A Parábola dos Cegos (De parabel der blinden) - Pieter Bruegel "o Velho"

A Parábola dos Cegos (De parabel der blinden) - Pieter Bruegel "o Velho"

Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Nápoles, Itália

Têmpera sobre tela - 86x154 - 1568

A obra retrata a parábola na qual um cego guia outro cego.

A passagem bíblica aparece em Mateus 15:14, quando Jesus dirige uma crítica aos fariseus: "Deixai-os; são cegos condutores de cegos. Ora, se um cego guiar outro cego, ambos cairão na cova."

A narrativa é comumente interpretada como uma metáfora para descrever uma situação em que uma pessoa sem conhecimento é aconselhada por outra pessoa que também não tem conhecimento.

Texto de apoio 1:

A Parábola dos Cegos é uma pintura do artista renascentista flamengo Pieter Bruegel, o Velho, concluída em 1568. Executada em têmpera sobre tela de linho, mede 86 cm x 154 cm. Representa a parábola bíblica dos cegos guiando cegos, contada em Mateus 15:14, e pertence à coleção do Museu de Capodimonte, em Nápoles, Itália.

A pintura reflete o domínio da observação de Bruegel. Cada figura apresenta uma doença ocular diferente, incluindo leucoma da córnea, atrofia do globo ocular e olhos removidos. Os homens mantêm a cabeça erguida para melhor utilizar os outros sentidos. A composição diagonal reforça o movimento desequilibrado das seis figuras caindo em progressão. É considerada uma obra-prima pela precisão dos detalhes e da composição.

Bruegel pintou "O Cego" um ano antes de sua morte. A obra possui um tom amargo e melancólico, que pode estar relacionado ao estabelecimento do Conselho das Perturbações em 1567 pelo governo dos Países Baixos Espanhóis. O conselho ordenou prisões e execuções em massa para impor o domínio espanhol e suprimir o protestantismo. A localização da Igreja de Santa Ana na vila de Sint-Anna-Pede levou a interpretações tanto pró-católicas quanto anti-católicas, embora não esteja claro se a pintura foi concebida como uma declaração política.

A pintura retrata uma procissão de seis homens cegos e desfigurados. Eles passam por um caminho ladeado por um rio de um lado e por uma aldeia com uma igreja do outro.

O líder do grupo caiu de costas em uma vala e, como todos estão ligados por seus cajados, parece prestes a arrastar seus companheiros consigo. Um vaqueiro está ao fundo.

Bruegel baseou a obra na parábola bíblica do cego guiando o cego, de Mateus 15:14, na qual Cristo se refere aos fariseus. Segundo a crítica de arte Margaret Sullivan, o público de Bruegel provavelmente estava tão familiarizado com a literatura clássica quanto com a Bíblia. Erasmo havia publicado seus Adágios dois anos antes da pintura de Bruegel, e eles continham a citação "Caecus caeco dux" ("o cego guiando cegos") do poeta romano Horácio. Bruegel expande os dois cegos da parábola para seis; eles estão bem vestidos, em vez de usarem as roupas camponesas que tipificam sua obra tardia.

O rosto do primeiro cego não é visível; o segundo vira a cabeça ao cair, talvez para evitar cair de cara no chão. O terceiro homem, de caneleiras, na ponta dos pés, com os joelhos dobrados e o rosto voltado para o céu, compartilha um bastão com o segundo, pelo qual está sendo puxado para baixo. Os outros ainda não tropeçaram, mas o mesmo destino parece estar previsto.

Os rostos e corpos dos cegos, e os detalhes do fundo, incluindo a igreja, são representados com detalhes excepcionalmente finos. A postura de queda para trás do guia demonstra o domínio de Bruegel sobre a perspectiva. Os cenários de Bruegel tendem a ser ficcionais, mas o de Cegos Guiando Cegos foi identificado como a vila de Sint-Anna-Pede, e a igreja como a Igreja de Santa Ana. Trecho de texto da Wikipédia.

Texto de apoio 2:

The Blind Leading the Blind, Blind, or The Parable of the Blind (Dutch: De parabel der blinden) is a painting by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, completed in 1568. Executed in distemper on linen canvas, it measures 86 cm x 154 cm. It depicts the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind from Matthew 15:14, and is in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy.

The painting reflects Bruegel's mastery of observation. Each figure has a different eye affliction, including corneal leukoma, atrophy of globe and removed eyes. The men hold their heads aloft to make better use of their other senses. The diagonal composition reinforces the off-kilter motion of the six figures falling in progression. It is considered a masterwork for its accurate detail and composition. Copies include a larger version by Bruegel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and the work has inspired literature such as poetry by Charles Baudelaire and William Carlos Williams, and a novel by Gert Hofmann.

Bruegel painted The Blind the year before his death. It has a bitter, sorrowful tone, which may be related to the establishment of the Council of Troubles in 1567 by the government of the Spanish Netherlands. The council ordered mass arrests and executions to enforce Spanish rule and suppress Protestantism. The placement of St. Anna's Church of the village of Sint-Anna-Pede has led to both pro- and anti-Catholic interpretations, though it is not clear that the painting was meant as a political statement.

Description:

The painting depicts a procession of six blind, disfigured men. They pass along a path bordered by a river on one side and a village with a church on the other. The leader of the group has fallen on his back into a ditch and, because they are all linked by their staffs, seems about to drag his companions down with him. A cowherd stands in the background.

Bruegel based the work on the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind from Matthew 15:14, in which Christ refers to the Pharisees. According to art critic Margaret Sullivan, Bruegel's audience was likely as familiar with classical literature as with the Bible. Erasmus had published his Adagia two years before Bruegel's painting, and it contained the quotation "Caecus caeco dux" ("the blind leader of the blind") by Roman poet Horace. Bruegel expands the two blind men in the parable to six; they are well dressed, rather than wearing the peasant clothing that typifies his late work. The first blind man's face is not visible; the second twists his head as he falls, perhaps to avoid landing face-first. The shinguard-clad third man, on his toes with knees bent and face to the sky, shares a staff with the second, by which he is being pulled down. The others have yet to stumble, but the same fate seems implied.

The faces and bodies of the blind men, and background detail including the church, are rendered in exceptionally fine detail. The backward-falling posture of the guide demonstrates Bruegel's mastery of foreshortening. Bruegel's settings tend to be fictional, but that of The Blind Leading the Blind has been identified as the village of Sint-Anna-Pede, and the church as St. Anna's Church.

Style:

One of four surviving Bruegel paintings in distemper, the work is a tüchlein, a type of light painting that uses tempera made from pigment mixed with water-soluble glue. This medium was widely used in painting and manuscript illumination before the advent of oil paint. It is not known from whom Bruegel learnt its use, but amongst those speculated are his mother-in-law, illuminator Mayken Verhulst; his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst; and painter and illuminator Giulio Clovio, with whom he resided in Italy and whom he helped paint miniatures in distemper. Due to the high perishability of linen cloth and the solubility of hide glue, tüchleins do not preserve well and are difficult to restore. The Blind Leading the Blind is in good condition and has suffered no more than some erosion, such as of a herdsman and some fowl in the middle ground. The grain of the linen canvas is visible beneath the delicate brushstrokes. The work is signed and dated "BRVEGEL.M.D.LX.VIII". The painting measures 86 cm × 154 cm, the largest of 1568.

The austere tone is achieved through pigments in a colour scheme of mostly greys, greens, brownish-reds, and blacks. The diagonal movement of the bodies creates a dramatic tension in the foreground which is divided diagonally from the landscape background. The flat country features are distinctly Flemish, unlike in most of Bruegel's landscapes, in which he introduced foreign elements such as mountain ranges even into local scenery.

In contrast to earlier depictions of the blind as beneficiaries of divine gifts, Bruegel's men are stumbling and decrepit, and portrayed without sympathy. The eyeless figure would have been interpreted as a man who had suffered punishment for wrongdoing or fighting.

Bruegel painted with the empirical objectivity of the Renaissance. In earlier paintings the blind were typically depicted with eyes closed. Here, Bruegel gives each man a different ocular affliction, all painted with a realism that allowed identification of their conditions by later experts, though there is still some diagnostic disagreement. French anatomical pathologist Jean-Martin Charcot and anatomical artist Paul Richer published an early account, Les difformes et les malades dans l'art ("The deformed and sick in art", 1889), and French pathologist Tony-Michel Torrillhon followed with more research on Bruegel's figures in 1957. The first man's eyes are not visible; the second has had his eyes removed, along with the eyelids: the third suffers from corneal leukoma; the fourth atrophy of the globe; the fifth is either blind with no light perception, or photophobic; and the sixth has pemphigus or bullous pemphigoid. Charcot and Richer noted Bruegel's accuracy in portraying the blind men facing not forward but with their faces raised in the air, as they would have had to rely on their senses of smell and hearing.

Background:

Sixteenth-century Europe was undergoing many societal changes: the Protestant Reformation and its rejection of public religious imagery; Renaissance humanism and its emphasis on empiricism at the expense of religious faith; and the growth of the middle class amidst the rise of mercantilism. It was a time of rapid advances in learning and knowledge, and a move towards the empirical sciences—the age of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus and of Gutenberg's printing presses. The cartography of Ortelius influenced the painting of landscapes, and the advances Vesalius brought to the study of anatomy via the direct observation of dissected bodies, motivated artists to pay greater attention to the accuracy of the anatomy in their works.

Art was now traded in open markets; artists sought to distinguish themselves with subjects different from traditional noble, mythological, and Biblical ones, and developed new, realistic techniques based on empirical observation. Classical literature provided precedents for dealing with "low" subjects in art. Genre art and its depiction of ordinary people and everyday life emerged against this background.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder began his career illustrating landscapes and fantastic scenes in a dense style that earned him a reputation as artistic heir to Hieronymus Bosch. He soon came to follow the example of another master, Pieter Aertsen, who had made a name for himself in the 1550s depicting everyday scenes in a highly realistic style, such as the detailed array of meat products that dominate his large Butcher's Stall of 1551. Bruegel's subjects became more quotidian and his style observational. He achieved fame for detailed, accurate and realistic portrayals of peasants, with whom his paintings were popular. He painted on linen canvas and oak panel, and avoided scenes of magnificence and portraits of nobility or royalty. The peasants Bruegel at first depicted were featureless and undifferentiated; as his work matured, their physiognomy became markedly more detailed and expressive.

In 1563, Bruegel married Mayken, the daughter of his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and moved to Brussels, the seat of government in the Spanish Netherlands (1556–1714). In 1567 the governor of the Netherlands, the Duke of Alba, established the Council of Troubles (popularly called the "Blood Council") to suppress non-Catholic religions and enforce Spanish rule, leading to mass arrests and executions. Whether Bruegel had Calvinist sympathies or intended a political message in The Blind is not clear, but the evidence indicates he likely held views critical of the Catholic Church.

A bitter, sorrowful tone characterizes his last works, such as The Blind and The Magpie on the Gallows.

In ancient Greece the blind were depicted as having received gifts from the gods, and blind singers were held in high regard. In mediaeval Europe, the blind were depicted as the subjects of miracles, such as Bartimaeus in the healing the blind near Jericho in Mark 10:46–52. Following the Reformation, painted depictions of saints and miracles fell out of favour in Protestant areas. In Catholic thought, charitable works of mercy, such as giving alms to the blind and poor, were good works which, together with faith, helped the salvation of the doer. However, the Protestant doctrine of sola fide rejected the efficacy of works in achieving salvation, prescribing that it depended on faith alone (and the complication of God's predestined will for each individual). The status of charity for the poor and infirm diminished, and beggars saw their circumstances deteriorate. In popular literature of the time, the blind were depicted as rogues or targets of pranks. The parable of the blind leading the blind also appears as one of the illustrated proverbs in Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs (1559).

Analysis:

Charles Bouleau wrote of the tension in Bruegel's compositional rhythms. The picture is divided into nine equal parts divided by a set of parallel oblique lines. These are divided by another network of lines at constant angles to the first. The composition invites the reader to follow the action rather than dwell on the individual figures. The blind men resemble each other in dress and facial features, and they appear as if they succeed one another in a single movement culminating in a fall, beginning on the left with "rambling, then hesitation, alarm, stumbling, and finally falling". The succession of heads follows a curve, and the further the succession, the greater the space between heads, suggesting increasing speed. The steep roofs of the background houses contribute to the composition's feeling of motion.

Art historian Gustav Glück noted incongruities in that the beggars are well-dressed and carry staves and full purses. Academics Kenneth C. Lindsay and Bernard Huppé suggest Bruegel may have implied that the blind men represent false priests who ignored Christ's admonitions not to carry gold, purses, or staves; the leader carries a hurdy-gurdy, a musical instrument associated with beggars in Bruegel's time; this perhaps implies a false minstrel, one who sings praises not for God.

The church in the background, identified as St. Anna's Church at Dilbeek in modern Belgium, has sparked much commentary. One view holds that the church is evidence of the painting's moralistic intent—that while the first two blind men stumble and are beyond redemption, the other four are behind the church and thus may be saved. Another interpretation has it that the church, with a withered tree placed before it, is an anti-Catholic symbol, and that those who follow it will fall following a blind leader as do the men in the ditch. Others deny any symbolism in the church, noting that churches frequently appear in Bruegel's village scenes as they were a common part of the village landscape. Medical researcher Zeynel A. Karcioglu suggests the church represents indifference to the plight of the handicapped.

In contrast to the posed, static figures typical of paintings of the period, Bruegel suggests the trajectory of time and space through the accelerated movement of the figures. Critics Charcot and Richer wrote that the concept of visualizing movement was not formulated until the 17th century, and that Bruegel prefigures motion pictures and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, Number 2. Karcioglu sees the painting as anticipating the 19th-century chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey. Dutch film director Joris Ivens stated, "If Bruegel were alive today he would be a film director."

Legacy:

The Blind Leading the Blind has been considered one of the great masterpieces of painting. Bruegel's is the earliest surviving painting whose subject is the parable of the blind leading the blind, though there are earlier engravings from the Low Countries known that Bruegel was likely aware of, including one attributed to Bosch, and another by Cornelis Massijs. Bruegel's paintings have enjoyed worldwide popularity and have been the subjects of scholarly works in disciplines even outside the arts, such as medicine.

Bruegel's depictions of beggars in paintings such as The Blind Leading the Blind left a strong influence on those who followed him, such as David Vinckboons. Hieronymus Wierix incorporated a copy of The Blind Leading the Blind into the series Twelve Flemish Proverbs. A forgery attributed to Jacob Savery called The Blind appeared c. 1600 bearing a false inscription dating it 1562. Bruegel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger painted a larger copy in c. 1616 with extra details, including a flock of sheep, that hangs in the Louvre; this copy was in the collection of Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, patron of Italian Baroque painter Domenico Fetti, who may have been influenced by the painting when he executed his own version of the parable around 1621–22.

The painting has been the subject of poetry, including works by the Germans Josef Weinheber and Walter Bauer, and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire's "The Blind". American William Carlos Williams wrote a series of poems on Bruegel's paintings; his "Parable of the Blind" focuses on the meaning of The Blind's composition—a word that appears three times in the poems eight tercets.

Bruegel's painting served as a model for Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck's one-act The Blind. West German writer Gert Hofmann's 1985 novel The Parable of the Blind features Bruegel and the six blind men: to accomplish a realistic portrayal, Bruegel repeatedly has the men cross a bridge and fall into a creek in midwinter until their expressions achieve the desolation Bruegel believes represents the human condition.

A 1987 historical novel Bruegel, or the Workshop of Dreams by Claude-Henri Rocquet has Bruegel painting the blind out of fear of losing his own eyesight.

Provenance:

The Blind Leading the Blind and The Misanthrope were discovered in the collection of the Count Giovanni Battista Masi of Parma in 1612, when Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma confiscated Masi's property for his part in a conspiracy against the House of Farnese. How the painting arrived in Italy is uncertain, though it is known that Masi's father Cosimo returned from the Netherlands in 1595 with a number of Netherlandish paintings. The Farnese art collection came to be one of the largest of the Renaissance era, divided amongst the Farnese residences in Parma and Rome.

In the 18th century, Charles III of Spain inherited the collection from his mother, Elisabeth Farnese, heiress of the Duchy of Parma in north Italy, who became Queen consort of Spain. As a younger son, Charles had been made Duke of Parma, then boldly seized the Kingdom of Naples, becoming Charles VII of Naples, before inheriting the Spanish throne. Charles housed the collection in what is now the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples. The painting hangs in the Capodimonte with The Misanthrope, as part of the Farnese collection. Trecho de texto da Wikipédia.

Texto de apoio 3:

Viram meus olhos os que não podem ver, cegos à beira do abismo. Nápoles, Museu Capodimonte, uma grande tela de linho, mais de metro e meio de comprido pintado a têmpera, técnica que Bruegel raramente usou, e que terá aprendido com a sua sogra, Mayke Verhulst, uma extraordinária pintora e gravurista neerlandesa do século XVI, sobre a qual hoje pouco se sabe, quase nada. De parabel der blinden / A Parábola dos Cegos, assim se chama a obra-prima, foi executada pelo pintor no final da vida, em 1568, um ano antes de morrer. Talvez por isso, a tela é amarga e catastrófica, uma ilustração metafórica do caminho que levam os cegos que se deixam guiar por outros cegos, como na parábola com que Cristo fustigou os fariseus: "Deixai-os! São cegos que guiam outros cegos. E quando um cego conduz outro cego cairão ambos na mesma vala", diz-nos Mateus 15:14 (num sentido próximo, Lucas 6:39; e a Epístola aos Romanos, 2:19). Aliás, dissera-se já antes, no Velho Testamento: "Aqueles que guiam este povo são os mesmos que o desorientam, e aqueles que são guiados deixam-se seduzir e ser guiados ao erro" (Isaías, 9:16).

Não era a primeira vez que Pieter Bruegel, o Velho, se deixava seduzir pelo poder da parábola da cegueira. Nove anos antes, em 1559, num quadro intitulado Provérbios Neerlandeses, figurara três cegos em campo aberto, caminhando rumo ao desastre certo. Agora, porém, a alegoria bíblica ganhava outro significado. Em 1563, Bruegel casara-se com a filha do seu mestre e estabelecera-se em Bruxelas; quatro anos depois, o governador dos Países Baixos, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3º duque de Alba, instituiu o famigerado "Conselho Sangrento", para impor pela força a fé católica, perseguindo os hereges protestantes. Não por acaso, uma outra tela que Bruegel pintou na altura, A Pega na Forca, mostra-nos uma cena campestre, exibindo em primeiro plano o patíbulo usado para pendurar os condenados. E, em A Parábola dos Cegos, vemos ao fundo a Igreja de Santa Ana, na vila de Sint-Anna-Pede, em Ittterbeek, no coração do Brabante flamengo. A inclusão do templo de Santa Ana no centro do quadro, em lugar de destaque, tem suscitado inúmeras interpretações: para uns, era uma crítica à Igreja Católica, dadas as inclinações calvinistas do pintor; para outros, nada há de especial na figuração da Igreja de Santa Ana, tudo não passando de um cenário bucólico igual a tantos que surgem na obra de Bruegel; outros ainda sustentam existir um moralismo implícito no quadro, nos termos do qual os dois cegos da frente irão cair ao chão e perder-se, ao passo que os outros quatro da retaguarda, por se encontrarem atrás da igreja, acabarão por salvar-se; e até há quem diga, enfim, que o quadro representa uma denúncia da nossa indiferença perante a sorte das pessoas com deficiência.

Talvez seja elaborar em excesso. Desde logo, porque várias gravuras neerlandesas da época, uma das quais atribuída a Bosch, retratam cegos a guiar outros cegos, a par de outros temas conexos, como o da "nave de loucos". Bruegel ter-se-á limitado, assim, a pintar um tópico em voga e na moda, colocando-o num ambiente rural que conhecia bem e, quando muito, deixando uma mensagem à clef a censurar os excessos dos dominadores espanhóis e da Contra-Reforma tridentina.

A genialidade não está, pois, na escolha do tema, mas na composição da pintura, no seu dinamismo extremo. Em vez de colocar as figuras na horizontal, no mesmo plano dos nossos olhos, Bruegel representou-as obliquamente, na diagonal. Os cegos não marcham de forma linear, ordenada e disciplinada, antes parecem uma procissão caótica, um cortejo descendente, em queda livre. Repare-se ainda que, sob uma unidade aparente, há dois núcleos bem distintos, até afastados entre si: o primeiro grupo, que vai à frente, é composto por dois cegos já definitivamente perdidos; o segundo, mais distante, é formado por quatro homens que ainda não caíram por terra, ou seja, que ainda são passíveis de salvação. A separação dos grupos é adensada por outro toque subtil: os cegos da frente situam-se abaixo da linha dos nossos olhos, ao passo que os restantes se encontram acima desse plano, com os rostos virados para cima, farejando o ar. O uso da diagonal transmite-nos ainda a noção de que o terreno que os cegos pisam é íngreme, resvaladiço, propiciador da sua queda (ou, se quisermos, da sua perda), o que é acentuado pelo pormenor do lado inferior esquerdo, que dá a ideia de que tudo se passa à beira de um penhasco ou de uma ribanceira perigosa. É também a diagonal que, sublinhando o caminhar oblíquo dos cegos, dá ritmo e movimento a todo o quadro. Através de um extraordinário uso da perspectiva, Bruegel coloca-nos, e ao nosso olhar, no lado inferior direito da tela, no fulcro da cena: o cego da frente já caiu, estatelando-se desamparado no chão; o seguinte está também prestes a desabar, e vemo-lo no preciso instante da queda, como num instantâneo fotográfico; nos quatro que seguem atrás - mais uma nota genial de Bruegel -, a posição é cada vez mais instável à medida que se aproximam do fulcro da cena, a da queda do primeiro cego. Nos rostos dos cegos, as emoções são cada vez mais carregadas à medida que se encaminham para o desastre e, nos que vão atrás, a expressão da face é plácida e tranquila, indiferente ao perigo - outro atestado da sua cegueira. Os infortunados caminham da esquerda para a direita, no sentido da leitura, e o movimento da cena é quase cinematográfico ou, se quisermos, muito parecido ao das histórias aos quadradinhos. A Parábola dos Cegos pode ser uma tela trágica e amarga, com um sentido teológico profundo (aos olhos de Deus, somos todos cegos), mas é também um quadro cómico, prenhe de ironia e humor.

Especulou-se sobre as vestes dos infelizes, dizendo alguns que, pelo modo de trajar, aqueles cegos não poderiam ser mendigos, ponto ainda hoje controverso. Bruegel figura-os com precisão, com os rostos voltados para o ar, como é típico dos invisuais, que têm de se orientar pelo olfacto e pela audição. Outro pormenor assombroso: como foi notado em 1889 por Charcot, lenda da medicina francesa, os cegos de Bruegel apresentam patologias diferentes: um teve os olhos retirados das órbitas (há quem diga que por castigo ou no decurso de uma briga); outro padece de leucoma da córnea; outro, de atrofia do globo ocular; o quinto é fotofóbico e não tem percepção da luz; o último sofre de pênfigo ou penfigoide bolhoso. Num quadro do século XVI, encontramos um manual completo de oftalmologia. Espantoso.

Como é espantoso pensarmos que o tema do cego que guia outro cego, constante dos Evangelhos, surge em livros religiosos bem mais antigos, como os Upanishads, escritos muitos séculos antes de Cristo ("Permanecendo no meio da ignorância, pensando-se sábios e instruídos, os tolos vão sem rumo aqui e acolá, como cegos guiados por cegos"), ou em textos budistas como o Cânone Páli, ou Tipitaka, que fala "de uma fila de cegos, cada um apoiando-se naquele que está em frente". No mundo latino, Horácio referiu-se ao Caecus caeco dux, o "chefe cego dos cegos" e, mais recentemente, o tema foi retomado por Charles Baudelaire, por Maurice Maeterlinck, pelo poeta William Carlos Williams e, como é óbvio, no Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, de José Saramago. Trecho de texto de António Araújo (ortografia portuguesa antiga).

Nota do blog: Data 2013 / Crédito para Wikipédia.