Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Two chained monkeys

We were fortunate enough to see this painting back in 2018 while visiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna where it was on loan for a Bruegel exhibition that celebrated the 450^th anniversary of the Flemish artist’s death. Amidst all the tumult of his Wimmelbilder (teeming) multi-figural works on show, this work stood out for its small size and relative simplicity. According to the caption card next to the artwork, art historians have offered competing interpretations of the painting’s meaning, some seeing it as an allegory of human foolishness while others decipher it as calling out political subjugation. A few critics think that it is about ignorance or even that it constitutes meta-analysis of the role of the artist, and skewers any of his pretentions to be able to imitate what he sees, just as monkeys were thought to do. These observations prompted one of our family party, frustrated by this excess of artspeak, to comment that Bruegel might not have intended any of this, and that ‘sometimes, you might just fancy painting a couple of monkeys’.

  Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Two chained monkeys, 1562, oil on oak wood panel, Gemäldegalerie Berlin

This made us laugh as we recognised that over-interpretation of the artist’s objectives for a painting can sometimes kill the enjoyment of it. But on the other hand, Bruegel is so painstaking in the detail that he includes in all his work that it encourages us to look really closely for narrative content that might be easily overlooked with a more cursory view. In his poem Musée des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden makes a related point in relation to Bruegel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Not only must the viewer look closely to spot the legs of Icarus ‘disappearing into the green water’, but the onlookers depicted nearby, within the painting itself, might not even notice what was happening or had ‘somewhere to get to’. In other words, significant things, real or metaphorical, might be going on in this painting while we can still enjoy looking at some amusing monkeys. So, while there might not be any obvious ‘Where’s Wally’ imperative on the viewer to scrutinise it minutely, I think it is legitimate to think that there is more to this painting than first meets the eye.

First of all, the setting. We see a distant view of the busy port of Antwerp through a thick stone arched opening of what might be a castle or some similarly fortified building. The dun walls, chipped with age, are monolithic and oppressive in their depth, and look like they belong more to a prison than a palace. This aperture is effectively the animal’s gaol cell but crueller than many in that most prisoners are not taunted by such a view of freedom. The imagined edifice sits high above the bustling and cosmopolitan city of import-export activity and, were it not for the chains that secure them, the painting leaves us with the feeling that the foregrounded pair of monkeys might either easily fall to their deaths or find their liberty on the streets. The effect of the framing is to make it feel as though we are looking though the flat picture plane onto another world beyond or inside it. The distant ships and buildings are misted by heat haze or possibly sea fret so that they seem somehow fuzzily mystical. This amplifies that forlorn sense of captivity – the painting posits a Shangri-la out there, always in sight, always out of reach.

These are white-collared mangabey monkeys, and the one on the left shows us its distinctive white eyelids that make it look as if it is comically staring wide-eyed, either in mischievous joy (its upturned mouth might suggest a smile) or in terrified alarm, and the ambivalence in our reading seems significant. Their bent-backed posture suggests cowering anxiety. They point in opposite directions. The one on the right is turned away from us and faces out to sea, bent down as if searching for something, maybe longing for its African homeland. The other looks inwards towards the inside of the building and towards us, looking for solace or salvation. It makes us wonder which of these desire directions is most likely to yield satisfaction.

Some broken nut shells litter the parapet to suggest their recent feeding particularly by the monkey on the right. This has led some to suggest that the painting might be a metaphor for avarice versus frugality. While I don’t find this entirely convincing, not least because the monkey on the left doesn’t appear to be conserving food, the fact remains that the nutshell contents have been consumed so that both animals’ utter dependency is underlined. Held captive in chains, these primates are unlikely to survive in what is to them an alien environment – they are kept here alive at the whim of their captors, to provide them with amusement and chatteringly sub-human companionship. Many modern-day viewers will feel sorry for them and want them to be set free while also acknowledging that liberty would likely mean death without the constant provision of food that they ‘enjoy’ in captivity.

Two separate chains tether the monkeys to the central iron ring embedded in the stone. Again, the message of this is ambiguous: they have each other for company, but they are also condemned to be never free from the inescapable and oppressive presence of a cellmate.

To me, and this is an unresearched personal view, a more compelling argument could be made for the painting’s message to be more like an allusion to the concept of free will. By this reading, the monkeys stand for mankind, obviously enough, those who consider themselves at liberty and masters of their own destiny. They are seemingly free to trade in the great city or to navigate the oceans in search of fame and riches. But in reality, they are constrained, their agency limited, and they remain at the mercy of a superior being. These pitiful monkeys embody the idea that to think that one’s achievements are not gifted by God is folly, and it is vain to think that we are not all tethered in some way to his will. Monkeys have often been used in art to represent foolishness, but here I think that this quality is mixed in with conceit. For all the finery of their exotic appearances, the looks by which they might have judged themselves superior to other creatures, they are forever fated to exist within a narrow orbit, even when they have the vision of unbounded possibility beyond the walls in sight.

The subject of free will was fiercely debated in sixteenth century Europe and I believe Bruegel is unlikely to have been unaffected by the discourse. Scholars have suggested that the artist was influenced by the humanist ideas of Erasmus (more so than Luther’s) who argued that although mankind was enslaved by original sin, by choosing good over evil salvation remained open to him. With willing cooperation and by the grace of God, he could look forward to life everlasting. Could these monkeys stand for humankind, made captive by sin but with the kingdom of God at hand?

As per that exhibition visit comment made in 2018, I am sure that Bruegel did just fancy painting a couple of monkeys but, by intention or not, he allowed some deeper theological and philosophical thought about free will versus pre-destination to inform his composition.