Avaritia (Greed), 1558

This piece of art work is Avaritia (Greed) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Done in 1558, it is a part of Bruegel’s series on the Seven Deadly Sins. In the center of the pictures sits a personification of Avaritia (“greed” in Latin) and the negative consequences of greed. The quote, “Quis metus aut pudor est unquam properantis avari” that is written at the bottom is translated as “Scraping Avarice sees neither honor nor courtesy, shame nor divine admonition.” (1)

About the artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder was “Netherlandish painter and designer for engravings. His works provide a profound and elemental insight into man and his relationship to the world of nature” (2). He is called the “Elder” to distinguish him from the long line of Bruegels that came after him. One could say that his art style went through three major changes: Antwerp, Mature, and Late.

Works such as Avaritia (Greed) show Bruegel’s penchant of creating a scene that depicted peasant peoples or many actions or events happening in one painting or work. He often created a work with the purpose to tell some sort of story, as he had developed a “style that uniformly holds narrative, or story-telling, meaning” (3). The art style that Avaritia (Greed) was etched in was Bruegel’s “Antwerp Style,” a style he developed after entering under Hieronymus Cock, an Antwerp publisher. Cock at first tried to pass of Bruegel’s work as someone else named Hieronymus Bosch, but with Bruegel’s Seven Deadly Sins series, Bruegel’s name is on the etchings. With the series, “Bruegel was attempting to substitute a new and more relevant eschatology for Bosch’s traditional view of the Christian cosmos” (2).

I feel that this work was a way of reflecting on how Bruegel saw greed in and around his environment. The Reformation had happened during his life time, and at the time, there was a lot of unrest and dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church. There were a lot of contradictions within the church and corruption. I think this was a way of depicting that.
Bruegel did not often depict religious figures or themes in his work, but he did make satire work about such themes. To me, the woman sitting in the foreground of the work represents not only the wealthy, but the high members of the Church. In the work, she has coins spilling into her lap, and her hand is reach into the chest next to her for more coins. There are peasants all around her, and they are naked or in very rugged clothing. The person next to her filling up the chest with coins has a large hole in the vase and a mask on his face. There are deformed peasants off to the right begging for coins. They could represent those who were crippled or disabled in some way and often were very poor and homeless. Chaos seems to be going on all around her, yet all the woman cares about are the coins.

1. “Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Avaritia (Greed) (26.72.31)”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/26.72.31 (October 2006).

2.  “Pieter the Elder Bruegel Biography.” Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1 Jan. 2002. Web. 10 Feb. 2015. <http://www.pieter-bruegel-the-elder.org/biography.html>.

3. Pioch, Nicolas. “Bruegel, Pieter the Elder.” WebMuseum, Paris. 16 Aug. 2002. Web. 10 Feb. 2015. <http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/>.