Title: Homo ludens: Pieter Bruegel’s Children’s Games and the Humanist Educators
Abstract: Compositionally, Children's Games resembles Bruegel's other two encyclopedic works, Netherlandish Proverbs (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) and The Battle Between Carnival and Lent (Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum).Executed on panels of similar dimensions and produced in the period 1559-60, these three paintings form a distinct visual group within Bruegel's painted oeuvre. 9Netherlandish Proverbs is peopled by errant villagers acting out popular proverbial sayings.A distant church, a river, a tavern, and a castle serve to ground the antics of the figures within