Bruegel had in 1558 a series of panel paintings made ( Twelve Proverbs, today in the Mayer van den Bergh Museum in Antwerp). Such extensive pictorial composition as in The Dutch Proverbs but no one seems to have tried before him.
The Proverbs shown
( The proverbs listed below form a part of over 100 sayings of the painting depicted. , The figurative set the picture sayings have been numbered on the black and white picture. )
Others
The painting is pictured on the cover of the music album of the band Fleet Foxes same name.