ABSTRACT
There exists a long tradition of iconographic interpretations of proverbs and proverbial expressions, ranging from medieval wood-cuts to misericords, from book illustrations to emblems, from tapestries to oil paintings, and from braodsheets to modern caricatures, cartoons, comic strips, and advertisements. The Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel (1520?–1569) produced many proverb pictures, his most celebrated one being the Netherlandish Proverbs (1559), an oil picture illustrating over one hundred proverbial expressions. For detailed studies see Wilhelm Fraenger, Der Bauern-Bruegel und das deutsche Sprichwort (Erlenbach-Zürich: Eugen Rentsch, 1923); Jan Grauls, Volkstaal en volksleven in het werk van Pieter Bruegel (Antwerpen: N.V. Standaard, 1957); David Kunzle, “Bruegel’s Proverb Painting and the World Upside Down,” The Art Bulletin, 59 (1977), 197–202; and Alan Dundes and Claudia A. Stibbe, The Art of Mixing Metaphors: a Folkloristic Interpretation of the “Netherlandish Proverbs” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981).
