Dulle
Griet in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh
Jane Carroll and Alison Stewart
jane.L.carroll@dartmouth.edu
astewart1@unl.edu
The workshop took
place before BruegelA?s painting in the Mayer van den
Bergh. Organizers Jane Carroll and Alison Stewart
offered a brief introduction that welcomed discussion
and overlapping interpretations for BruegelA?s painting.
The workshop was centered around four papers addressing
specific aspects of meaning in BruegelA?s work, with
each presentation followed by questions and discussion
initiated by workshop attendees. Walter Gibson began
by addressing the central figure of 'Dulle Griet'
as the stock figure of the quarrelsome, headstrong
women who dared to confront the devil himself as seen
in proverbs and literature of the time. Yona Pinson
turned to an interpretation of folly, human desire,
and avarice for the entire painting as seen in individual
details (e.g., egg shells and coins). Margaret Carroll
stressed the importance of viewing the painting first-hand
for its threatening, war-like effect, in which the
townA?s walls are breached, the town sacked and looking
like Hell. Louise Milne addressed madness within folk
mythology including dreams and nightmares explored
in the next generation by William Shakespeare. For
Milne, 'Dulle Griet' is Lady Antwerp before the gates
of Hell while women exercise carnivalesque license.
Discussion after each presentation and at the very
end stressed the centrality of Antwerp, shipping and
commerce, money and capitalism, and BruegelA?s use
of Boschian imagery.
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