Paintings for our times: Brueghel's Village Festival
A Village Festival in honour of St. Hubert and St. Anthony. Pieter Brueghel II, 1627
Today, Friday, 22nd May, would have been the penultimate day of the 47th CAMRA Cambridge Beer Festival held on Jesus Green. It’s an ever popular event which was originally staged in the Corn Exchange as it was when I first came to Cambridge in the summer of 1987. In 1992, as a result of the difficulty in keeping the beer at a decent temperature along with growing pressure in terms of crowd numbers, the festival moved to Cambridge City Football Ground in Milton Road and took place towards the end of May. In 2001 the festival moved to its current location on Jesus Green.
Unlike what’s depicted in today’s painting from the Fitzwilliam Museum collection, things are generally pretty civilised at the Beer Festival. Back in C17th Flanders though people really knew how to party.
The viewer looks down upon this busy village scene from a distance. In the foreground children brawl over a few coins. One man leans on a barrel with his face in his hands - the epitome of drunken dejection - while another encourages a young boy to swig from a jug the size of his head. A pig sniffs around a huge cauldron, while a few feet away a couple embrace. Despite the title, it is not immediately obvious that the festivities being enjoyed in this painting have anything to do with religion!
Nearby people dance and play bagpipes and in the distance a man empties his bladder against a wall. In the foreground at the far right, another man vomits profusely while next to him a copulating cockerel and a hen join in the fun.
In the centre of the picture, a large crowd has gathered around a stage to watch a play entitled Cluijte van Plaijerwater (‘TheWonderwater Farce’) in which a man dressed as a monk kisses a buxom woman, while another man spies upon them from a basket on an actor's back.
St Hubert and St Anthony carried in effigy
On the right of the painting we eventually see the reason for this communal exuberance. Ignored by the majority of villagers, the statues of two saints are processed towards the village church. Preceded by a banner and holding the hunting horn by which he was traditionally identified, is St Hubert, the patron saint of hunters. He is followed by an image of St Anthony, the desert dwelling hermit saint whose renowned asceticism was the antithesis of the revelry going on in the village.
Crossbowmen’s procession
Members of the crossbowman's guild, their weapons slung over their shoulders, lead the procession towards the church, perhaps for a service of thanksgiving before a hunt. So many of the details in Brueghel's painting fascinate and entertain: the travelling players' makeshift platform and the glimpses we get of the activity backstage; the proximity of the tavern and church in the background, a matter of grave concern to Dutch moralists in the 17th century.
Then there are the people themselves - the cripple begging near the very centre of the canvas; the man trying to climb into the cart that is already too full of travellers; four children chasing a motley clad jester.
The whole is a fascinating panorama of then contemporary Northern European village life. But the scene is generic rather than specific, and Pieter Brueghel II was working in a tradition of village festivals that was popularized by his father in the 16th century. What are we to think of these flirting, drinking, puking villagers? Is this an abuse of a religious festival that the artist regrets or condemns? Or are the peasants being celebrated for their straightforward, earthy humanity?
Certainly, since the 16th century, there had been those who lamented the reputation the Dutch had for excessive drunkeness. One William Brereton commented of a village festival he attended near Dordrecht, in 1634
“I do not believe scarce a sober man was to be found amongst them. Nor was it safe for a sober man to trust himself amongst them, they did so shout and sing, roar, skip and leap. ”
But there was another view of such behaviour, a view that drew no strict moral judgements. A print from 1623 showing drunken peasants in close proximity to gentlefolk, begs indulgence for the village dwellers who have toiled all year in the fields. One can just as easily react to their antics with a smile as a frown.
As was said of the peasant paintings by Pieter Brueghel II's father:
“There are few works by his hand which the observer can contemplate solemnly or with a straight face. However stiff, morose or surly he may be, he cannot help chuckling or at any rate smiling. ”
Central to this painting is the theatrical performance in the middle, and an analogy can perhaps be drawn between this type of farce and this kind of painting. Plays like that being performed here managed to marry earthy language and bawdy humour - jokes about adultery, lecherous vicars, drinking games - with basic Christian truths. As the conclusion to this play says:
“Now go and may Mary protect you all,
And her son, Jesus of Nazareth,
And may he grant you all peace and happiness.
Conduct your marriage in such a way
That you may enjoy life everlasting. ”
The moral may be perfunctory but there is nothing to say that it is not sincere. As in the play, so in the painting: the overall effect is comic, perhaps satirical, but not excessively condemnatory.
Please note that some of the art-historical commentary in this article is drawn from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s excellent website: https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Footnote: Cluijte van Plaijerwater (The Wonderwater Farce)
The text of the play being performed in this painting has by great good fortune survived in the archives of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp. The plot is as follows:
The wife of Werenbracht, an innkeeper, feigns sickness and sends her husband to fetch some plaijerwater (wonderwater; but the word also implies 'wound water' or 'hoax water') from Discontent in Eastland, where it flows high up from the Mountain of Folly near the Valley of Sorrows. With her husband gone, she arranges a romantic rendezvous at the inn with the village priest.
On his travels Werenbracht meets a poultry seller who reveals his wife's deceit and infidelity. The two decide to catch her in the adulterous act and, hiding Werenbracht in his basket, the poultry seller heads for the inn to ask for lodging.
After a good deal of carousing and singing, the wronged husband leaps from the basket and confronts his wife and her priestly lover. After beating them both, he laments his misfortune.
Brueghel depicts the moment that Werenbracht emerges from the poultry seller's basket. The following translation first appeared in the journal Dutch Crossing in 1984. It is quoted here with the kind permission of the editor:
Poultry seller:
Now Werenbracht, you can come out /And give the priest a mighty clout.
He really has messed you around. Your wife is playing fast and free; They're going through your stores, you see.
So wonderwater at home you've found.
Werenbracht: [emerging from the basket]
By all the devils!
Oh you false priest, you'll live to regret this.
Hell's teeth, you'll both pay dearly for this!
Priest:
Oh, dear, where can I go?
Werenbracht:
What are you doing here, tell me, take that, you whore-monger!
Poultry seller:
Drench him with wonderwater,
And splash some on your wife too!
The wife:
Ow, ow, ow, you've broken my arm!
Have mercy! What am I to do now?
Werenbracht:
Ow, filthy lies! Now cool your ardour.
Was that why you were ill? You'll be sorry for this.
Priest and the wife:
Ow! Ow! Dear me!
Poultry seller:
Keep pouring, Werenbracht, 'April showers'.
It would be a shame if any was wasted.
Werenbracht:
I'll pour from up here.
Poultry seller:
Oh yes, Werenbracht, quickly.
It would be a shame to stop now.
Werenbracht:
Blast your guts, I'll beat you both to death.
You false priest, how could you ever bring such shame on me!
Priest and the wife:
Oh, murder, murder, murder.
Poultry seller:
You pair of arseholes! Get out of the house,
While you're still alive. You see how things are here.
Priest:
Oh, dear friend, get him off us,
For God's sake; these blows are wearing me down.
Poultry seller:
Quick, get through this opening here,
Both of you, or I can't help you.
Werenbracht:
Wait don't hold me back, let me bathe their wounds
With the wonderwater she sent me to fetch.
Poultry seller:
Be content, you've found enough of it;
Now you don't need to go to Eastland for it.
Werenbracht:
That's true. After this I fear I'll have
Shame, sorrow, disgrace and great dishonour, all my life.
Let us honour all decent women
Who are happy to be with their own husbands.
Now go and may Mary protect you all,
And her son, Jesus of Nazareth,
And may he grant you all peace and happiness.
Conduct your marriage in such a way
That you may enjoy life everlasting.
