The picture “Blind” Bruegel wrote shortly before his death. The blind follow the blind guide; their empty eye sockets are terrible on their pale, tilted faces, their palpable hands and wrong steps downhill, straight into the river, where their blind guide has already fallen down and the one following him is falling, and the others are submissive, still not knowing anything.
But they all have to be there – and this is inevitable, it will happen in a moment: what they do not see themselves on is seen with cruel clarity. And the landscape breathes peace and tranquility, the rural church seems very cozy, even a river looks cozy, where it is destined to be drowned by the poor and blind.
Bitter allegory! This is the most powerful, concluding chord of the art of Brueghel. Loving his long-suffering homeland, the artist could not forgive his compatriots for passivity, deafness, blindness, submergence in the antiquity of today and the inability to climb those mountain peaks that give insight to the whole, single, common. Woe to the blind!
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