gandalf1202:

Jan Brueghel the Elder – A Village Festival [1600] on Flickr.

Jan Brueghel was the son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, born a year before his father died. He spent the years 1592-5 in Italy, where (unlike his friend Rubens) he seems to have presented himself as the archetypal Flemish artist, specialising in landscape, flower and animal painting and employing a meticulous jewel-like technique. Italian patrons were perfectly capable of appreciating these qualities, whatever their thoughts about what the highest form of art should be like.

This magnificent landscape depicts a Kermis or fair, during which a religious festival is celebrated by a rustic street party. The pub in the left background is full; amongst many groups we can just make out a ring of peasants playing dice on a tree-stump table. In the middle ground two groups of peasants dance in a ring to the sound of bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy, and a pair of children are trying to learn the same moves. One elderly woman in the near group has a ring of keys held on a cord, which flies out from her waist as she spins. Behind the nearer ring to the right there is a toy, a beggar or peddler in red talking to a ‘mummer’, and a man and his wife who appear to be in biblical fancy dress, with hats designed to look like haloes. The festivities are enjoyed by two groups of prosperous middle-class observers: one group of gallant young lovers (in the middle ground) have courtly manners which contrast with the peasant couple billing in the cart; the nearer group seems to include three generations of a single family, with their nursemaid. A jester is chased away (or possibly restrained with demands for an encore) by a group of children. Some beggars arrive at the extreme left foreground; children play boules across the centre; and an elderly couple share a ride home to the right, taking their flag and a basket full of produce.

[The Royal Collection – Oil on copper, 47.6 x 68.6 cm]

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/69647253062.

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