Two monkeys

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Two monkeys (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)
Two monkeys
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Oil on oak
20 × 23 cm
Gemäldegalerie Berlin

Two Monkeys , also Two Chained Monkeys , is a painting by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder . The 20 cm × 23 cm picture, painted in oil on oak, dates from 1562 and shows two monkeys in a wall arch. A landscape with a city on a river can be seen in the background. The image motif offers art historians a wide variety of possible interpretations, ranging from an allegorical interpretation to references to the political situation and the portrayal of the personal circumstances of the painter. The painting is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

Image description

Image detail: Bruegel's signature and date

A mighty gray-brown wall is depicted parallel to the image, in which there is a compressed, arched opening that is reminiscent of a loopholes . In this opening in the wall sit two collars (Cercocebus torquatus) , monkeys from the vervet family. They are each chained to a metal ring in the middle of the base plate. While the monkey on the left looks forward to the viewer, the monkey on the right looks at the ground in its bent position towards the center. Fragments of a walnut shell are scattered in front of his body and towards the lower edge of the picture . The monkeys are characterized by a striking fur in reddish colors, from which white areas on the face and neck stand out. The long tails of the two animals, which the painter placed in the foreground of the picture, are also characteristic.

A landscape with a city on a river can be seen in the background through the opening in the wall. Various types of sailing ships can be seen on the river, some of which were also used for overseas trade. In the city skyline to the right of the river, Bruegel shows various church towers and a windmill. Due to Bruegel's biographical reference and similarities with the still existing church towers, art historians assume that the river in the picture represents the Scheldt and the city of Antwerp with the Cathedral of Our Lady , whose north tower still towers over the city today. After that, the opening of the wall would be a loopholes in the former citadel of Antwerp , which was south of the city. While the monkeys and the inside of the wall arch are painted in comparatively dark colors, the painter shows the city in very light, almost pale colors with a large open sky. There two birds fly over the city, the freedom of which contrasts with the captured monkeys. Below the monkey on the left, the painter has placed the signature BRVEGEL in the brickwork and dated the picture with MDLXII (1562).

Image interpretations

The painting Two Monkeys can be interpreted in very different ways. After the monkey appeared in representations as a fool as early as the Middle Ages , Bruegel's monkeys are an allegorical symbol for the lower human senses and instincts. The cracked nutshells indicate the voracity and stupidity of the animals. Possibly attracted by this food, they were captured. Accordingly, the monkeys caused their situation themselves and exchanged their freedom for the enjoyment of the fruit. Applied to humans, the question arises whether it is worth giving up freedom for a profit of dubious value, here the nutshells.

The subject of freedom and imprisonment also has a political meaning. The two monkeys are interpreted as citizens of Antwerp in chains, who were robbed of their freedoms by the Spaniards under King Philip II . The monkeys' long tails can also be read as a reference to the long-running disputes with the Spaniards. In addition, there is a linguistic proximity between the word seigneurie “rule” and the Brabant term singerie “monkey faxes, grimaces” - a symbol for a political monkey theater. For the author Jozef Muls, Zwei Apen represents the oppression of the Netherlands.

Another interpretation refers to Bruegel's personal circumstances. In 1563, a year after Two Monkeys were completed , Bruegel married and moved to Brussels. The city painted in the background can be understood as a farewell picture to Antwerp and the monkeys chained to a ring can be an allusion to the firm bond of marriage.

Role models and receptions

Jan Bruegel the Elder: Animal Study (Donkeys, Cats, Monkeys) , around 1616, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

In addition to the composition Four Monkeys by the engraver Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, models for Bruegel's Two Monkeys could be an engraving created by Albrecht Dürer around 1498 with the title The Madonna with the Vervet Monkey, in which the monkey is also attached to a ring with a chain. One of the earliest artists to use Pieter Bruegel's monkey motif was his son Jan Brueghel the Elder . In his painting Animal Study , which is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna , he shows donkeys and cats as well as numerous images of monkeys that resemble those of his father in the painting Two Monkeys . Among the contemporary artists, the Canadian Attila Richard Lukacs makes repeated references to Bruegel's image in his work. In his group portraits, the monkeys can be read as the artist's self-portrait, as in the Flemish model. For the Swiss author Silvio Blatter , Bruegel's painting served as the inspiration for his novel Zwei Affen . The two protagonists of the book get to know each other in front of the painting in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie and a love story develops. While she is copying the painting, he tells her about his time in a Thuringian salt mine, where the painting was at war. In her poem The Two Monkeys by Breughel, the Polish Nobel Prize winner for literature, Wisława Szymborska, draws parallels between the subject of the picture and the experiences of her generation. So she writes: "I am tested in human history. / I stutter and I falter." And gives one monkey the role of an ironic listener, while the other monkey, pretending to be asleep, adds "with a quiet clink of the chain".

Provenance

The painting Two Monkeys was first mentioned in 1668 in the inventory of the collector Peter Stevens from Antwerp. In January 1931, the then director Max Jakob Friedländer bought it for the Berlin Gemäldegalerie in the Parisian art trade for 25,000 Reichsmarks . The picture shown in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum after the acquisition came to West Germany after the Second World War and has been part of the collection of the holdings shown in Berlin (West) in Dahlem since the 1950s, before it moved to the new building of the Gemäldegalerie in the Kulturforum in 1998 .

literature

  • Silvio Blatter: Two monkeys . DuMont, Cologne 2008, ISBN 3-8321-8050-8 .
  • Robin Mayor: Attila Richard Lukacs: recent work 1990 . Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary 1990, ISBN 1-895086-18-3 .
  • Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Hrsg.): Catalog of the paintings from the 13th to 18th centuries . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-7861-6196-8 .
  • Jozef Muls: Bruegel . Standaard-Boekhandel, Antwerp 1945.
  • Wolfgang Stechow: Pieter Bruegel, the elder . Abrams, New York 1969.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The term two chained monkeys can be found in the catalog of the Gemäldegalerie Berlin. See Gemäldegalerie (Ed.): Catalog , p. 86
  2. ↑ Gemäldegalerie (Ed.): Catalog , p. 86
  3. ↑ Harald Hartung: On the death of Wisława Szymborskas, In human history checked , published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on February 1, 2012