The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Infobox Painting


title=The Fight Between Carnival and Lent
artist=Pieter Bruegel
year=1559
type=oil on wood
height=118
width=164
museum=Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"The Fight Between Carnival and Lent" is an oil on panel work painted by Pieter Bruegel in 1559. This painting depicts a common festival of the period, as celebrated in the Southern Netherlands. [Cunningham and Grell, work cited] It presents the contrast between two sides of contemporary life, as can be seen by the appearance of the inn on the left side - for enjoyment, and the church on the right side - for religious observance. The busy scene depicts well-behaved children near the church and a beer drinking scene near the inn. Other scenes show a well in the centre (the coming together of different parts of the community), a fish stall and two competing floats.

A battle enacted between the figures Carnival and Lent was an important event in community life in early modern Europe, representing the transition between two different seasonal cuisines: livestock that was not to be wintered was slaughtered, and meat was in good supply. As the period of Lent commenced, with its enforced abstinence and the concomitant spiritual purification in preparation for Easter, the butcher shops closed and the butchers travelled into the countryside to purchase cattle for the spring. [Jean Elizabeth Howard, Marion F. O'Connor, "Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology" Routledge 2005, ISBN 0415353122, page 215]

The figure of Carnival was a fat man who led a procession through the town and presided over a large feast. [Mack P. Holt, "Alcohol: A Social and Cultural History", Berg 2006, ISBN 1845201663, pages 28 – 29] In some traditions an effigy of the Carnival figure was burned at the end of the celebrations. [Fudge, work cited page 16.] In Bruegel's painting the figure is a large man riding a wine barrel, wearing a huge pie as a head-dress; he is wielding a long spit, complete with a pig's head, as a weapon for the fight.

The painting currently resides in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

References

* G. Martin. (1984). "Bruegel". London: Bracken Books. ISBN 0-946495-22-X
* Thomas A. Fudge, "Daniel Warner and the Paradox of Religious Democracy in Nineteenth-Century", Edwin Mellen Press, 1998, ISBN 0773482490, pages 14 – 16
* Andrew Cunningham, Ole Peter Grell, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe", Cambridge University Press 2000, ISBN 0521467012, page 220] Hello

Footnotes