Netherlandish Proverbs

A whole village busies itself with absurdities: a man bangs his head against a brick wall, another casts roses before swine, someone covers a well after the calf has already drowned. Bruegel packs more than a hundred Netherlandish proverbs and idioms into a single seething square, each acted out with deadpan literalness, an upside-down globe on the wall announcing a world gone topsy-turvy. The effect is comic and bleak at once - a panoramic catalog of human folly, vanity, and self-deception. Scholars still argue over the exact count, since some scenes carry more than one saying.