Why Did Bruegel Paint Hell Like This?

This painting depicts a woman marching into hell. It was painted in 1563 by Peter Bruegel the Elder. The woman is carrying a sword. Behind her, an army follows. Around them, strange creatures crawl across the landscape. Some look like animals. Others look like machines. A few are difficult to describe at all. Fires burn in the distance. Buildings collapse. And near the centre of the painting sits what appears to be the entrance to hell itself. The painting is known as Dullergriet or Mad Meg. The name comes from an old Flemish expression about a woman bold enough to rob right in front of hell. Let's start with the bag. It hangs at Meg's waist, roughly as wide as her torso, tied shut at the top. A pot, a ladle and a basket dangle from the outside. The bag is visibly, heavily distended. She hasn't even reached the mouth of hell yet. Whatever she's carrying, it's already weighing her down before she even reaches the mouth of hell. The old proverb says she was so insatiable she would storm the underworld for more, even when she had enough. Looking at the pack on her hip, she clearly has enough. Bruegel wasn't the first artist to imagine hell. Jan van Eyck's Last Judgment had already turned it into a world of demons and punishment. In John Martin's Pandemonium, hell becomes a vast city of fire, stretching across the horizon beneath the gaze of Satan himself. Those paintings begin inside hell. Dullergriet doesn't. The strangest thing about this painting isn't hell, it's the journey toward it. Now let's take a look at her armour. A metal breastplate strapped over a plain household smock. One iron gauntlet on her left hand. Nothing on the right. They don't match. This isn't military gear forged for a soldier. It's a collection of domestic clutter and scavenged iron thrown together in a hurry. But look at her right arm. While her left hand clamps the heavy bag against her ribs, her right arm holds a sword mid-raise, the blade angled upward. One hand is dedicated entirely to keeping what she has already stolen. The other is entirely free to strike for more. She isn't running away, she is advancing. Behind her, on the bridge at the far left, a crowd of women follows her lead. One pulls a creature on a taut rope, dragging it backward. Another holds a beast upside down by its legs. A third forces a thrashing shape headfirst into an open sack. They aren't defending themselves, they are collecting. They are dressed much like Meg, and the creatures they are targeting are small, roughly the size of stray dogs, scattering away from the line of march. If this is a battle between humanity and damnation, humanity is winning. The monsters are the ones retreating. Bruegel painted fear before. In the triumph of death, skeleton armies sweep across the landscape while people run in every direction. Some hide, some fight. Most simply try to escape. The outcome is never in doubt. Death is coming. And everyone knows it. But look at Dullagrete. Hell is right there. Meg can see it. It is built directly into a colossal, hollow face, wide lips framing a dark mouth. But the demons crawling through the dirt in front of it aren't forming a defensive line. One has the hull of a small boat for a torso. Another is an iron helmet, walking on tiny legs. They are ignoring Meg completely. They are scuttling backward toward the mouth, clutching small, dark bundles against their bodies. Even the giant eyes of Hell itself don't look down at the woman approaching with the sword. They are fixed on something far out on the horizon, staring blankly past her. Look at the bridge behind her. One of the women has a demon pinned underneath her, tying it down with something domestic. And not one of these women needs Meg. And there's an old Flemish proverb that seems almost made for this painting. One woman makes a din, five make an army, and against six, the devil himself has no weapon. The battle was always going to go this way, which should make Meg the least interesting figure in the painting. But it doesn't. Look at her sword. It has been raised the entire time, and never used, which is strange. Bruegel made her the biggest thing here, so why can't you stop looking at her? Karel van Mander couldn't either. He wrote about the painting in 1604, more than 40 years after Bruegel painted it, and the detail he remembered wasn't the demons or the fires, it was Dulegriet herself. He described her as looking terribly bewildered, dressed in a strange way, and bold enough to rob right in front of Hell. More than four centuries later, we're still doing exactly what Karel van Mander did, looking past the demons, past the fires, past Hell itself, and ending up right back at her. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, consider liking and subscribing, and if you're in the mood for another art mystery, check out this next video.