DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.44747#0036
II
Bruegel’s Children’s Games
and Renaissance Concept of Children’s Play
An Allegory of Childhood, Not a Miniature Version of Adult Folly
Previous studies of Children’s Games (fig.5), like those of
Netherlandish Proverbs, have not focused on the relationship of this
painting to the rest of Bruegel’s oeuvre, how it reflects the sixteenth-
century view of children and how it resembles or differs from other
depictions of children’s games in paintings and prints of the same
period. Many scholars have concluded that the children in this paint-
ing represent adults because of their non-childish, expressionless
faces, but in my view this interpretation does not take sufficient
account of the Renaissance view of childhood.
Stridbeck, for example, states, “Children’s Games are an allegory
of the foolish and sinful world, the perverted world, in which man
deceives himself and each other, in a deranged, materialistic, deeply
meaningless life.” 33! Sandra Hindman supports the view that this
picture shows a world of folly characteristic of adults, that is, of
humankind as a whole.34! Pointing to specific games, Hindman notes
that the last male in the “baptismal procession” wears a blue cloak,
the symbol of deception, and so is a cuckolded husband. She also
interprets many other games in this negative fashion, and says,
“Bruegel suggests that folly accompanies life’s major events.”
A problem with this view is that Stridbeck’s main sources for the
connection of children’s games with human folly are not sixteenth-
century thinkers, contemporaries of Bruegel, but such people as the
seventeenth-century Calvinist moralist, Jacob Cats. The idea of the
folly of games is taken specifically from the theme of the prologue,
entitled “Children’s Games,” of Cats’s Marriage: These Are All of
Its Occasions in Their Actual State (1625) 35\ “The world and all its
makeup is nothing but a children’s game.” Before Cats, Roemer
Visscher, in Allegorical Dolls had expounded on the folly of
adults with examples taken from children’s games, likening walking
on stilts to the vanity of appearing greater than one’s abilities and
top-spinning to a lazy person who will not work unless he is whipped.
These emblem books using children’s games, however, appeared in
the seventeenth century, from 50 to 60 years after Bruegel’s painting
was executed.
I would propose some different interpretations for the reasons
given below. First, before Bruegel painted Children ’r Games, he had
demonstrated an encyclopedic interest in proverbs and folk festivals
and an avidity for collecting information on them while preparing to
paint the Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) and Battle Between Carnival
and Lent (1559). I would suggest that Children’s Games reveals the
same concern with “all- inclusive” expression as the other two works.
Second, Bruegel saw strenuous outdoor play as important for de-
veloping physical strength in children, and he portrayed various
children’s winter pastimes like ice-skating, sleigh-riding, and top-
spinning in Hunters in the Snow (1565) and Winter Landscape with
Bird-trap (1565). Third, the possibility that this painting is an al-
legory of childhood should not be neglected. Woodcuts and engrav-
ings of the Ages of Man published in Germany and the Netherlands
from the end of the fifteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth
century always depict the stage of childhood with figures of children
playing with tops, riding on hobby horses, or playing other games.
A Book of Hours published in Paris by Thielmann Kerver in 1522
links the twelve months of the liturgical calendar with the twelve
Ages of Man. A full-page illustration of children’s games, which
seems to have no precedent in this sort of book, is associated with
January (fig.6). The activities portrayed include playing with a bird,
golf games (Kolven), making a windmill with nuts, riding on a
hobby horse and using pinwheels as spears, blowing a pig’s-bladder
balloon, and throwing a stick. The inscription in the margin explains,
The first six years man lives in the world
we rightly compare to January,
for during this month neither vigor nor strength is abundant
as in a six-year old child.37!
Here January is compared to the immature condition of a six-year-
old child, but the games are not in any way presented as the folly of
adults.
E. Tietze-Konrad has given attention to allegorical prints of
lnfantia (childhood) published in Bruegel’s time,38) and I have ex-
amined marginal inscriptions on such prints in Latin, Dutch, and
French, interpreting the intentions of his contemporaries in depicting
children’s games in this way. For example, Marten de Vos’ print,
Childhood (fig.7),39! contains this Latin inscription.
The children exult and frolic
although they have just begun to speak
and cannot yet walk surely upon the earth.
Another inscription, in French, reads,
In this delightful young age,
46
Bruegel’s Children’s Games
and Renaissance Concept of Children’s Play
An Allegory of Childhood, Not a Miniature Version of Adult Folly
Previous studies of Children’s Games (fig.5), like those of
Netherlandish Proverbs, have not focused on the relationship of this
painting to the rest of Bruegel’s oeuvre, how it reflects the sixteenth-
century view of children and how it resembles or differs from other
depictions of children’s games in paintings and prints of the same
period. Many scholars have concluded that the children in this paint-
ing represent adults because of their non-childish, expressionless
faces, but in my view this interpretation does not take sufficient
account of the Renaissance view of childhood.
Stridbeck, for example, states, “Children’s Games are an allegory
of the foolish and sinful world, the perverted world, in which man
deceives himself and each other, in a deranged, materialistic, deeply
meaningless life.” 33! Sandra Hindman supports the view that this
picture shows a world of folly characteristic of adults, that is, of
humankind as a whole.34! Pointing to specific games, Hindman notes
that the last male in the “baptismal procession” wears a blue cloak,
the symbol of deception, and so is a cuckolded husband. She also
interprets many other games in this negative fashion, and says,
“Bruegel suggests that folly accompanies life’s major events.”
A problem with this view is that Stridbeck’s main sources for the
connection of children’s games with human folly are not sixteenth-
century thinkers, contemporaries of Bruegel, but such people as the
seventeenth-century Calvinist moralist, Jacob Cats. The idea of the
folly of games is taken specifically from the theme of the prologue,
entitled “Children’s Games,” of Cats’s Marriage: These Are All of
Its Occasions in Their Actual State (1625) 35\ “The world and all its
makeup is nothing but a children’s game.” Before Cats, Roemer
Visscher, in Allegorical Dolls had expounded on the folly of
adults with examples taken from children’s games, likening walking
on stilts to the vanity of appearing greater than one’s abilities and
top-spinning to a lazy person who will not work unless he is whipped.
These emblem books using children’s games, however, appeared in
the seventeenth century, from 50 to 60 years after Bruegel’s painting
was executed.
I would propose some different interpretations for the reasons
given below. First, before Bruegel painted Children ’r Games, he had
demonstrated an encyclopedic interest in proverbs and folk festivals
and an avidity for collecting information on them while preparing to
paint the Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) and Battle Between Carnival
and Lent (1559). I would suggest that Children’s Games reveals the
same concern with “all- inclusive” expression as the other two works.
Second, Bruegel saw strenuous outdoor play as important for de-
veloping physical strength in children, and he portrayed various
children’s winter pastimes like ice-skating, sleigh-riding, and top-
spinning in Hunters in the Snow (1565) and Winter Landscape with
Bird-trap (1565). Third, the possibility that this painting is an al-
legory of childhood should not be neglected. Woodcuts and engrav-
ings of the Ages of Man published in Germany and the Netherlands
from the end of the fifteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth
century always depict the stage of childhood with figures of children
playing with tops, riding on hobby horses, or playing other games.
A Book of Hours published in Paris by Thielmann Kerver in 1522
links the twelve months of the liturgical calendar with the twelve
Ages of Man. A full-page illustration of children’s games, which
seems to have no precedent in this sort of book, is associated with
January (fig.6). The activities portrayed include playing with a bird,
golf games (Kolven), making a windmill with nuts, riding on a
hobby horse and using pinwheels as spears, blowing a pig’s-bladder
balloon, and throwing a stick. The inscription in the margin explains,
The first six years man lives in the world
we rightly compare to January,
for during this month neither vigor nor strength is abundant
as in a six-year old child.37!
Here January is compared to the immature condition of a six-year-
old child, but the games are not in any way presented as the folly of
adults.
E. Tietze-Konrad has given attention to allegorical prints of
lnfantia (childhood) published in Bruegel’s time,38) and I have ex-
amined marginal inscriptions on such prints in Latin, Dutch, and
French, interpreting the intentions of his contemporaries in depicting
children’s games in this way. For example, Marten de Vos’ print,
Childhood (fig.7),39! contains this Latin inscription.
The children exult and frolic
although they have just begun to speak
and cannot yet walk surely upon the earth.
Another inscription, in French, reads,
In this delightful young age,
46