PIETER BRUEGEL (AFTER) The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind.
Engraving, circa 1643. 180x228 mm; 7 1/4x9 inches, wide margins. Second state (of 2), with the number and Bible verse designation lower right. Crowned shield with a fleur-de-lys watermark. Published by Claes Jansz. II Visscher. A very good, well-inked impression of this extremely scarce engraving.
According to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where there are two impressions of this subject, the etching was made by an anonymous 17th century printmaker, published by Amsterdam printseller, Claes Jansz. II Visscher, and based on Bruegel's (1525/30-1569) De parabel der blinden, distemper on linen canvas, 1568, now in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. Etched in reverse of the painting, it employs the same composition with blind men, dressed like vagrants and holding long wooden canes, following a diagonal line across the image to a river in which they will soon fall. As in the painting, there is a village in the background with a church steeple. While there are only three blind men in the engraving, instead of six in Bruegel's painting, the one at the front (who has already fallen in the Bruegel painting) wears a similar hurdy gurdy player as in the painting.
The theme of the Blind Leading the Blind derives from Matthew, XV: 13-4, in which Christ, told that he had angered the Pharisees by criticising their spiritual leadership, replied : 'Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' Hieronymous Bosch (circa 1540-1516) painted the earliest known treatment of the theme, in a work known only through a later engraving by Pieter van der Heyden, published by Hieronymous Cock. The subject was visited again in an engraving by Cornelis Massys of circa 1540, showing four figures rather than Bosch's two, before being again depicted by van der Heyden and Cock in 1561, and followed by Bruegel's well-known oil painting.
