A crowded Flemish village acts out about 126 proverbs and idioms literally: people bang their heads against a wall, fill in a pond after the calf has died, and carry daylight in a basket. The picture's early title, The Blue Cloak or The Folly of the World, names Bruegel's real subject: human stupidity. His son Pieter the Younger painted at least 16 copies.
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At the centre, a wife drapes a blue cloak over her husband, a sign that she is cuckolding him. Nearby, one man shears a sheep and another a pig.
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