The Bruegel Painted Parable in the Elementary Series Episode The Woman

Summary: The Bruegel painted parable The Blind Leading the Blind fictitiously belongs to Irene Adler in the Elementary series episode The Woman May 16, 2013.

The Parable of the Blind (1568 distemper on linen canvas) by Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1530-Sept. 9, 1569); Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Southern Italy; Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Pieter Bruegel painting The Parable of the Blind appears May 16, 2013, in episode 23, directed by Seith Mann, in the first season of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) series Elementary.

The 33.875- by 60.625-inch (86.0425- by 153.9875-centimeter) tempera on canvas from 1568 becomes the fictitiously restored belonging of Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer) in The Woman episode. Irene catches Sherlock Holmes' (Jonny Lee Miller's) curiosity by claiming the consummately restored original clandestinely for herself and the cleverly counterfeited copy for the museum collection. The brown-gray-mauve glue-bound painting depicts the parable of St. Matthew XV verse 14 that "If the Blind lead the Blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

Episode writers Robert Doherty and Craig Sweeny perhaps entertain the Bruegel painted parable as foreshadowed evidence of Irene's exile as Jamie Moriarty and Sherlock's for addictions.

Away from sometimes fabricated, sometimes non-fabricated serial plots, the Bruegel painted parable of the blind flourishes at the Museo di Capodimonte (Top-of-the-Hill Museum) in Naples, Italy.

The tragic glimpse gives the blind leader already gone face-up into the stream, the second about to go face-down and the last four going gingerly forward. The blind beggar amid The Fight between Carnival and Lent of 1559 heralds the Bruegel painted parable's physical and spiritual blindness, despite the fourth man's cross. The second, third, fourth and sixth men illustrate the respective blindness of empty, eyeball-less sockets, fixated non-seeing eyes, inflicted or inherited non-seeing squints and sewed-together eyelids.

Perhaps Irene judged as juggle-worthy the thin-colored Bruegel painted parable with cowering cow, lone lily, sparse grasses and trees and peripheral church, three buildings and town.

An earlier depiction of the blind leading the blind by figure and landscape painter Pieter Bruegel is found in the background in Netherlandish Proverbs (1559 oil-on-panel): Netherlandish Proverbs (Dutch: Nederlandse Spreekwoorden) with inset detail of three blind figures, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Art collectors, connoisseurs and historians know Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1530?-Sept. 9, 1569) as figure and landscape illustrator and genre and landscape oil and tempera painter.

Specialists list the Bruegel legacy as figure and landscape drawings for engravings in Antwerp, miniatures and watercolors in Italy and genre and landscape paintings in Brussels. They mention as respective fine linen watercoloring, Mannerist panting and miniature painting mentors Claude Dorizi and Mayken Verhulst Bessemer, Pieter Coeck van Alst and Giulio Clovio. They note as early-drawn landscapes, miniatures and figures Landscape with Walled Town and Tower of Babel in 1553 and Big Fish Eat Little Fish in 1556.

Death of the Virgin and the Mannerist Adoration of the Kings in 1564 and Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery in 1565 offer early-painted figures.

Bruegel drawings and paintings present, until the last years, powerful built and natural settings prevailing over pint-sized people, as in The Triumph of Death in 1562.

Only the gray-monochromed Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery and Death of the Virgin, the thin-colored painted parable and the watercolor-like Misanthrope qualify as non-vivid. Even The Hunters in the Snow, Massacre of the Innocents, Numbering at Bethlehem and Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird-Trap in 1565-1566 reek of colors. Carol van Mander's Schilder-boeck in 1604 said, "He (Bruegel) liked to frighten people, often even his own pupils, with all kinds of spooks and uncanny noises."

Perhaps the Bruegel painted parable told Irene, not der Mander's take, or Sherlock's on her dark heart, but tumultuous truths of thoughtful teamwork and trustworthy tips.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) flashes back to meeting art forger and restorer Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer) in her studio, where he discovers her collection of original art, including Pieter Bruegel's Parable of the Blind, in Elementary tv series' The Woman (season 1, episode 23): CBS Elementary episode 1.23 promotional photo via SpoilerTV May 11, 2013

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

In CBS series Elementary episode The Woman, Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) discovers that art restorer Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer) has skillfully switched her copy of The Parable of the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder for the original: Pieter Bruegel's The Parable of the Blind (1568 distemper on linen canvas); Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Southern Italy; Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_(1568)_The_Blind_Leading_the_Blind.jpg

An earlier depiction of the blind leading the blind by figure and landscape painter Pieter Bruegel is found in the background in Netherlandish Proverbs (1559 oil-on-panel); Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, northeastern Germany: Netherlandish Proverbs (Dutch: Nederlandse Spreekwoorden) with inset detail of three blind figures, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Netherlandish_Proverbs_-_detail_of_blind_men.jpg

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) flashes back to meeting art forger and restorer Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer) in her studio, where he discovers her collection of original art, including Pieter Bruegel's Parable of the Blind, in Elementary tv series' The Woman (season 1, episode 23): CBS Elementary episode 1.23 promotional photo via SpoilerTV May 11, 2013, @ https://www.spoilertv.com/2013/05/elementary-season-1-finale-promotional.html

For further information:

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