When the panel Dulle Griet by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1894 was presented at an auction sale in Cologne, no one was really interested. Yet, art collector Fritz Mayer intuitively decided to buy the panel at the auction anyway and took it to his Flemish hometown Antwerp. Since 1904, the public can enjoy it in the small, but very recommendable museum Mayer van den Bergh.
Bruegel was then commonly known as ‘Peasant Bruegel’, famous for his landscapes and what were assumed to be authentic representations of Flemish folk life. This spooky and chaotic painting, dating from 1561, did not fit that image. Essentially, in the 19th century, nobody understood its original significance anymore. Who was this mysterious, colossal woman that the painting earned its nickname from? ‘Dulle Griet’ (‘crazy girl’, often translated as ‘Mad Meg’) wears a military costume and seems to be heading for the mouth of hell, visible on the left. Her female followers loot the house on the other side of the bridge. Another giant figure, sitting on top of the building, carries a boat on his shoulder. And these are only a few elements of this picture, which is chock-full of monstrous creatures and enigmatic symbols that were probably easily understood by Bruegel’s contemporaries.
The present appreciation of Dulle Griet does not necessarily imply that one understands a lot more of this work, although many scholars have speculated about the significance since then. For example, the panel has been interpreted in the context of the warfare in sixteenth-century Flanders, Dante’s Inferno, Erasmian humanism, medieval allegory, gender studies and much more.
In my opinion, the safest interpretation is that Bruegel wants to show us an upside down world, in which all social and ethical standards that make civil society liveable are inverted. As such, it delivers an implicit warning: if we don’t behave in a proper way, i.e. without folly, greed and cruelty, our world ends in complete madness.
(text: Maarten Levendig, for close-ups see: wga.hu/html_m/b/bruegel/pieter_e/05/index.html)
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