Seven Deadly Sins in Bruegels' Day

A unique picture of good and evil in the time of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and today, published to accompany the exhibition Truly Wicked: The Seven Deadly Sins Visualised at Bonnefanten, Maastricht, October 18, 2924 - January 12, 2025

How do you portray sin, evil and foolishness in humans? Religious and political tensions and even the weather - we are talking about the depths of the Little Ice Age - contributed to a boom in representations of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Low Countries and immediate surroundings in the long sixteenth century. In this publication, four accessibly written essays highlight different sides of the pictorial tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, with the renowned print series of the same name designed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder at its center. A fifth, literary essay describes the feverish visions of one of the victims of a true 16th-century series of murders permeated by the deadly sins.