Proverbs gathered
Proverbs were gathered into collections. Bruegel's picture brings a great many of them together into one scene, and many of the proverbs show human folly.
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Netherlandish Proverbs
Pieter Bruegel the Elder · 1559
painting
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Select a detail to locate it.
Bruegel turns proverbs into actions: a woman cloaks her husband in blue, and a well is filled after the calf has drowned. Painted on oak in 1559, the village assembles sayings about human folly into a world turned upside down.
Details
Take one action at a time. Someone carries baskets of light in broad daylight; elsewhere the world itself is inverted. The individual absurdities accumulate as you move across the village.
In its time
1559
Books from this period
Where it hangs
Gemäldegalerie Berlin
Dutch paintings 15th-16th-century room 7
In context
A world turned upside down
The picture shows a world turned upside down, and the sign of it is at the left. It also shows the absurdity of much human behaviour.
A cloak for a husband
Look at the woman who hangs a blue cloak on her husband. It means she is deceiving him.
The story
1559. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting carries this date and brings a great many proverbs together into one scene.
Today. The painting is in Berlin.
The world turned upside down
Bruegel shows a world turned upside down and puts its sign at the left. In it, many of the proverbs show human folly, and the picture shows the absurdity of much human behaviour.