The Blind Leading The Blind (The Parable of the Blind)

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The Blind Leading The Blind (The Parable of the Blind): Pieter Brueghel the Elder

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Pieter Brueghel the Elder Oil Painting - The Blind Leading The Blind (The Parable of the Blind)

Keywords: Leading, Parable

Work Overview: The Blind Leading the Blind
Dutch: De parabel der blinden
Artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Year 1568
Type Distemper on linen canvas
Dimensions 86 cm × 154 cm (34 in × 61 in)
Location Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy

The Blind Leading the Blind, Blind, or The Parable of the Blind (Dutch: De parabel der blinden) is a painting by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, completed in 1568. Executed in distemper on linen canvas, it measures 86 cm × 154 cm (34 in × 61 in). It depicts the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind from the Gospel of Matthew 15:14, and is in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy.

The painting reflects Bruegel's mastery of observation. Each figure has a different eye affliction, including corneal leukoma, atrophy of globe and removed eyes. The men hold their heads aloft to make better use of their other senses. The diagonal composition reinforces the off-kilter motion of the six figures falling in progression. It is considered a masterwork for its accurate detail and composition. Copies include a larger version by Bruegel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and the work has inspired literature such as poetry by Charles Baudelaire and William Carlos Williams, and a novel by Gert Hofmann.

Bruegel painted The Blind the year before his death. It has a bitter, sorrowful tone, which may be related to the establishment of the Council of Troubles in 1567 by the government of the Spanish Netherlands. The council ordered mass arrests and executions to enforce Spanish rule and suppress Protestantism. The placement of Sint-Anna Church of the village Sint-Anna-Pede has led to both pro- and anti-Catholic interpretations, though it is not clear that the painting was meant as a political statement.

The painting depicts a procession of six blind, disfigured men. They pass along a path bordered by a river on one side and a village with a church on the other.[1] The leader of the group has fallen on his back into a ditch and, because they are all linked by their staffs, seems about to drag his companions down with him.[2] A cowherd stands in the background.

Bruegel based the work on the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind from Matthew 15:14,[a] in which Christ refers to the Pharisees.[4] According to art critic Margaret Sullivan, Bruegel's audience was likely as familiar with classical literature as with the Bible. Erasmus had published his Adagia two years before Bruegel's painting, and it contained the quotation "Caecus caeco dux" ("the blind leader of the blind") by Roman poet Horace.[5] Bruegel expands the two blind men in the parable to six; they are well dressed, rather than wearing the peasant clothing that typifies his late work.[6] The first blind man's face is not visible; the second twists his head as he falls, perhaps to avoid landing face-first. The shinguard-clad third man, on his toes with knees bent and face to the sky, shares a staff with the second, by which he is being pulled down. The others have yet to stumble, but the same fate seems implied.[7]

The faces and bodies of the blind men, and background detail including the church, are rendered in exceptionally fine detail.[8] The backward-falling posture of the guide demonstrates Bruegel's mastery of foreshortening.[2] Bruegel's settings tend to be fictional,[b] but that of The Blind Leading the Blind has been identified[8] as the village Sint-Anna-Pede,[9] and the church as Sint-Anna Church.

One of four surviving Bruegel paintings in distemper,[c] the work is a tüchlein, a type of light painting that uses tempera made from pigment mixed with water-soluble glue. This medium was widely used in painting and manuscript illumination before the advent of oil paint. It is not known from whom Bruegel learnt its use, but amongst those speculated are his mother-in-law, illuminator Mayken Verhulst; his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst; and painter and illuminator Giulio Clovio, with whom he resided in Italy and whom he helped paint miniatures in distemper.[12] Due to the high perishability of linen cloth and the solubility of hide glue, tüchleins do not preserve well and are difficult to restore. The Blind Leading the Blind is in good condition and has suffered no more than some erosion,[13] such as of a herdsman and some fowl in the middle ground.[14][d] The grain of the linen[7] canvas is visible beneath the delicate brushstrokes.[15] The work is signed and dated BRVEGEL.M.D.LX.VIII.[16] The painting measures 86 cm × 154 cm (34 in × 61 in),[4] the largest of 1568.[7]

The austere tone is achieved through pigments in a colour scheme of mostly greys, greens, brownish-reds, and blacks. The diagonal movement of the bodies creates a dramatic tension[17] in the foreground which is divided diagonally from the landscape background.[18] The flat country features are distinctly Flemish, unlike in most of Bruegel's landscapes, in which he introduced foreign elements such as mountain ranges even into local scenery.[19]

In contrast to earlier depictions of the blind as beneficiaries of divine gifts, Bruegel's men are stumbling and decrepit,[20] and portrayed without sympathy. The eyeless figure would have been interpreted as a man who had suffered punishment for wrongdoing or fighting.[21]

Bruegel painted with the empirical objectivity of the Renaissance. In earlier paintings the blind were typically depicted with eyes closed. Here, Bruegel gives each man a different ocular affliction, all painted with a realism that allowed identification of their conditions by later experts,[20] though there is still some diagnostic disagreement.[22] French anatomical pathologist Jean-Martin Charcot and anatomical artist Paul Richer published an early account, Les difformes et les malades dans l'art ("The deformed and sick in art", 1889), and French pathologist Tony-Michel Torrillhon followed with more research on Bruegel's figures in 1957.[7] The first man's eyes are not visible; the second has had his eyes removed, along with the eyelids: the third suffers from corneal leukoma; the fourth atrophy of the globe; the fifth is either blind with no light perception, or photophobic; and the sixth has pemphigus[7] or bullous pemphigoid.[23] Charcot and Richer noted Bruegel's accuracy in portraying the blind men facing not forward but with their faces raised in the air, as they would have had to rely on their senses of smell and hearing.[24]

Charles Bouleau wrote of the tension in Bruegel's compositional rhythms. The picture is divided into nine equal parts divided by a set of parallel oblique lines. These are divided by another network of lines at constant angles to the first.[33] The composition invites the reader to follow the action rather than dwell on the individual figures. The blind men resemble each other in dress and facial features,[34] and they appear as if they succeed one another in a single movement culminating in a fall,[9] beginning on the left with "rambling, then hesitation, alarm, stumbling, and finally falling".[34] The succession of heads follows a curve, and the further the succession, the greater the space between heads, suggesting increasing speed.[34] The steep roofs of the background houses contribute to the composition's feeling of motion.[7]

Art historian Gustav Glück noted incongruities in that the beggars are well-dressed and carry staves and full purses. Academics Kenneth C. Lindsay and Bernard Huppé suggest Bruegel may have implied that the blind men represent false priests who ignored Christ's admonitions not to carry gold, purses, or staves;[35][g] the leader carries a hurdy-gurdy, a musical instrument associated with beggars in Bruegel's time;[36] this perhaps implies a false minstrel, one who sings praises not for God.

The church in the background, identified as the Sint-Anna Church at Dilbeek in modern Belgium,[10] has sparked much commentary. One view holds that the church is evidence of the painting's moralistic intent—that while the first two blind men stumble and are beyond redemption, the other four are behind the church and thus may be saved. Another interpretation has it that the church, with a withered tree placed before it, is an anti-Catholic symbol, and that those who follow it will fall following a blind leader as do the men in the ditch. Others deny any symbolism in the church, noting that churches frequently appear in Bruegel's village scenes as they were a common part of the village landscape.[31] Medical researcher Zeynel A. Karcioglu suggests the church represents indifference to the plight of the handicapped.[8]

In contrast to the posed, static figures typical of paintings of the period, Bruegel suggests the trajectory of time and space through the accelerated movement of the figures. Critics Charcot and Richer wrote that the concept of visualizing movement was not formulated until the 17th century,[9] and that Bruegel prefigures motion pictures[37] and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.[9] Karcioglu sees the painting as anticipating the 19th-century chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey.[7] Dutch film director Joris Ivens stated, "If Bruegel were alive today he would be a film director."

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Jesus had told his disciples that it was not necessary to wash hands before eating. Scribes and Pharisees who heared about this were infuriated, as it was a clear breach of Jewish law. When the disciples informed Jesus about that, he replied that the Pharisees were blind leading the blind, and that all would end up falling into the ditch. The disciples should pay no attention to them.

Pieter Bruegel here depicts the subject literally. The painting is also a study of the different stages of falling, a technical challenge that Bruegel seemed to be fascinated by toward the end of his life.

The expressions on the faces range from trust to surprise and shock.

The church in the background emphasizes Bruegel's message: do not blindly follow leaders that lead you away from the Church, or you will end up in trouble.

Bruegel usually painted details with great care, after studying the subject extensively. Ophthalmologists (eye doctors) are said to be able to recognize five different eye diseases in this painting.

It was only later that Bruegel's pictures received their titles; they have since undergone change in the course of the centuries, most of the works being known today under a number of names. That given this work - which is also known as The Fall of the Blind - refers to Christ's parable concerning the Pharisees (Matthew 15:14): "And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

In the parable of the blind leading the blind Christ was illustrating in readily appreciable physical form a spiritual condition — inner blindness to true religion. Bruegel gives visual expression to Christ's words in this truly tragic image. The frieze-like procession of the large-scale figures of six blind men reaches an agonizing climax in the terrified expression of the second, who is falling. In contrast to this staggering line of humanity is the church behind them, strong and solid, representing the faith which gives true vision. Once again, in a late work, Bruegel gives a particular and realistic interpretation to a Christian moral.

The blind were a subject of special fascination to Bruegel. He introduced a group into The Fight between Carnival and Lent and a drawing of 1562 in Berlin also shows a group of three blind people. Other paintings of the blind by Bruegel are mentioned in early inventories. His treatment of them is sympathetic without for a moment being patronizing.

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