Figures of Speech addresses a key topic in Renaissance studies: the importance and pervasiveness of proverbs. For sixteenth-century Netherlanders, proverbs revealed the wisdom of the Ancients as well as the linguistic richness found in their own native language; for Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, and other Renaissance painters, proverbs were a frequent and appealing subject. In this book, Walter S. Gibson provides a comprehensive and engaging survey of these visual representations, capturing for twenty-first–century readers the moral sensibilities of a time and culture when such adages (and the images conveying their meaning) were invaluable guides to life.

“Walter Gibson, dean of Bruegel scholars, has done it again. His new book, like the proverbs it studies, instructs gently yet plainly in compact size. While it figures forth the depths of Bruegel`s own passion for proverbs, this wide-ranging period study also shows the cultural breadth of Dutch proverbs in other media, including the witty world of urban rhetoricians. These `loquacious pictures` have their adept translator in Walter Gibson.” (Larry Silver)

AUTHOR:
Walter S. Gibson is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University and the author of many books including Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter.