THE BATTLE

High Times in The Low Countries

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who died in 1569, was one of the leading artists of the northern renaissance. As an immediately recognizable exemplar of 16^th century painting in the Low Countries, he is matched only by Hieronymus Bosch, who lived a generation before Bruegel and clearly influenced his style. The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch’s masterpiece, is a sprawling vision of apocalyptic nightmare, anticipating aspects of surrealism. There are such elements in Bruegel’s work as well, yet he is most celebrated for realistic depictions of daily life and robust, bawdy peasant celebration. These tendencies are combined to sublime effect in The Battle of Carnival and Lent.

       Executed in oils on oak, The Battle is set in a busy square, typical of towns in Flanders or Holland. In the foreground, the central figures tilt toward each other, evoking a medieval tournament. Yet this particular joust hardly evokes the valorous spirit of chivalry.

    Carnival is an obese drunkard astride a wine barrel, his lance a skewer of roasted meats. His foe: a wizened female figure armed with a baker’s paddle and two scrawny fish. She sits – somewhat precariously – upon a cart pulled by a priest and a nun. Carnival’s retinue includes masked mummers and musicians. The combatants are flanked by two buildings. To the right, backing up Lent, is a church, with penitents coming and going through the open doors. In the opposite corner, the citadel of Shrovetide is a tavern, where people have gathered to watch a play.

    The symbolism of these dueling edifices seems simple enough at first glance. Modern viewers need no special knowledge to be charmed by the details. Nevertheless, an understanding of Bruegel’s world lends the imagery a greater richness. For example, scholars have identified the street performance as “The Dirty Bride”, a folk comedy popular at the time and ultimately derived from the Roman poet Virgil. The tavern itself flies the banner of The Blue Barge, associated with a social organization known as The Guild of Fools.

   Some 42 years before The Battle was completed, a German priest named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. Luther railed against the selling of indulgences – the practice of forgiving sins in exchange for financial contributions to the Catholic church. In doing so, he set in motion a chain of events that would become known as the Protestant Reformation. For centuries, political power in western Europe had been dominated by the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.  In theory, the emperors controlled secular affairs; the popes maintained spiritual authority.  In practice, things were considerably messier. Once Luther called into question the religious supremacy of The Church, princes and other potentates exploited doctrinal differences to expand their territories. The continent would be roiled by sectarian wars and massacres for generations.

 In Bruegel’s lifetime The Low Countries, dominated by Spanish and Austrian branches of the Habsburg dynasty, remained officially Catholic. Yet the region – having few natural barriers and crisscrossed by trade routes – would have been exposed to the religious upheaval so typical of Europe at the time. This context accounts for much of the painting’s appeal even as it heightens the mystery of its meaning.

   As well-catalogued as Bruegel’s work has been, remarkably little is known about the artist himself. Half a dozen towns sprinkled across modern Belgium and The Netherlands have been plausibly proposed as the place where he was born; even the date of his birth is unknown. There is no record of his education. Clearly, Bruegel came from an iconographic tradition dating from the Middle Ages, using worldly objects to suggest spiritual values. Doubtless each element of the composition means something, but lacking real knowledge of its creator’s worldview, it is hard to assign any definitive interpretation to the work.

   The grotesqueness of the struggle is framed, in the background, by life-like renderings of trees. Realistic, but not entirely natural: those on the left still sport the bare limbs of winter, while those on the right bear the tender foliage of early spring. A simple evocation of changing seasons, or a suggestion that true rebirth is only possible through The Gospel? Some art historians see in Bruegel’s oeuvre a dichotomy of virtue and vice inherited from the medieval Church. Others see the artist as a heretic, lampooning the empty rituals of Catholicism. There is evidence enough to support either view.

    In any event, it is worth noting that of the dozens of figures on the scene, few seem overly concerned with the conflict in the midst. Even the combatants themselves seem curiously disengaged. Paupers dance and collect alms, children play on both sides of Bruegel’s busy panorama. The fact is that most people are neither unrestrained sensualists nor self-denying saints. We carry on finding what satisfactions we can throughout each year of our lives. As the critics Francoise and Philippe Roberts–Jones have written, the battle of Carnival and Lent is ultimately an absurd conflict, around which are “scattered fragments of the real world, mixed with shreds of dreams and fantasies”.

    In 1559, the year Bruegel finished The Battle, John Calvin opened a school for theology in Geneva. The French-born preacher’s critique of The Vatican was far more radical than that of Martin Luther. Eventually, the new faith would attract many adherents in the United Provinces, which broke away from Habsburg rule to form the nucleus of the Netherlands.  The Belgians, by contrast, remain predominantly Catholic. Their kingdom is sharply divided along linguistic lines: Flemish speakers in Flanders, Francophone Walloons, and a small German community near the eastern frontier. Yet the church provides a common denominator, and with that comes Carnival in all its bizarre guises.

   Ostend features the Procession of 1000 Lamps, and an affair called the Dead Rats’ Ball. Aalst is famed for a Parade of Giants and an abundance of Voil Jeanetten, men in dresses and women wearing beards. Genders are bent and egos bruised as these “Dirty Janes” engage in the good-natured abuse of onlookers.

    While insults are being hurled in Aalst, oranges are the preferred projectile in Binche, some 84 kilometers to the south. Fruit is lobbed by the Gilles, a fraternity of native-born men in costumes and clogs. It is actually considered a blessing to be so pelted. Benediction or not, cautious homeowners and the keepers of shops board their windows against the citric barrage. Anybody inclined to doubt that Belgians can carouse with the best of them would do well to consider etymology: Binche is the origin of the English “Binge”.

     This is not to suggest that Carnival is completely unknown in the home of gouda and Van Gogh. Despite a Protestant majority, there is a significant Catholic presence in such provinces as Gelderland, Noord Brabant, and Limburg. The stately city of Maastricht occupies a position on the country’s dangling southern appendage. Color and cacophony prevail and business is set aside during the days before Lent. To visit at this time is to see the stereotypically reserved Dutch indulge a hedonism akin to that of Cariocas at the Sambodromo, Trinidadians at Queen’s Park Savannah, or English lads on a stag weekend in Amsterdam.

Binche Carnaval photo by Selcenc via Wikimedia Commons; all other images in public domain.