A detailed, busy drawing of peasant life. Scenes of drinking and dancing, with figures relieving themselves, and an archery contest in the bottom right. In the upper left, the state of a saint is carried at the head of a religious procession.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca.1529-1569), Kermis at Hoboken, 1559, The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) © The Courtauld

Kermis at Hoboken

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel created this detailed drawing as a design for an engraving. Celebrated for his vivid depictions of peasant life, Bruegel here shows revellers at a festival in the Flemish village of Hoboken, near Antwerp. Amidst scenes of drinking and dancing and figures relieving themselves, an archery contest is precariously underway. The secular and the religious co-exist. At the upper left a chamber of rhetoric presents a performance whilst a statue of a saint is carried at the head of a religious procession. 

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