The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent is a 118 x 164.5 cm 1559 arisen large oil painting Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As a fight between Carnival and Lent it belongs to Bruegelsammlung of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Hall 10

Construction

The viewer looks, as in Bruegel's early works customary on top of a densely populated place. This is divided into two parts: Left customs of Carnival are shown on the right of Lent. Two inns on the left edge and a cathedral with an Ash Wednesday procession face each other as opposites, as are the two figures at the bottom of that fight with skewer and baked shovel. In order to create more space for the numerous figures, Bruegel sets the horizon line at unrealistically high, so all that remains is a narrow strip of sky. Moreover, the space to background appears folded up like a stage and the character size increases slowly and evenly. This is reminiscent of medieval altar paintings, where the painter proceeded for based in space views in the scene so. Bruegel used this technique now for a complete picture.

Interpretations

The Battle of Prince Carnival ( Mr. Fastnacht ) against Mrs. Fasting is a parody of a knight game. Prince Carnival is sitting on a barrel and pulled on a load carriage. On his "weapon", the skewer, put a pig's head. Woman Fasting sitting on a pew, standing on one of a monk and a maid carts drawn procession. She wears a hair hair shirt and a beehive on his head. On their "weapon", a back blade are two pegs. Individual groups of figures break the contrast: on the Carnival page decrepit beggar, on the fast side playing children.

From the scheme also three figures fall in the middle: There a couple follows a fool who shines on a bright day with a torch. This could be an allusion to the " upside-down world " in which Protestants and Catholics feud, how to in the Netherlands Bruegel's time. Prince Carnival and woman fasts are therefore caricatures of denominations: Protestants had abolished the Lent, because it considered that neither repentance, abstinence nor good works to the people justify before God, but faith alone. This brought them from the Catholic side, the suspicion one to be morally depraved and morally. On the other hand, let the demonstrative outward piety of the Catholics they appear to be particularly ascetic.

Another way of interpretation, which does not exclude the first, is that the artist alludes to the two-state model of Augustine. After that the world consists of a vicious state ( civitas diaboli ) and a theocratic state ( civitas dei ). So the carnival would be for sinful pleasures and Lent as penance for it.

And a mapping

This founded by Bruegel image type is also known as " encyclopedic graph ", as the artist in a limited space as large a glance creates ( approximately on contemporary customs ). Other examples are The Dutch Proverbs and The Kids. Signed and dated on the image in the lower left corner on a stone, using the two dice player: Brvegel ( V and E ligated ) 1559.

History

In Habsburg possession of the painting arrived probably under Rudolf II Since 1748 it is located in the Gemäldegalerie, previously in the treasury.

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