The Dutch Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: “The picture brings together 100 proverbs and places them in surroundings that are as real as the people’s behaviour, revealed in terse and apposite form by the wise sayings. The individual scenes are played out side by side, without being directly dependent on each other. A village near the sea provides a spacious stage for the apparently everyday tasks of its inhabitants. […] The wise sayings [that it portrays] are evidence of man’s folly and sinfulness in a crazy world that has turned away from God. This proverb picture is evidence of Bruegel’s intense pre-occupation with the spiritual and moral questions of his time, which give the work its timeless validity.”