The Fight Between Carnival and Lent
1559 · Oil on oak panel · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
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This print
About this work
- Artist
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569)
- Year
- 1559
- Medium
- Oil on oak panel
- Original size
- 118 × 164.5 cm
- Collection
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
- Movement
- Northern Renaissance
In a town square packed with nearly two hundred figures, two processions meet in a mock joust: on the left, by the inn, fat Carnival sits astride a beer barrel with a roast pig on a spit for a lance, and on the right, by the church, gaunt Lent rides a cart pulled by a monk and a nun, holding out two herrings on a baker's peel. Around them are dancers, beggars, cripples, players, fishmongers and churchgoers, and every detail of custom has been identified by folklorists, though the simultaneity is invented. The theme, the passage from Shrove Tuesday to the forty days of fasting before Easter, goes back to medieval poems, and a print after Frans Hogenberg of 1558 is a likely precursor. Bruegel signed and dated the panel 1559 on a stone at the lower left, the year of Netherlandish Proverbs; with Children's Games of 1560, it forms a group of encyclopedic scenes of folk life. Probably owned by Emperor Rudolf II, it moved from the Habsburg treasury to the picture gallery in 1748 and hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
This full-bleed edition prints the work edge to edge from a high-resolution scan of the original, very slightly cropped (a few percent at most) to fit the sheet. The gallery edition shows the whole work, uncropped. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
A crowded town square of tiny festive and fasting figures between an inn and a church, in brick, ochre, black and white, for a dining room or kitchen at 32×24 in natural wood. A cream, ochre or sage wall; it pairs with The Feast of Saint Nicholas.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Northern Renaissance painting
- Era
- 16th century (1559)
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Mood
- classic
- Rooms
- kitchen, dining room, living room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 32×24. Prints at 16×12, 24×18, 32×24 in — 16×12 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 24×18 above a console or sideboard; 32×24 as the statement piece above a sofa or headboard.
Framing. Printed edge to edge: a slim black or natural wood frame right to the image, or let the canvas wrap do the framing.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Fight Between Carnival and Lent in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Fight Between Carnival and Lent painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
A fine-art print
The same artwork as a clean fine-art print — the image shown large with a minimal caption.
