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Notes
1. While a detailed analysis of this painting is outside the scope of this review, I have to quarrel with Gibson's interpretation (taking his cue from Karel van Mander) that Griet is a looter. She and her army of housewives seem more to be preserving their households from attacking demons (the enemy) than looting them. I believe he, and the art historians he quotes, have hold of the wrong end of the stick.
2. This was a popular farcical situation wherein a married woman, feigning illness, sends her husband on a wild goose chase for plaijerwater (fake water) so that she can entertain her lover.
3. Gibson states airily, “scholars have mined these pictures so industriously for whatever nuggets of profundity [they possess] … they have generally overlooked the marvels that Bruegel presents to the naked eye.