Mad Meg (Dulle Griet) Pieter Brueghel The Elder (1525-1569)

Description of Peter Brueghel’s painting "Mad Greta"

One of Brueghel’s most frightening paintings. The horror of this painting can be explained somewhat by the incomprehensibility of this painting and all the events that occur on it. If we consider the painting "Mad Greta" from the side of emotional perception, it surpasses even Bosch’s phantasmagoric images and designs in its expressiveness.

On closer inspection, we see a blood-red sky that is obscured by a sinister haze, with the whole picture simply dotted with various vile and sinister creatures. We see huge, ugly heads with big eyes that spawn these horrible creatures.

At the same time, the people who are around do not seem to notice anything that is happening, but die because of the crush that they themselves have created, because they are blinded by their greed and try their best to get as much gold as they can. People don’t notice that it’s not really gold, but the filth that the ugly giant spews out.

The picture is striking and disgusting not because of the ugly creatures, but because of the fact that people are maddened by their baseness, stupidity and vices.

It is because of them that the atmosphere of utter hell is created, not because of the devil and the monsters. It is not the creepy monsters, not the devil himself, that strike in this painting, but the people, mad and steeped in vices. At the center of the canvas stands an enormous woman who is dressed in some rags. She holds a sword in her hand and a dagger concealed at her waist, apparently carrying someone’s belongings. Not far from her, ordinary people are robbing someone’s house.

That said, the title of the painting itself has symbolism. At that time, Big Greta, was called a big gun, and most likely, the artist tried to show all the terrible motives of war, which covers the world. In confirmation of this half-destroyed walls of the fortress, fires and large troops with deadly spears in their arsenal.