Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Peasant Wedding, c. 1566-69 Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

(lighthearted music)
Male Voiceover: Art so often
focuses on the lives of kings,
of biblical figures,
of saints and martyrs,
but what about everyday people?
What about most of us?
Female Voiceover: Well, that's
exactly what we get to see,
thanks to Bruegel, who is
known as the peasant painter.
We're seeing a peasant wedding
from the late 16th century.
Male Vocieover: There's
so much to look at here.
There's so many people crowded
into this barn-like space.
You can see huge walls of hay
that are being stored in the background,
and in front of that, a long table
with, well, the wedding party.
Female Voiceover: This is
a new type of painting.
This is a genre painting,
a scene of everyday life;
and this is a subject that begins
to be painted in the 16th century
because the protestant
reformation has happened.
Male Voiceover: So, the
artist traditional patron,
the church and people
buying art for the church,
has disappeared, and so
now the artist are looking
for different subjects, and we have
the birth of landscape painting, genre.
We see still life beginning to develop.
This new array of
options of possibilities,
but of course, patronage is
still coming from the wealthy.
This is a culture that was based
on trade and manufacturing;
and it would have been those that had made
a significant amount of
money that would have then
gone to artists and said, "Paint
me a painting about our world."
Female Voiceover: So, there
is something really appealing
about a monumental painting
of peasants celebrating life,
enjoying each others' company,
and celebrating a wedding.
Male Voiceover: You use the
world monumental a moment ago,
and that's such a perfect
word for this painting.
Bruegel paints in a style
that feels monumental.
the figures are solid, they
seem like the salt of the earth;
everything about this painting
has the feeling of warm roughness.
Female Voiceover: It's
important to think about that
in relationship to the culture
of Antwerp and Brussels,
where Bruegel worked,
those were big cities,
that, as you said, were really wealthy;
but what Bruegel is showing us here,
and what his patrons wanted to
see, was a much simpler life.
Male Voiceover: Let's do
exactly what the artist
is inviviting us to do; let's walk in.
Female Voiceover: There's a
lot of feasting and drinking.
A lot of drinking, especially.
We see the figure on the lower left,
he's pouring out the drink
that's being enjoyed.
Male Voiceover: My guess is that's beer.
This is Flanders, which is now
Belgium, and they made great beer;
and it makes sense because
that's a drink made from grain,
the very material that is so much a
part of the life of these peasants.
They're growing it, they're harvesting it,
and here, they'ere participating in
a wedding on the thrashing floor.
My eye first goes to that tray that's
being carried by those two waiters,
when they seem to be bringing in some sort
of porridge or pudding
in the earthenware bowls.
If you look a little bit past that,
you can see a man in a red cap
who's picking up those bowls
and seems to be passing
them down the table.
Female Voiceover: Carelessly,
because one looks like it's about to
the food is about to slip out of the bowl.
Male Voiceover: True. We
might look under his hand
and see that there's a knife,
there's a cutting board,
there's a loaf of bread, and
then we might go to the right.
There we see, seated in a high-back chair,
the notary, the legal
observer of the wedding.
To his left we can see a
Franciscan speaking to a man,
who's elegantly dressed,
and really stands out.
That would probably be the land-owner,
the noble whose land all
of these peasants work.
Female Voiceover: The artist
is really drawing our attention
to the star of the wedding, the
star of any wedding, the bride,
who forms the top of a pyramid
between these two figures
in the foreground that
you were describing.
She sits in front of a green
cloth, this was the tradition,
below a crown and also wearing a crown;
and she sits very modestly and demurely,
not partaking in eating and drinking.
All part of the way peasants celebrated
weddings in the 16th century.
Male Voiceover: Scholars
have done research,
and determined that Bruegel is quite
accurate in his representation.
He's trying to get right how
these rituals were enacted,
and so the idea that the
bride would stay very passive
with her hands folded,
not eating, not speaking,
under that crown made of paper.
Female Voiceover: Nuptials.
Definitely nuptials, is
apparently quite accurate,
and so it is this glimpse, not
only for us now in a later era,
but even for the city patrons.
Female Voiceover: When we think
about that kind of anthropologist,
few maybe sometimes may think about a view
that's very distant, but I
don't feel that with Bruegel.
I feel a sense of sympathy
with these figures,
a sense of shared humanity, and I think
that's what makes him a great painter,
is that we look at the
faces, and they feel
like people we might know or recognize.
Male Voiceover: I really love the
lower left corner of the painting.
This little boy whose face
is almost completely obscured
by his hat, although he's been dressed up.
He's got that wonderful
peacock feather in his cap,
and he's making sure that he doesn't
miss any drop of that pudding.
Female Voicoever: Then that
figure who pours the beer
is very graceful in his movements.
Male Voiceover: Beautifully
foreshortened rendering of the face.
This is almost drawing
as well as painting.
All the way at the far end of the table,
there's another lovely little vignette
that shows a woman with a
small child seated next to her,
who's happily eating, and
she seems to be looking up,
holding her stein, saying,
"Would you fill this up for me?"
Female Voiceover: "Hey, would you mind
getting me something else to drink?"
There's also the figure
who's playing the bagpipes,
who's watching the food come in.
It's just a really lovely glimpse
into life in the 16th century,
painted with a sense of
warmth and generosity.
Male Voiceover: We can
inhabit this world with them,
in just a wonderfully intimate way.
(lighthearted music)