Mad Meg. Dulle Griet, also known as Mad Meg, is a figure of Flemish folklore who is the subject of a 1563 oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
The painting depicts a virago, Dulle Griet, who leads an army of women to pillage Hell, and is currently held and exhibited at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp. A restoration of the painting in 2018 revealed that it was painted in 1563, shortly after the painter had moved to Brussels.
Previously, the signature and the date on the painting had been illegible, and it was assumed that it was painted two years earlier, or, based on its close compositional and stylistic similarity to The Fall of the Rebel Angels and The Triumph of Death, one year earlier. Like those pictures, Dulle Griet owes much to Hieronymus Bosch.
It is assumed the painting was destined for a series. Bruegel's earliest biographer, Karel van Mander, writing in 1604, described the painting as Dulle Griet, who is looking at the mouth of Hell.
It came into the collections of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, then was looted by the Swedish troops in 1648, and reappeared in Stockholm in 1800. Art collector Fritz Mayer van den Bergh discovered it in 1897 at an auction in Cologne, where he bought it for a minimal sum, discovering its actual author a few days later. Griet was a disparaging name given to any bad-tempered, shrewish woman. Her mission ref
The painting depicts a virago, Dulle Griet, who leads an army of women to pillage Hell, and is currently held and exhibited at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp. A restoration of the painting in 2018 revealed that it was painted in 1563, shortly after the painter had moved to Brussels.
Previously, the signature and the date on the painting had been illegible, and it was assumed that it was painted two years earlier, or, based on its close compositional and stylistic similarity to The Fall of the Rebel Angels and The Triumph of Death, one year earlier. Like those pictures, Dulle Griet owes much to Hieronymus Bosch.
It is assumed the painting was destined for a series. Bruegel's earliest biographer, Karel van Mander, writing in 1604, described the painting as Dulle Griet, who is looking at the mouth of Hell.
It came into the collections of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, then was looted by the Swedish troops in 1648, and reappeared in Stockholm in 1800. Art collector Fritz Mayer van den Bergh discovered it in 1897 at an auction in Cologne, where he bought it for a minimal sum, discovering its actual author a few days later. Griet was a disparaging name given to any bad-tempered, shrewish woman. Her mission ref
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