Bruegel’s The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting of 1559, ‘The Fight Between Carnival And Lent’. Created in Antwerp at a time of religious tension between Catholics and Protestants, the painting is rich in detail and seems ripe for interpretation. But Bruegel is notoriously difficult to interpret. His art seems to reject the preoccupations of the Italian Renaissance, drawing instead on techniques associated with the new technology of the 16th century, print. Was Bruegel using his art to comment on the controversies of his day? If so, what comment was he making?

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Guests

• Louise Milne No other episodes
  Lecturer in Visual Culture in the School of Art at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University
• Jeanne Nuechterlein No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of York
• Miri Rubin 13 episodes
  Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History and Head of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London

Reading list

• Bruegel
  Walter S. Gibson (Thames & Hudson, 1985) Google Books →
• Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter
  Walter S. Gibson (University of California Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c.1525-1569: Peasants, Fools and Demons
  Rose-Marie Hagen and Rainer Hagen (Benedikt Taschen, 1994) Google Books →
• Bruegel: The Complete Works
  Rose-Marie Hagen and Rainer Hagen (Taschen, 2000) Google Books →
• Carnivals and Dreams: Pieter Bruegel and the History of the Imagination
  Louise Milne (Mutus Liber, 2011) Google Books →
• Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany
  R. W. Scribner (Hambledon Press, 1987) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b04xrv9n

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xrv9n

Auto-category: 759.9492 (Bruegel, Pieter, approximately 1525-1569)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, I'm looking at a painting which is looking down on a busy square with crowds of people dressed in a late medieval costume.