Peter Brueghel’s painting “Mad Greta” is one of the most terrible and great works of the artist. It will leave a rare person indifferent if he sees the original picture, which is in the Belgian Museum Mayer van den Bergh (Museum Mayer van den Bergh), or its reproduction or photograph.
Description of the picture
The painting “Mad Greta” is made mainly in red shades, its plot unfolds against the backdrop of a bloody sky barely covered with smoke. The earth is teeming with creatures in which only with a close look you can recognize people. They loot, kill and fight. The huge stone head in the left part of the picture also spawns.
At first glance it seems that the artist portrayed hell. But in the picture there are neither mythical creatures, nor devils, nor demonstrations of human suffering. The image shows a distorted interpretation of the behavior of people during the war. In a figurative sense, Bruegel wanted to show the underworld, but not underground, but on it, whose participants are not souls, but living people. The masses of people shown in the picture behave exactly the same, because the atmosphere of war, according to the artist, lowers all people to a low level, or simply drives them crazy.
In the center of the picture is the insane Greta herself. Her mouth is ajar, one hand squeezes the sword, the other a simple garment with a sticking out pan.
Obviously, the woman lost her mind amid the ongoing chaos. The person who is looking at the picture is invited to decide for himself where Greta is moving away from the city, or, conversely, she takes an active part in looting, distraught from suffering and horror.
Plot
The riot in the Netherlands in the early 60s of the 16th century, when the Spaniards were actively oppressed in the country, inspired the artist to write a painting called Mad Greta. This entailed war, destruction and poverty.
The emotional state is conveyed by Peter Bruegel quite accurately, so every person who looks at this picture may partially experience the aversion to war and pain that the author tried to convey.
In order to enhance the effect of tragedy, the author combines in one picture both real events and fantastic elements. This is not only a way to allegorically emphasize the insurmountable changes in the human character under the influence of war, but also a powerful tool to recreate an atmosphere of horror.
origin of name
The choice of the name of the picture about the war and human vices was not accidental. This is a kind of parody of the name of the famous gun of the day “Big Greta”. Thus, the artist not only in his work showed his attitude to the war, but also metamorphoses inevitably occurring during the war period with people, meaninglessness and cruelty.
In Belgium, you can find not only the original of this picture, but also a monument to this famous cannon.
Painter Peter Brueghel the Elder
The author of the picture with a surreal storyline “Mad Greta” is a famous artist from the Netherlands of the 16th century. The date of his birth is unknown, but it is known for certain that he began his work in the forties of the 16th century. Until 1559, he signed his Brueghel paintings, and after he threw away one extra letter and became known as Bruegel.
Great influence on Peter Bruegel made the work of Jerome Bosch. Many of his works, including Mad Greta, are visually similar to Bosch's paintings: in them, emotions prevail over a reliable representation of reality. The imitation of Bosch Brueghel reached such proportions that the latter even signed his work as "Jerome Bosch", he even sold these paintings, posing as the work of a famous colleague. Such a picture is "Big fish eat small ones."
It is noteworthy that Bruegel never painted to order: no portraits, no nudes. His work has always been social in nature, in the paintings he denounced human vices in the most frank and ironic form.
Peter Bruegel was married, a son was born in marriage - his namesake, who also later became an artist. He is known by the name of Brueghel Muzhitsky.
Peter Bruegel died in Brussels in 1569. But his work lives to this day, and even a modern man, after four and a half centuries, having read the description of the painting “Mad Greta”, will perfectly understand the feelings and emotions that the Dutch artist Peter Bruegel tried to convey to his descendants and contemporaries through his work.