FUSSY IN KRAKÓW: BRUEGEL'S FIGHT BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT

I'm happy to present another essay from my new series on food in art and literature. This time the cultural menu includes carnival waffles, Lenten fish, and a fashionable hat stuffed with meat. :)

This week marked the end of Carnival, a festive season of celebrations, revels and food, followed by the beginning of Lent, the time of penance, prayer and.... also food, or more specifically, Lenten dishes. The tension between these two seasons is brilliantly captured in the painting 'The Fight Between Carnival and Lent' by an imminent Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1559).

The painting is divided into two sections: a cheerful carnival procession gathered around numerous inns, plays, and masquerades on the left side; and a more solemn crowd of parishioners leaving the church and giving alms to the poor – on the right. However, what these two sides have in common is food, especially dishes and culinary utensils grotesquely depicted as clothes or fashion accessories.

The foreground is dominated by two fighting figures: chubby Carnival (Mardi Gras) and emaciated Lent wearing a nun's habit. Carnival sits astride a beer barrel decorated with a piece of meat, he wields a spit with a pig's head and sausages and wears a fashionable hat in the form of a meat pie. There's no doubt this man is a meat-lover, or even a butcher as the knife hanging from his belt may suggest.

Carnival's entourage is as elegant as its ringleader. Just behind him, there's a woman carrying on her head a tasteful table with biscuits and a traditional carnival dish - waffles. Another lady flaunts an egg necklace, while a man in the bottom left corner has three big waffles strapped to his hat. Undoubtedly, it's a great way to distract his gambling opponent. ;)

Thanks to Bruegel's painting we can also see how carnival waffles were prepared in the 16^th-century Low Countries. In the middle of the square there's a lady making the batter in a pot directly on the ground and baking the waffles over an open fire. I wonder what Health and Safety would say to all that...

Lent's procession is also equipped with food, though it doesn't look as appetizing as Carnival's. The figure leading the penitents wears a beehive on her (his?) head and has some Lenten 'delicacies' under her feet: hard tack, pretzels and mussels, which were once considered poor man's food. She's armed with a baker peal with two measly herrings and behind her back you can notice a stall selling Lenten fish.

Interestingly, Medieval believers tried to evade the ban on eating the meat during Lent, for example by claiming that birds are 'creatures of the sea' because they were created by God on the same day as fish. Even beavers were considered to be fish because of the scales on their tails. Apparently the term 'fish' was much broader in the Middle Ages than today.

Bruegel's painting depicts an allegoric fight between an urge to play and an urge to pray, between the flesh and the spirit. It also reflects a historic conflict between Catholics, who observed the Lent, and Protestants, who thought it was obsolete. But basically it's just a hilarious and grotesque glorification of food in all its aspects: from Lenten hard tack to delicious waffles.