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The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Most of yesterday was spent on researching genre painting, and more specifically genre painting of the Low Countries. One of the big mysteries in art history is the painting The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Why would anyone paint a picture of peasants eating drab bread, porridge and soup, served in plates that are carried on a door off its hinges? Why would anyone want to depict this instance of ugliness?

In Brueghel’s time, the Roman Catholic Church was the most important patron of the arts. But starting with Bosch and Brueghel, genre paintings became a much more important genre in the Low Countries than it was in the rest of Europe. Many of these paintings are quite charming amusing (think Vermeer’s Milkmaid and The Smoker by Joos van Craesbeeck), not so this Peasant Wedding. Did Brueghel paint this work for himself? The peasants themselves could obviously not afford the painting. Was it commissioned by someone else? That’s the mystery.

Update: Brueghel the wedding crasher

I consulted the ultimate reference to Early Netherlandish painters, Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck and I found quite a telling passage on Brueghel. Possibly the painting was made as a commission.

“…He [ Pieter Brueghel the Elder ] did a great amount of work for a merchant by the name of Hans Franckert, a noble and worthy man who liked to chat with Breughel. He was with him every day. With this Franckert, Breughel often went on trips among the peasants, to their weddings and fairs. The two dressed like peasants, brought presents like the other guests, and acted as if they belonged to the families or acquaintances of the bride or of the groom. Here Breughel delighted in observing the manners of the peasants in eating, drinking, dancing, jumping, making love, and engaging in various drolleries, all of which he knew how to copy in color very comically and skillfully, and equally well with water-color and oils; for he was exceptionally skilled in both processes. He knew well the characteristics of the peasant men and women of the Kampine and elsewhere. He knew how to dress them naturally and how to portray their rural, uncouth bearing while dancing, walking, standing, or moving in different ways. He was astonishingly sure of his composition and drew most ably and beautifully with the pen. He made many little sketches from nature…” —Dutch and Flemish Painters, 1936.