The Beggars

This is a tiny panel, smaller than a sheet of paper, and it is the only Bruegel in the Louvre. He painted it in 1568, in a Netherlands under harsh Spanish rule. Five crippled men huddle in a courtyard on crude crutches, cloaks pinned with little foxtails. Those foxtails are worth a second look. Around that time the fox's tail was a symbol of the beggars party, the Gueux, the rebels who had risen against Philip the Second of Spain and his officials, so a scene of literal beggars may carry a sharp political charge. It is the year after the Duke of Alba arrived to crush the revolt. On the back of the panel a 16th-century admirer scratched a line in Latin praising Bruegel as a painter whose art outdoes nature herself.