The Blind Leading the Blind

Six blind men stumble in a diagonal line across the canvas: the leader has already toppled backward into a ditch, the next is falling, and each man behind, hand on the shoulder ahead, is about to follow. Bruegel illustrates Christ's warning that if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch (Matthew 15:14), but he studies the men's clouded eyes and groping faces with near-clinical accuracy. A village church stands calmly in the background, untouched by the disaster. Painted in delicate tempera on linen, it is one of his last and most pitilessly clear-eyed works.