Children's Games (Bruegel)

Children's Games is an oil-on-panel by Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1560. It is currently held and exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The entire composition is full of children playing a wide variety of games. Over 90 different games that were played by children at the time have been identified.

Children's Games
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games
Artist	Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Year	1560
Type	Oil on panel
Dimensions	118 cm × 161 cm (46 in × 63 in)
Location	Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Description

This painting, mentioned for the first time by Karel van Mander in 1604, was acquired in 1863 by Archduke Ernest of Austria. It was suggested that it was the first in a projected series of paintings representing the Ages of Man, in which Children's Games would have stood for Youth. If that was Bruegel's intention, it is unlikely that the series progressed beyond this painting, for there are no contemporary or subsequent mentions of related pictures.

The children, who range in age from toddlers to adolescents, roll hoops, walk on stilts, spin hoops, ride hobby-horses, stage mock tournaments, play leap-frog and blind man's bluff, perform handstands, inflate pigs' bladders and play with dolls and other toys. They have also taken over the large building that dominates the square: it may be a town hall or some other important civic building, in this way emphasizing the moral that the adults who direct civic affairs are as children in the sight of God. This crowded scene is to some extent relieved by the landscape in the top left-hand corner; but even here children are bathing in the river and playing on its banks.

The artist's intention for this work is more serious than simply to compile an illustrated encyclopaedia of children's games, though some eighty particular games have been identified. Bruegel shows the children absorbed in their games with the seriousness displayed by adults in their apparently more important pursuits. His moral is that in the mind of God, children's games possess as much significance as the activities of their parents. This idea was a familiar one in contemporary literature: in an anonymous Flemish poem published in Antwerp in 1530 by Jan van Doesborch, mankind is compared to children who are entirely absorbed in their foolish games and concerns.

The games

Starting from bottom left, the games may be identified as follows:

Number	Image	Game	Notes
01		Playing with dolls
02		Playing 'Holy Mass'	Small liturgical objects used at Mass and Liturgies
03		Water gun and owl on support	Shooting water at a bird
04		Wearing masks	Wearing disguises for fun
05		Swinging from a hanging seat	The classic hanging seat
06		Climbing a fence
07		Handstand
08		Play the "knot"	Bending the body to contorted positions
09		Somersault	Flipping and rolling forwards, backwards, or sideways
10		Fence riding	Pretending the fence is a horse
11		Mock wedding	It is exactly at the diagonal centre of the panel. Perhaps an irony of the holy sacrament, or a reference to the main event that allows conception of children. Mock child weddings have been common folk tradition many places in Europe, and were often celebrated at Midsummer.
12		Passing through kicking legs - running the gauntlet
13		Blind Man's Bluff	One player is blindfolded and then disoriented by being spun around. The other players call out to the "blind man" who attempts to tag them before they dodge away.
14		Playing with birds
14b		Making hats with twigs	The child in the blue tunic is wearing a hat woven from twigs.
15		Blowing bubbles	Still a popular pastime, Bruegel shows children blowing bubbles with clay pipes and verifies soap bubbles being used as entertainment for at least 400 years
16		Shell bobbin	A flying spinneret made of nut shells
17		Teetotum	Forerunner of the roulette and dice games
17b		Toy animal with leash	A stone dog of sorts
18		Knucklebones	Game of very ancient origin, played with five small objects, originally the "knucklebones" (actually the astragalus: a bone in the ankle, or hock) of a sheep, which are thrown up and caught in various ways; more commonly known as playing jacks.
19		Mock baptismal	Re-enacting the procession of adults carrying home a baby just baptized. The blue hood symbolises deception ("hooding the husband" meant to cuckold him, as shown in Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs).
20		A hand game	Possibly the morra, a hand game - similar to rock, paper, scissors - that dates back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times
21		Piñata	A papier-mâché or other type of container that is decorated, filled with toys and or candy and then broken, usually as part of a ceremony or celebration
22		Walk on stilts	Walking poles equipped with steps for the feet to stand on, they can be short (like here) or long (see number 62)
23		Play leapfrog	Vaulting over each other's stooped backs
24		Mock tournaments	Competitions of various kind
25		The "Pope's seat"	Holding the child by gripping hands
26		Hobby-horse	Riding a wooden hobby horse made of a straight stick with a small horse's head
27		Stirring excrement with a stick
28		Playing the flute and the drum	Playing simple music with basic instruments, always popular with kids
29		The simple roll hoop	Children and adults around the world have played with hoops, twirling, rolling and throwing them throughout history
30		Shouting into a barrel from a hole	The many uses of a barrel
31		The hoop with bells	A variation of rolling the hoop
32		Riding the barrel	With barrel vaulting, another popular play
33		Hat throwing	Throw them through a child's open legs, or see who throws farthest
34		Raisinbread man	A man-shaped loaf of bread, most likely some sort of Dutch duivekater, offered during wakes or at Christmas
35		The penalty of "bumbouncing"	Bouncing someone's buttocks on planks
36		Ball made with an inflated animal bladder	Inflating a bladder to create a balloon or ball
37		Buck buck	A group of children had to create a "pony" and another had to leap on their backs until the weight made it crumble
38		To play shop	On the wooden plank below the funnel Bruegel inscribed "BRUEGEL 1560" Red pigment was made from scraping bricks and was most famous from Antwerp.
39		Playing Tiddlywinks	Played with small discs called "winks", a pot, and a collection of squidgers. The children use a "squidger" (a disk) to propel a wink into flight by pressing down on a wink, thereby flicking it into the air: the objective of the game is to score points by sending one's own winks into the pot
39b		Playing Mumblety-peg	An old outdoor game played by children using pocketknives
40		Building (a well)
41		Pulling hair	May be a game or a fight
42		Catching insects with a net
43		Playing the scourge
44		Playing marbles	Ancient throwing game
45		Pitch and toss	The players each take a coin and take turns tossing them towards the wall: the coin the closest to the wall wins
45b		Twirling a hat on a stick
46		Making a procession	Popular among children and adults, in diverse applications
47		Playing the porter
48		Who's got the ball?	Hiding the ball and guessing who has it
49		Riding piggyback	Riding on another's shoulders
50		Singing door-to-door
51		Bonfire	Lighting a fire
52		Riding a broom	A variation of hobby-horse, but with many players
53		Pushing a wall
54		Hide-and-seek	Or "hide and go seek", a game in which a number of players conceal themselves in the environment, to be found by one or more seekers
55		The "devil's tail" or "crack the whip"	One player, chosen as the "head" of the tail or whip, runs around in random directions with subsequent players holding on to the hand of the previous player. The entire "tail" of the whip moves in those directions but with much more force toward the end of the tail.
56		Grappling	A basic form of wrestling
57		The "devil chained"	Role play as a street game
58		Run, jump on a cellar's door
59		Bowling	Players attempt to score points by rolling a ball along a flat surface, either into pins or to get close to a target ball
60		The token	Running and handing off the baton to the next runner
61		Throwing walnuts	Perhaps a variation of bowling or bocce, hitting an assembled cluster of nuts
62		High stilts	Walking on long poles
63		Pole vaulting	Exercising on a horizontally fixed bar
64		Balancing a stick on a finger	A clownish game of balance
65		Put up a show	Enacting a play
66		Spinning tops	Using toys that can be spun on an axis, balancing on a point
67		The trolleys	Baskets moving on a line
68		Flying a ribbon on a stick	Letting a piece of cloth fly in the wind from a stick
69		Whom shall I choose?	A girl selects her "baby" from a group of friends under a blanket
70		Urinating
71		Bocce	In teams, throwing the bocce balls closest to the jack ball
72		Pirouetting skirts	Swirling the girls' skirts round and round
73		Climbing a tree
74		Swimming	A healthy recreational exercise, enjoying a full-body workout
75		Diving	Jumping or falling into water is always fun for children
76		Floating with an inflated pig's bladder	A sheep's bladder was also used, to float on top of it or to play water games
77		"Dethroning the King"	A game also known as "king of the hill"
78		Playing with sand
79		Coil tournament	A fight of knights
80		Rattles	Noisy musical game

See also

• List of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

External links

• Children's Games at the KHM (in German)
• Bosch Bruegel Society
• 99 works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Creative Bruegel laid the foundation of the Netherlands School (in Russian)