MONSTRANCE
Editions  ·  The Life of Christ
The Fight Between Carnival and Lent — Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.
Sanctuary Edition

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Date 1559 datiert
Collection Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
Subject The Life of Christ
Season Ordinary Time
Master 20,293 px
License Public domain

Sizes

18×24 in$140
sheet 24×18 in · image 24×17.4 in · archival margin · 846 dpi
24×36 in$190
sheet 36×24 in · image 33.1×24 in · archival margin · 613 dpi
32×48 in$340
sheet 48×32 in · image 44.1×32 in · archival margin · 460 dpi
40×60 in$480
sheet 60×40 in · image 55.1×40 in · archival margin · 368 dpi
View in the gallery

About this painting

Fat Carnival rides a barrel with a roasting spit for a lance; lean Lent comes rolling up the other way carrying two fish. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is precise about what is real here and what is not — every scenic detail matches how Shrovetide plays and carnival processions actually looked in the sixteenth century, and folklorists have identified them one by one. What Bruegel invented is the simultaneity: the whole quarrel between appetite and fasting put into one square, on an afternoon that never happened.

Sources: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie, 'Kampf zwischen Fasching und Fasten', inv. 1016; read 2026-08-27.

Pray with this every day  ›

Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 20,293 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.