Why Pieter Bruegel's painting "The Parable of the Blind" is called a medical reference

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Pieter Bruegel the Elder left to the art world not only a galaxy of talented heirs-painters, but also masterful canvases with a careful depiction of details and … hidden amazing data. One of his paintings, in addition to its magnificent plot, hides medical data. This is the "Parable of the Blind", dedicated to the tragic fate of people.

About the picture

The Parable of the Blind is a 1568 painting by the Dutch Renaissance artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The artist was born in Brabant (in the village of Brueghel, which gave him the name) between 1525 and 1530. Pieter Bruegel the Elder founded a whole dynasty of artists. Painters were his sons (Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder), as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"The Parable of the Blind" is a pictorial embodiment of the saying of Christ: "If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit" (Matt. 15:14). Of course, the Renaissance artist did not create this canvas with the aim of conveying his knowledge of human blindness. In this context, physical blindness is a metaphor for spiritual blindness or inner blindness to true religion. The blind from Bruegel's painting correspond to the blind from the Bible (Christ saw in the Pharisees "the blind leaders of the blind"). In Bruegel's painting, there are no guilty ones, but everyone is doomed to fall, because they have lost the true message of Christ.

In this case, Bruegel's description is very literal, since the leader of the procession of six blind men fell into a ditch and, it seems, will drag his comrades away with him. Bruegel visually expresses the words of Christ in this truly tragic image. But there is also a glimmer of hope: despite spiritual blindness, behind the heroes stands a strong and sturdy church representing the faith that gives true vision. The blind were frequent "guests" on Bruegel's canvases, a subject of special charm for him ("The Battle of Maslenitsa and Lent", "The Sermon of John the Baptist"). And what is important: the artist's attitude towards them is sympathetic, not patronizing for a minute.

Heroes and plot

What does the viewer see in the picture? The picture represents 6 blind men holding each other by the hand or by the stick. All of them are heading towards the stream, into which the first blind man is already falling. On the other side you can see the village and the church. Four of the six heroes hold their heads high in order to better use the rest of the senses. The diagonal composition of the painting enhances the movement of the six figures and adds dynamism to the work. The leader of the group has already fallen on his back into the ditch, and since they are all holding hands and holding their staves, the “leader” of the group will drag all the companions who follow him into the pit. The palette, consisting mainly of gray, green, brown, green, dark red and black, creates a strict and even somewhat gloomy tone. The choice of palette can be explained by two factors.

First, the painting was painted just a year before the artist's death. Diseases and an aggravating political situation played a role (the last years of his life were spent in an atmosphere of terror, imposed by the leader of the counter-reformation, Alba). Secondly, the very theme of the picture (hopelessness and spiritual blindness) suggests a gloomy tone. The plot is clearly separated from the landscape: green plains and a distinctly Flemish landscape. The faces and bodies of the blind, as well as minor details, including the church, are depicted in exceptional detail (this is in the spirit of Pieter Brueghel, each work of which is a meticulous detailed composition).

Bruegel's precise medical diagnosis

As a result of the research carried out, it turned out that the picture hides amazing secrets. It turns out that Pieter Bruegel the Elder was not only a skilled painter. The Parable of the Blind is an accurate depiction of the clinical forms of blindness.

So, one of the people on the cornea was found to have a leucorrhoea in the form of a white spot - a symptom of what a modern doctor would call leukoma. Another blind man stared into the sky: he suffers from atrophy of the eyeballs - another now known cause of blindness.

The diagnosis of the third character is enucleation of the orbits: it is possible that his eyes were injured during a fight; another character has his eyes removed along with his eyelids.

The fifth hero has blindness, deprived of light perception, or photophobia (increased painful sensitivity to light; photophobia).

The sixth character has pemphigus or bullous pemphigoid.

In early paintings of that era, the blind were usually depicted with their eyes closed. Here Bruegel gives each person a different eye condition, depicted with medical realism. It was this precision that allowed the experts to identify their diagnoses. Such attention to the physical manifestations of the illness of his heroes is no exception in the work of Bruegel. In many works, viewers can see lame, crippled people depicted with such amazing accuracy that any doctor can diagnose the situation from the picture. This work of Bruegel is considered by many to be a masterpiece for its meticulous attention to detail and deliberate diagonal composition that emphasizes the confusion of the characters and the loss of balance. blind. Among many art critics, there is an opinion that the heroes of Bruegel's paintings are not only blind, but also dumb. Otherwise, how can you explain the fact that they could not warn each other about the impending fall? The frieze-like procession of six figures reaches its climax in the emotion and frightened expression of the second hero, whose only face is turned towards the viewer.

How can such knowledge in medicine be explained by an artist of the 16th century? The story tells of a striking progress in medicine in the 16th century. But the accuracy in depicting clinical blindness in Bruegel does not correlate with the era, since at that time blindness was rather little studied. It was usually attributed to the action of destructive vapors rising from the stomach and affecting the center of vision. Where exactly Bruegel was able to collect medical data and so accurately portray eye diseases remains unknown. However, this does not detract from the value of the canvas, but, on the contrary, stirs up even greater interest in the art of Pieter Brueghel.

Towards the end of his short life, Bruegel began to make tremendous efforts to study the pictorial idea of a falling figure. These studies culminated in the Parable of the Blind, in which the unity of form, composition, content and expression makes him a significant contribution to European painting. This is one of the greatest paintings of the Renaissance in its masterful manifestation of the New Testament parable.

Especially for those who are interested in the work of this artist, a story about the secret meanings of Bruegel's visual "Flemish proverbs".