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''The Fight Between Carnival and Lent'' was painted by
The literary theme of the struggle between personifications of
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; – 9 September 1569) was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genr ...
in 1559. It is a panorama of contemporary life in the Southern Netherlands
The Southern Netherlands, also called the Catholic Netherlands, were the parts of the Low Countries belonging to the Holy Roman Empire which were at first largely controlled by Habsburg Spain (Spanish Netherlands, 1556–1714) and later by the A ...
. While the painting contains nearly 200 characters, it is unified under the theme of the transition from Shrove Tuesday
Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), observed in many Christian countries through participating in confession and absolution, the ritual burning of the previous year's Holy Week palms, finalizing one's Lenten s ...
to Lent
Lent ( la, Quadragesima, 'Fortieth') is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke ...
, the period between Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...
and Easter
Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...
.
History
The literary theme of the struggle between personifications of Lent
Lent ( la, Quadragesima, 'Fortieth') is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke ...
and Shrove Tuesday
Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), observed in many Christian countries through participating in confession and absolution, the ritual burning of the previous year's Holy Week palms, finalizing one's Lenten s ...
dates as far back as the year 400 with the Psychomachia
The ''Psychomachia'' (''Battle of Spirits'' or ''Soul War'') is a poem by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius, from the early fifth century AD. It has been considered to be the first and most influential "pure" medieval allegory, the first in ...
. The 13th Century French poem ''La Bataille de Caresme et de Charnage'' describes a symbolic battle between different foods, meat against fish. A likely graphic precursor of the painting is a 1558 Frans Hogenberg
Frans Hogenberg (1535–1590) was a Flemish and German painter, engraver, and mapmaker.
Hogenberg was born in Mechelen in Flanders as the son of Nicolaas Hogenberg.Seven Virtues, which have formal similarities: an allegorical figure, against a background with a high horizon line, is surrounded by a crowd of figures who carry out various activities related to the subject. In the same year, Bruegel painted ''
Across the street, another group of dramatists performs ''The Catch of the Wild Man''. Above Carnival, a woman bakes waffles. A procession of
In the centre are scenes that cannot be clearly connected to either side. At the back is a bakery with ware displayed for sale. Dried fish hang in front of the window. A woman is polishing the utensils. Another woman is doing spring cleaning and has climbed a ladder to clean the overhead light from the outside. In front of the bakery, two young men and two young women are playing an agility game where it involves throwing up old earthenware cooking pots and catching them. That it is not easy, testifies the shards of fallen ones on the ground.
At the centre of the market square is a public well. On its right side, a woman has just drawn the clear water; at her feet is a basket of fresh vegetables. The freshness of this scene stands in sharp contrast to the pig at left of the well. A fish stall offers a wide range of fresh and dried fish, perhaps acting as a counterpoint to the waffle maker on the left.
To the left of the well, in an area brightly lit, walks a couple, seen only from the back. They have taken part in the carnival event: the man is dressed up by tucking a straw bag as a hunchback under his clothes, the woman carries a non-burning lantern around the waist. In front of them, a
BrueghelYoung-carnival.jpg, Versie in Brussel (E 183)
Bruegel Carnival Lent.JPG, Verdwenen versie uit Krakau (E 184)
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Battle Between Carnival and Lent. Oil on oak panel. Sotheby's.jpg, Sotheby's, 2012 (E 185)
Pieter Brueghel the Younger - the Fight Between Carnival and Lent - copy sold by Christie's, December 6th, 2011.jpg, Christie's, 2011 (E 186)
Brueghel Young Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten.jpg, Christie's, 2010
Netherlandish Proverbs
''Netherlandish Proverbs'' ( nl, Nederlandse Spreekwoorden; also called ''Flemish Proverbs'', ''The Blue Cloak'' or ''The Topsy Turvy World'') is a 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that depicts a scene in which humans a ...
'', also modelled on a print by Hogenberg. The following year he produced ''Children's Games''. These three works are closely related, each forming a catalogue of folk customs. The works mark the transition of Bruegel from draughtsman to the painter of grand panels for which he is now known.
Composition
It is typical of theworld landscape
The world landscape, a translation of the German ''Weltlandschaft'', is a type of composition in Western painting showing an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings. ...
style, in which an imaginary panoramic landscape is seen from an elevated viewpoint. The horizon is high in the picture, giving the viewer a bird's eye view of the scene. The physical canvas is large, and the characters are small, which means that nearly 200 characters fit into the scene, mostly in groupings.
A market square of an unspecified village in the Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
is shown. Themes in the scene would have been nostalgic for contemporary viewers, since it depicts an older and more rural style of improvised celebration, in contrast to the highly organized professional processions which would have been seen at that time in Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,
.
The spectacle is divided into two halves, and framed by two buildings: the inn on the left, the church on the right, which gives it the character of a scene in a stage show. The left side of the sprawling canvas depicts the Carnival, the right side, Lent. The boundary is not sharply defined, however, and in several places the followers of Lent and Shrove Tuesday invade each other's space.
The painting depicts different times of year. Barren, wintery, trees on the left hint at the winter, while the budding trees of the churchyard's lenten side hint at a burgeoning spring.
In the foreground is the battle itself: the two opponents, pulled and pushed and accompanied by supporters, are about to meet.
The painting does not present either side as being better than the other, but presents both sides as extremities of the human experience.
Detail
Foreground
In the foreground, the two antagonists, Carnival and Lent, are in a parody of a late medievaljoust
Jousting is a martial game or hastilude between two horse riders wielding lances with blunted tips, often as part of a tournament. The primary aim was to replicate a clash of heavy cavalry, with each participant trying to strike the opponent w ...
. The two opponents do not ride head-on into each other, but rather pass each other by, trying to lift each other out of the saddle.
They are borne on what resemble contemporary carnival floats. Both characters wear a headdress which makes it clear that they are allegorical characters. Carnival wears a poultry pie with the legs of a crow sticking out. Lent wears a beehive, a common symbol for the church at the time.
Carnival is a fat butcher, with his pouch of knives, straddling a beer barrel on a blue sled. A pork chop is attached to the front of the barrel, and a cooking pot serves as a stirrup. His weapon is a rotisserie
Rotisserie, also known as spit-roasting, is a style of roasting where meat is skewered on a spit – a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or roasted in an oven. This metho ...
carrying the head of a suckling pig
A suckling pig is a piglet fed on its mother's milk (i.e., a piglet which is still a " suckling"). In culinary contexts, a suckling pig is slaughtered between the ages of two and six weeks. It is traditionally cooked whole, often roasted, in ...
, poultry and sausages. Two men pull his sled. One of them waves a red-gold-white flag, the then typical carnival colors. Carnival's followers form a procession of figures wearing masks, bizarre headgear and household objects as props or improvised musical instruments, in a reversal of the normal order. The followers are provided with wafers and cakes. In the foreground are bones, egg shells, and playing cards.
Lent is a thin woman, seated on a hard three-legged chair, and armed with a baker's spatula called a peel, on which lie two herring
Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae.
Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...
. She is surrounded by pretzel
A pretzel (), from German pronunciation, standard german: Breze(l) ( and French / Alsatian: ''Bretzel'') is a type of baked bread made from dough that is commonly shaped into a knot. The traditional pretzel shape is a distinctive symmetrical ...
s, fish, fasting breads, mussel
Mussel () is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and Freshwater bivalve, freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other ...
s, and onions, all typically consumed during Lent. Lent is laboriously drawn by a monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
and a nun
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...
. Her entourage consists of children, who, like Lent, have the ash cross of Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer and fasting in many Western Christian denominations. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and falls on the first day of Lent (the six weeks of penitence before Easter). It is observed by Catholics in the Rom ...
on their foreheads. They make noise with clappers. A church minister accompanies the children, carrying a bucket with a holy water brush and a bag for donations, which include dry rolls, pretzels and shoes.
Left side
The left side is dominated by an inn, which according to its signboard is called the Blau Schuyt (Blue Barge), referencing aMiddle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch. It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until the advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or c. 1550, there was no overarch ...
poem popular during Lenten celebrations, in which the bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
world was turned upside down. In and around the inn, there is heavy drinking. Through an upper floor window we see an encounter between two lovers. To the left, a musician with his bagpipes
Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, No ...
hangs out of the window to vomit.
In front of the inn, actors perform ''The Dirty Bride'', a play in which a peasant in a drunken stupor agrees to marry, but upon sobering up discovers how his bride looks. The painting shows the bride and groom dancing, while a masked member of the company collects money with a piggy bank.
Across the street, another group of dramatists performs ''The Catch of the Wild Man''. Above Carnival, a woman bakes waffles. A procession of lepers
Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease (HD), is a long-term infection by the bacteria ''Mycobacterium leprae'' or ''Mycobacterium lepromatosis''. Infection can lead to damage of the nerves, respiratory tract, skin, and eyes. This nerve damag ...
, led by a piper.
Right side
Just inside the church a veiled statue is visible. It was customary in Roman Catholic churches to cover artwork fromPassion Sunday
Passion Sunday is the fifth Sunday of Lent, marking the beginning of Passiontide. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed Passiontide from the liturgical year of the Novus Ordo, but it is still observed in the Extraordinary Form, the Persona ...
to Easter.
Outside, a man sits at a table with a relic that the pious can pay to touch. A woman at a stall sells votive offering
A votive offering or votive deposit is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally ...
s. A man and a woman pray kneeling against the wall of the church.
From a side door of the church, the poorer faithful emerge: some have brought their own seating, which they carry. The wealthier citizens, who have been allowed to sit on a bench in the church, leave the church by the main entrance; one gentleman is accompanied by a servant who carries his own folding chair. Some women in black cloaks carry boxwood branches, a custom associated with Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four canonical Gospels. Palm Sunday marks the first day of Holy ...
. The wealthy have been reminded of their obligation to charity by the Lenten sermon, so they give alms
Alms (, ) are money, food, or other material goods donated to people living in poverty. Providing alms is often considered an act of virtue or Charity (practice), charity. The act of providing alms is called almsgiving, and it is a widespread p ...
to the numerous beggars.
Unlike the group of beggars on the left, who have no audience, the beggars on the right receive the full attention of the churchgoers. Behind the man who is missing both feet and a forearm, a woman is wearing pilgrim insignia, but in the basket on her back is a monkey, which indicates feigning.
Technologies such as X-ray
An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...
s have revealed changes to Bruegel's work by an unknown hand. A bloated corpse, partially covered by a white shroud, has been hidden. In the original, the wheeled container with wheels, to the right of the fish stall, contains a human figure. These figures are also visible in copies made in Bruegel's time.
The background is dominated by people working, primarily with food: women preparing Lenten fish, men carrying wine from the inn and a woman making waffles. At the very back of the picture, other festivities are going on with a bonfire, dancing figures and beggars
Begging (also panhandling) is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a beggar or panhandler. Beggars may operate in public place ...
spread across the whole scene.
Centre
In the centre are scenes that cannot be clearly connected to either side. At the back is a bakery with ware displayed for sale. Dried fish hang in front of the window. A woman is polishing the utensils. Another woman is doing spring cleaning and has climbed a ladder to clean the overhead light from the outside. In front of the bakery, two young men and two young women are playing an agility game where it involves throwing up old earthenware cooking pots and catching them. That it is not easy, testifies the shards of fallen ones on the ground.
At the centre of the market square is a public well. On its right side, a woman has just drawn the clear water; at her feet is a basket of fresh vegetables. The freshness of this scene stands in sharp contrast to the pig at left of the well. A fish stall offers a wide range of fresh and dried fish, perhaps acting as a counterpoint to the waffle maker on the left.
To the left of the well, in an area brightly lit, walks a couple, seen only from the back. They have taken part in the carnival event: the man is dressed up by tucking a straw bag as a hunchback under his clothes, the woman carries a non-burning lantern around the waist. In front of them, a jester
A jester, court jester, fool or joker was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain guests during the medieval and Renaissance eras. Jesters were also itinerant performers who entertained common folk at fairs and ...
heads to the left. The man and the woman, on the other hand, seem to turn away from the bustle and continue along the lighted path to the right side of the square. For them, the party has ended, and the time for repentance and moderation has come.
Production and copies
It is anoil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
on oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...
planks taken from a single tree from the area around the Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...
. The panel was prepared by applying a primer of chalk and animal glue to it and polishing it smooth. No additional imprimatura In painting, imprimatura is an initial stain of color painted on a ground. It provides a painter with a transparent, toned ground, which will allow light falling onto the painting to reflect through the paint layers. The term itself stems from the ...
was used, and the warm tonality of the primer shines through in the final work. The signature is applied with black chalk.
Eighteen copies were made, of which five were by Brueghel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Pieter Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Younger (, ; ; between 23 May and 10 October 1564 – between March and May 1638) was a Flemish painter, known for numerous copies after his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work as well as h ...
or his studio.
References