Wine and Debauchery from the 1560s

Yesterday was a big day for art geeks around the world, particularly those with a penchant for sixteenth-century Flemish painting, with the identification of a previously unknown work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder--master of subjects such as feasting, gluttony and general debauchery and one of my very favorite artists of all time.

The new painting is The Wine of St. Martin’s Day (4’10” x 8’10”, c. 1565-68), a work of tempera on linen belonging to a Spanish private collection and likely soon to be sold to the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The attribution is major news because only 40 other identified works by Bruegel survive, all from roughly a single decade of the artist’s life, and none as large as St. Martin’s.



We’ve discussed on LTH all manner of feast days--religious and secular, steeped in tradition and entirely new--but, according to Google, there’s been only a passing reference to St. Martin’s Day, with a request for a cured leg of lamb recipe a few years ago.

Martin was a bishop of Tours in the fourth century, after having served as a soldier, baptized as an adult and starting a monastery. The Feast of St. Martin was, until the Middle Ages, like a Fat Tuesday before the period of fasting leading up to Christmas. It also marked the end of the agrarian year and the start of winter. St. Martin’s Day is still celebrated widely in northern and eastern Europe with a variety of activities, including the preparation of foods specific to the holiday.

The sprawling painting publicly attributed to Bruegel this week depicts about 100 townspeople jostling for and enjoying the first wine of the season. At the center of the image, figures simultaneously clamor to catch wine in myriad vessels and gulp it enthusiastically.



These two guys atop the raised barrel make Chicago’s Boy with Pitcher (ca. 1862/72) by Manet look downright timid.



In his more crowded compositions like The Wine of St. Martin’s Day, Bruegel is particularly adept at using juxtapositions to highlight the spectrum of indulgence. One “exhausted” reveler in the lower left corner of the "new" painting lies just a few paces, but seemingly a world away, from a mother feeding her infant.



And in my book, Bruegel wouldn’t be Bruegel without the random food details at the margins of his images. I’ve mentioned the woman with the giant apple from Bruegel’s The Harvesters (1565) before. This boy with a turnip in the left foreground of the St. Martin’s painting is my new favorite. Tickled by a turnip, that's me!



I look forward to seeing The Wine of St. Martin’s Day once the restoration in progress is complete in hopes that the figures' expressions will be more discernible and the color on the linen more vivid. The last time I went to the Prado was specifically to see Bruegel's Triumph of Death. Wine and debauchery seem like much better reason to visit Madrid.

I wish I could walk into that scene -- looks like fun!

Thank you "happy". I enjoyed the subject and your enthusiam for it!

I've always liked Brueghel (and his evil twin, Bosch), but as I'm basically an (Early) Italian Renaissance guy, I tend to see these mass scenes as the consequences of Humanism gone wild, an end of an era craziness that I also see in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, where you have people just piling onto one another, willy-nilly, without order and without any apparent impulse to moderate appetite.

Thanks so much for the beautiful, detailed post. What's the source? I didn't see even a little 2-sentence AP release that these sorts of stories usually generate. Would love to know more about how the attribution was made after so long.

David Hammond wrote:I've always liked Brueghel (and his evil twin, Bosch), but as I'm basically an (Early) Italian Renaissance guy, I tend to see these mass scenes as the consequences of Humanism gone wild, an end of an era craziness that I also see in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, where you have people just piling onto one another, willy-nilly, without order and without any apparent impulse to moderate appetite.

The subject of willy-nilly, topsy-turvy, upside-down-ness is indeed a major one in early modern visual culture. In the south, such release from everyday order and strictures is represented pictorially often in relation to religious ecstasy and the visionary or supernatural. Among my countrymen in the north (if you might entertain the notion of me being European by way of Canada, by way of the Chinese-looking Filipino relatives who were once ruled by the Spanish, who way back when also ruled the Netherlands and who owned/own a lot of Flemish paintings) and particularly in Bruegel's time, willy-nilliness is more often depicted in relation to peasantry celebrating Carnival and generally demonstrating folly.

David, your reading is a well-accepted one, particularly with images from the south. Thanks to the work of art historian Svetlana Alpers, the scholarship on images from the north shifted in the 1970s from more moralistic readings to interpretations that situate firmly the images of Bruegel et al in sixteenth-century political context(s). This article on Bruegel's famously piggy Land of Cockaigne (1567) is a helpful example of the latter "kind" of art history. I can email the entire text to anyone interested.

mrbarolo wrote:Thanks so much for the beautiful, detailed post. What's the source? I didn't see even a little 2-sentence AP release that these sorts of stories usually generate. Would love to know more about how the attribution was made after so long.

The announcement was made just yesterday, so perhaps you'll see blips about it today. I heard a rumor about the painting a few months ago via art historian acquaintances, but I got the official news of the identification first through CODART, which is an association of curators of Dutch and Flemish art. I see now that if you google the painting's title, it looks like the Atlantic just blogged about it a few hours ago, and the BBC reported on it yesterday, among other news outlets.

I'm glad others enjoy Bruegel, too. He's great, and--I'd like to think--really loved food.

h_s, I'm very unfamiliar with the viewing situation of paintings like this, but my guess is that the peasants who are so frequently the subjects of Brueghel's paintings would probably rarely have had a chance to view his portrayals of their class. With that in mind, and for the first time, I'm wondering if there isn't a certain kind of condescension in his works, a kind of window on "the other side" for more moneyed patrons who would be amused by the folly of the lower orders.

If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to see the full article.

David Hammond wrote:h_s, I'm very unfamiliar with the viewing situation of paintings like this, but my guess is that the peasants who are so frequently the subjects of Brueghel's paintings would probably rarely have had a chance to view his portrayals of their class. With that in mind, and for the first time, I'm wondering if there isn't a certain kind of condescension in his works, a kind of window on "the other side" for more moneyed patrons who would be amused by the folly of the lower orders.

True, Bruegel's patrons were definitely monied, though the proliferation of prints made from his images by folks like Pieter van der Heyden, Philips Galle, Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum and later generations helped broaden his audience.* And Bruegel wasn't the first or only artist from the north to depict peasants.** Bruegel's biography is very incomplete, but I once read that he may have gone "undercover" to observe peasants and draw "from life." (It'd take me a while to dig up that citation.)

David Hammond wrote:If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to see the full article.

I just emailed you the PDF. It's been a while since I read that article, but I believe Frank argues that images like Cockaigne (to which the St. Martin's painting has some parallels) are more akin to political satire and cartoons than highbrow amusement or condescension (not that political representations are immune from classism).

*See the catalog from the 2001 Met show of Bruegel's prints and drawings.
**See my graduate adviser's book Peasants, Warriors and Wives on this subject.

happy_stomach wrote:Bruegel's biography is very incomplete, but I once read that he may have gone "undercover" to observe peasants and draw "from life." (It'd take me a while to dig up that citation.)

That's the ticket: "Honey, I have to go research my painting. Don't wait up for me."

Got PDF. Thx.

happy_stomach wrote:This boy with a turnip in the left foreground of the St. Martin’s painting is my new favorite. Tickled by a turnip, that's me!

WAY late to this party and lots of things to say, once I get my mind in functioning order. But until then, I wonder: turnip? or kohlrabi?

(Same genus, different species. And, of course, entirely different iconographic subtext. )

Silly GB - it's a turnip: a kohlrabi bulb is part of the stem, the leaves come off of it and it has a little nipple on the end where it was cut instead of a little root (Here's one with a full root)

Truthfully, my own brain immediately went "couldn't it be a _____" and my inner google immediately came up with rutabaga, but searching "root vegetables Belgium" came up with Stoemp, a kind of root vegetable mash-up that seems to most often include turnips, carrots, potatoes and onion or leek (though I did see one reference to rutabagas.) However, the end root is kind of beard-like, so I think Sharon is right. Besides, she's smarter than me.

So there.

Turnip? Turnip? Pish-tosh. MHays, indeed! Cast your eyes thither:

Your mandrake-footed vegetable proves my point.

Are we absolutely sure this is not a white radish?

Turnip.

And likely pear in The Harvesters, with a tree-climbing forebear noticeable in the branches whom, I think, is an avatar for Bruegel himself, pulling down the ripe fruit as the workers scythe the grain. There is a ladder, but he has chosen not to use it, summoning a last breath of boyish vigor to scamper up an untended tree, its fruit allowed to ripen to prodigious size at the edge of an unseen orchard abutting the heights of the field. They may be younger sisters or small cousins that gather the fruit, highlighting the size disparity.

I fancy Bruegel sketching while up in a tree himself; his interest in figures and landscapes is almost universally top-down, as one can see in canvases like Census at Bethlehem, Peasant Wedding, and Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Even in his interior scenes the viewer is like a spider in the eaves or a hovering moth. I read the fruit gathered in the depths of the painting to be the same as in the cloth spread by the prim peasant in the foreground, a European pear.

My favorite pear painting is this one, though:

Santander wrote:My favorite pear painting is this one, though:

Surely inspired by Bosch.

David Hammond wrote:Are we absolutely sure this is not a white radish?

You mean daikon? No way. It's not the right shape.

Mhays wrote:However, the end root is kind of beard-like, so I think Sharon is right. Besides, she's smarter than me.

The second part is not true, but I stand by my turnip identification because I'm geeky enough to have evidence. The St. Martins painting is currently too dirty, and the best scan I can find doesn't have a high enough resolution to say with absolute certainty, but I would wager that the boy is indeed holding a turnip because...Bruegel seemed to like turnips.

You don't want to see what I could do with a scanner, easier access to all of my books and more than 10 minutes...but a lone turnip assumes a prominent position in a Bruegel image that deserves its own thread, The Thin Kitchen (1563) (with its counterpart The Fat Kitchen (1563)). I couldn't easily find a large enough reproduction online, but this is a quick photo of the engraving Pieter van der Heyden made after Bruegel's Thin Kitchen drawing.



I know it's hard to see, but what lies closest to the viewer at the edge of the table circled by emaciated bodies is clearly a turnip. So there! Bruegel knew turnips and how to use them!

happy_stomach wrote:

David Hammond wrote:Are we absolutely sure this is not a white radish?

You mean daikon? No way. It's not the right shape.

Didn't mean diakon, which would probably not have been growing in Brueghel's hood, but white radish (helios), which I grew in my garden last spring.

David Hammond wrote:

happy_stomach wrote:

David Hammond wrote:Are we absolutely sure this is not a white radish?

You mean daikon? No way. It's not the right shape.

Didn't mean diakon, which would probably not have been growing in Brueghel's hood, but white radish (helios), which I grew in my garden last spring.

I guess maybe, but are all helios yellow on the outside (and white on the inside)? Even with the painting as dirty as it is, the root vegetable the boy is holding looks more white than yellow.

Oh goodness! I do not especially believe my kohlrabi theory--though it is, without a doubt, possible--but merely wished to inject a note of doubt. Which David has picked up with admirable alacrity. And while I am impressed with Sharon's evidentiary recall, I would posit merely that Bruegel's use of a turnip in one (or more than one) work hardly excludes the possibility that he included a kohlrabi or white radish or something else in another (this) work.

And while I'm on the topic of doubt:

David Hammond wrote:...I tend to see these mass scenes as the consequences of Humanism gone wild, an end of an era craziness....

I disagree--at least to the extent that I understand David's point. While eras and ages and such are notoriously difficult to confine, Humanism was hardly nearing the end of its run in the 1560s. By my reckoning, it would be around for at least another century. And the 1560s are also too early for it to be the fin de siècle brooding that every end-of-century seems to prompt. (Unless, of course, you're referring to another era which escapes me--an entirely plausible, if not entirely likely, notion!)

And while David is in my sights:

David Hammond wrote:h_s, I'm very unfamiliar with the viewing situation of paintings like this, but my guess is that the peasants who are so frequently the subjects of Brueghel's paintings would probably rarely have had a chance to view his portrayals of their class. With that in mind, and for the first time, I'm wondering if there isn't a certain kind of condescension in his works, a kind of window on "the other side" for more moneyed patrons who would be amused by the folly of the lower orders.

This seems to me to be an unwonted leap. The premise is largely true of art and artists for centuries and is hardly unique to Bruegel, as you know. It has been my understanding that, despite the very little we know about Bruegel, he had come from the very class he portrayed so often. But even if that is not the case, it seems to be an unwarranted conclusion based on extremely meager evidence: Bruegel painted peasants for wealthy patrons (inasmuch as wealthy patrons were the only patrons around),therefore there is condescension in his work. I can think of at least several other very different conclusions one might draw from that single premise. Indeed, this strikes me as the perfect circumstance for the application of Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is best. And here, why not that Bruegel painted peasants engaged in daily life because he liked the subject? Or found it worthy of depiction?

To be clear: I am not saying David is wrong. (Not that I'd know in any event and which is why we are so very fortunate to have Sharon with us.) Only that his notion seems a bit of a stretch when easier explanations would suffice.

To further complicate this discussion, searching "belgian radish" didn't produce any visual results that were helpful, but a search of "Dutch Radishes" produced this document, which does show one Dutch varietal that is white and rounded; so it's a possibility. Nobody seems to offer enough food history to give me dates on what types of radishes reached Europe when.

However, given the Belgian root-mash dish sounds like peasant food to me (note that there are carrots in the thin kitchen; wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the menu) - a dish that might include but probably wouldn't feature radishes when turnips were a staple all over Europe, and most likely originated there - I still stand by Sharon.

It is interesting, though, that the turnips in both cases are ghostly white, when in most cases they are pink on the top where the root is exposed to sunlight. I wonder if this is significant in some way.

Mhays wrote:I wonder if this is significant in some way.

Significant? Significant?!? It's not only significant, it's...it's earth-shattering! Why, woman, you've discovered the key that unlocks the centuries-hidden meaning and iconographic--nay, the very semiotic--signification of the painting! Purple, as everyone knows, signifies royalty. Less well known, however, are its other significations. Among the lesser-known concepts symbolized by purple are wisdom and enlightenment. The turnip in the hand of an otherwise apparently inconsequential individual denotes, connotes, and otherwise prenotes, the growth (plants, growth, get it?) of enlightenment among the lower working classes, prefiguring the frequent working-class rebellions to sweep Europe a mere few centuries later. (Take that, those of you who thought iconography was boring!)



P.S. Michele, the thought that occurs to me is to wonder about appearance variations in the same plant in different locations. And, for what it's worth, the kohlrabi was hardly unknown in northern Europe at the same time. Indeed, kohlrabi is a German word, kohl meaning cabbage and...drum roll, please, rabi meaning...(wait for it)...turnip! (Antonius, are you here?)

Gypsy Boy wrote:

David Hammond wrote:h_s, I'm very unfamiliar with the viewing situation of paintings like this, but my guess is that the peasants who are so frequently the subjects of Brueghel's paintings would probably rarely have had a chance to view his portrayals of their class. With that in mind, and for the first time, I'm wondering if there isn't a certain kind of condescension in his works, a kind of window on "the other side" for more moneyed patrons who would be amused by the folly of the lower orders.

This seems to me to be an unwonted leap. The premise is largely true of art and artists for centuries and is hardly unique to Bruegel, as you know. It has been my understanding that, despite the very little we know about Bruegel, he had come from the very class he portrayed so often. But even if that is not the case, it seems to be an unwarranted conclusion based on extremely meager evidence: Bruegel painted peasants for wealthy patrons (inasmuch as wealthy patrons were the only patrons around),therefore there is condescension in his work. I can think of at least several other very different conclusions one might draw from that single premise. Indeed, this strikes me as the perfect circumstance for the application of Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is best. And here, why not that Bruegel painted peasants engaged in daily life because he liked the subject? Or found it worthy of depiction?

It wasn't a syllogism, bro, it was speculation about which I was wondering. Another counter-argument to my first thoughts about a long-dead artist's mindset would be that some of his portrayals of peasants (e.g., "Hunters in the Snow") border on the heroic. The depiction of "real people" as opposed to idealized mythic heroes, divinities and aristocrats is one of the defining characteristics of a rising Humanism.

Gypsy Boy wrote:

David Hammond wrote:...I tend to see these mass scenes as the consequences of Humanism gone wild, an end of an era craziness....

I disagree--at least to the extent that I understand David's point. While eras and ages and such are notoriously difficult to confine, Humanism was hardly nearing the end of its run in the 1560s. By my reckoning, it would be around for at least another century. And the 1560s are also too early for it to be the fin de siècle brooding that every end-of-century seems to prompt. (Unless, of course, you're referring to another era which escapes me--an entirely plausible, if not entirely likely, notion!)

Hold on a minute there, son, I'm not suggesting Humanism was coming to an end but rather the Renaissance, of which Humanism was a defining characteristic. Now, the exact dates of when an art historical period begins and ends is always going to be less than exact, as you note, but I think there would be general agreement that the movement that started in Italy in around the 1300s was winding down in around the 1500s.

One other thing, hoss: not all white turnips are tinged with purple.

And if you want to go all iconographic, home slice, consider that there’s a medieval tradition of viewing the radish as symbolic of godless strife…so much so that the vegetables were consecrated so as to render them harmless.

Sharon, I happened to grow helios, which were more yellowish, but some radishes are very white:

David Hammond wrote:It wasn't a syllogism, bro, it was speculation.

I don't think anything in my comment belies the fact that what you wrote was speculation (other than the word 'premise' which I think you're taking a bit too literally; besides, I don't know of anything about speculation that precludes it being an argument for a certain position, even a speculative position). I don't think that that invalidates my comments. You speculated, I speculated. We just speculated differently, that's all.

David Hammond wrote:...I tend to see these mass scenes as the consequences of Humanism gone wild, an end of an era craziness....

Gypsy Boy wrote:I disagree--at least to the extent that I understand David's point. While eras and ages and such are notoriously difficult to confine, Humanism was hardly nearing the end of its run in the 1560s. By my reckoning, it would be around for at least another century. And the 1560s are also too early for it to be the fin de siècle brooding that every end-of-century seems to prompt. (Unless, of course, you're referring to another era which escapes me--an entirely plausible, if not entirely likely, notion!)

David Hammond wrote:Hold on a minute there, son, I'm not suggesting Humanism was coming to an end but rather the Renaissance, of which Humanism was a defining characteristic. Now, the exact dates of when an art historical period begins and ends is always going to be less than exact, as you note, but I think there would be general agreement that the movement that started in Italy in around the 1300s was winding down in around the 1500s.

Um, first of all, I qualified what I wrote by explicitly stating "to the extent that I understand David's point." I wasn't certain of your point and said so. I still think that the antecedent for "end of an era" appears to be Humanism, not the Renaissance. And I stick by my point that Humanism was around for another century or so.

David Hammond wrote:One other thing, hoss: not all white turnips are tinged with purple.

I agree completely. I was responding to Michele's point about the corona of pink/purple on the tops of turnips that many of us are used to seeing. In fact, if you look at my P.S., I speculate about that too. And I thought that I was doing so pretty clearly in jest. Jeez.

Gypsy Boy wrote:It has been my understanding that, despite the very little we know about Bruegel, he had come from the very class he portrayed so often. But even if that is not the case...

And, in fact, it appears not to be the case. I stand corrected. A little Bruegology (Bruegelology?) has led me to understand that what I thought was established is not. My apologies to one and all.

I like turnips and radishes and all, but back to wine... I wonder how long it'll take for someone to reproduce The Wine of St. Martin’s Day on a bottle label. Bruegel's Wedding Feast (c. 1567-68), Wedding Dance (1566), and Peasant Kermis (c. 1567-68) have been used readily on labels for beer and wine, including, of course, Van Steenberge's Bruegel Amber Ale.




Bruegel Amber Ale photo by Speed-Light on Flickr

happy_stomach wrote:

Santander wrote:My favorite pear painting is this one, though:

Surely inspired by Bosch.

Surely you mean Giger?

Only on LTH!

Surely Dan Brown will weigh in any moment now and settle our iconographic hash.
Till then, nothng to contribute, but have enjoyed the thread enormously. Props to all the decoders of root vegetables in art.

Follow-up to Bruegel: People getting wasted in the 17th century

Although Sharon began this thread with the St. Martin's attribution back in September, it seems that the news has only now made it to the New York Times. If you're interested (free registration may be required), take a look here.