1)
2)Avaricia (Avarice)
Avaritia, dated 1556, is the first in the series of the Seven
Deadly Sins,
engraved by Pieter van der Heyden and published by Jerome Cock in Antwerp
in 1558. Greed for money and gain occupies a crucial place in the series,
being the moral source of all other sins -- money (or at least the desire
for it) is the root of all evil. The Latin motto reads: Does the greedy
miser ever suffer fear or shame? The rhyming Flemish couplet can be
translated: "Grasping Avarice does not understand / Honour, decency,
shame or divine command.//" The central personification of Avarice
is
a seated woman with money in her lap. With her free hand she reaches into
a treasure-chest which is being refilled by two monsters from a broken
jug. Her eyes are downcast, intent on the money -- or she may be blind.
She is certainly blind to all that is happening around her, so preoccupied
is she by the money. By her feet is a toad, her animal counterpart; in
Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, the most influential of all
iconographical text books of the Renaissance, the toad stands for avarice
because althogh able to eat earth and sand which are so readily available,
he does not, for fear that he should not have enough.
Behind Avarice is a moneylender's hut: he is seen taking a plate from a
poor man. To the right are a naked pair with a sheet of debts which is
pointed out by a winged monster. They have sold their souls for money.
Close by, a monster rolls a naked miser inside a spiked barrel and,
instead of blood, money spills out. The moneylender's victims are caught
in massive shears. Even the moneylender isnot secure; he is being robbed
by a thief climbing on his roof. On top of the roof is a domed
savings-bank surmounted by an elaborate spire. Inside the bank is a fist,
symbol of greed. From the spire a stick projects, dangling a bag of
money. Crossbowmen, below, the points of their arrows tipped with coins
fire at it and money showers down upon them. So absorbed are they that
they do not notice their own purses being cut. Greed prays upon greed.
Behind them a man rides an ox backwards, while after him a man drags a
heavy load. Behind his group a huge bellows fans a fire which sends smoke
through a hat pierced by a saw-bladed sword.
On the left hand side a large onion-shaped piggy-bank is being attacked.
One man is getting a coin out of the slot with a long pole, another has
climbed a ladder and is about to smash the bank. Beside this scene a
castle burns, spelling out the moral that wealth, once accumulated, is
vulnerable. In the foreground monsters beg and count money.
3)Gula (Gluttony)
Gluttony is personified by a woman in the dress of a Flemish burgher's wife. She guzzles from a jug. At her feet her animal equivalent, a hog with the ears and back feet of a dog, feast on turnips and carrots which have spilled form an upturned basket, bearing Bruegel's signature. A naked human couple are eating from the same table as Envy; they are encouraged by demons who are about to carry off the woman. Another human, his head held by a demon, vomits into the river, narrowly missing a naked swimmer. Behind him, only the top half of another swimmer's head is visible and on top of it he balances an egg, a recurring symbol of sin in Bruegel's work. Behind Envy is her 'house,' a ramshackle tent. It partially shelters a wine barrel from which a monster in monk's cowl drinks wine. In the branches of the blasted tree hang bagpipes, its bag denoting obesity. To the left is a giant on his knees imprisoned in a mill with spiked wheels. He is trapped, tormented by all the self-indulgence around him, unable to participate.
In the right foreground a bloated fish, his split belly sown up
but splitting again, eats a smaller fish. To heis left a dog upsets
a tray carried by a monster dressed as a butcher. Behind, a naked
man is trapped, legs flailing, in a wine barrel-again, a punishment
fitting his sin, drunkenness. At the water's edge an obese man
has to carry his own distended stomach in a cart. Above him a
windmill is fashioned from a human face; sacks are shovelled into
the mouthwhich, mechanically, unceasingly, grinds them. In the
background is the familiar landscape of ruined and burning buildings.
The Latin motto reads: Drunkenness and gluttony must be shunned.
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