Beschreibung:

After Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Dutch, ca. 1523-1569) "The Blind Leading the Blind" oil on canvas a copy by Egide Godfried Guffens (Belgian, 1823-1901), signed and inscribed lower left "Kopy op doeck G. Guffens / Bruegel MDXVIII". Framed. 34-1/2" x 61", framed 45-1/2" x 72" Notes: "The Blind Leading the Blind", an ancient idiom referenced in the Bible, was a popular motif depicted in Protestant 16th-century art that privileged proverbs and landscapes over forbidden religious icons. One of the last paintings Bruegel painted was of this subject, cleverly combining various types of eye afflictions on a motley crew of blokes trudging alongside a Dutch canal, the diagonal composition as off-kilter as the blind procession itself. The juxtaposition of the scurrilous leader grounded in a ditch with the Roman Catholic church of St. Anna in the background is often read as political mockery of the Spanish Netherlands government, which issued mass arrests and executions of Protestants through the brutal edict, the Council of Troubles (1567). Bruegel's interpretation of the "Blind Leading the Blind" has inspired numerous period and 19th-century copies; his son, Bruegel the Younger, painted a larger copy; Charles Baudelaire and William Carlos Williams reference it in their poems, and Godfried Guffens, a prominent member of the Nazarene movement (German Romantic painters with a predilection for Christian art), also pays tribute to the master and fellow Protestant in the depiction offered here.