Children’s Games by Pieter Bruegel

On the 450th anniversary of Bruegel’s death, his painting still has something to tell us about modern childhood

Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Children’s Games (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) — Wikimedia

Across the American midwest, pint-sized rodeos take place where children as young as three try to stay on board a galloping sheep to the animated encouragement of parents and onlookers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm_FTC_Za98

One can imagine that many three- or four-year-olds would delight in “mutton busting,” and that across time and culture many, if presented with a small sheep, would try to climb onto it. In fact, that is akin to what we see in the margins of a late medieval manuscript: gleeful children riding pygmy goats.

Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections, Ms. 7, fol. 91r. From a book of hours written & illuminated ca. 1500

One of the differences between the miniature rodeo and the portrayal of childhood in the manuscript, however, is the degree of adult mediation. The kids in the manuscript seem to be able to amuse themselves out-of-doors without having adults to impose a structure upon them, to corral, sanitize, and supervise them. Although one might think that the experience of childhood is unchanging over time and across cultures (a time of play, learning, and innocence, free of responsibility), it may be that the…