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Pieter Brueghel de Oude. Nederlandse spreekwoorden Detail: Hij speelt op die kake

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

1559

unspecified

From the collection of Catholic University of Leuven

Northern Renaissance Renaissance Renaissance

Dominant colour

Pieter Brueghel de Oude. Nederlandse spreekwoorden Detail: Hij speelt op die kake is a 1559 unspecified by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a Northern Renaissance work, held at Catholic University of Leuven.

Who painted this?: Pieter Brueghel the Elder
When & what style?: 1559 · Northern Renaissance
Where can I see it?: Catholic University of Leuven

About this work

This painting shows a busy scene packed with people acting out old Dutch sayings. A man in the middle balances upside down on a chair with a lute in his hands, literally playing on his backside. The joke is clear if you know the idiom "to play the lute on one's backside." Nearly every figure does something ridiculous tied to a proverb. One man bites a pillar. Another holds a sieve under water to catch fish. The whole work feels like a comic strip of 16th-century life. This is a Brueghel you’ll remember. Look next at another work by Pieter Brueghel I.