Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)

ZOLTÁN KOVÁCS: "The Witty Pieter Quast": The Works of an Amsterdam Master in Hungary Then and Now

The negative image of peasant depictions was only further reinforced by the fifteenth-sixteenth-century literary tradition. The interest expressed at the end of the fifteenth century was manifest toward the social classes, peasants, beggars and vagabonds living on the periphery of society. See J. Bolte, "Fahrende Leute in der Literatur des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts," in Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Phil.-hist. Klasse 31 (1928) 626-27, 644-46; FL Miedema, "Realism and comic mode: the peasant," Simiolus9 (1977) 205-19. On the other hand, however, gradually a positive portrayal of the peasant working the land also appeared. The image of the industrious farmer inherited from Ancient Rome contributed significantly to the fact that a different, positive attitude developed to the peasant lifestyle in the sixteenth century. This theme is briefly discussed in K. Lindsay and B. Huppé, "Meaning and Method in Brueghel's Painting," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 14 (1956), 376-86. This duality is already quite tangible in the art of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. On Brueghel's depiction of peasants, see R. Baldwin, "Peasant Imagery and Brueghel's 'Fall of Icarus'," Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 55 (1986), 101-14.