Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca 1525-1569), Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), ca 1562, oil on wood 117 x 162 cm.
Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp. See next pictures for details.

The giant figure in the centre, Dulle Griet, advances in rage amidst Boschian monsters towards the mouth of Hell. She wears a breastplate, a helmet and a mailed glove on the left hand, while carrying a sword in the other hand, her arm holding a money-box, a kitchen bowl with cutlery and a bag along her apron, full of stolen goods. As their commander, Dulle Griet is followed on the right by a troop of women looting a house and at the same time managing to handle in the turmoil an army of devilish monsters.

Above the turmoil of Griet’s female followers, Bruegel painted a strange figure with a boat on his back, sitting on the roof of the looted house and spooning a profusion of money out of his egg-shaped buttocks, this scene not showing a clear connection to the turmoil underneath.

The true meaning of the painting with the apparent imbalance between Griet’s and her followers’ fight and the invincibility of Hell remains unsolved. However, a saying from a book of proverbs published in Antwerp in 1568, may elucidate the painting’s mystery, Bruegel thus simply making fun of noisy or aggressive women: “One woman makes a din, two women a lot of trouble, three an annual market, four a quarrel, five an army, and against six the Devil himself has no weapon.”