The representation of the cardinal and theological virtues in the series, The seven virtues (1559-1560), by Pieter Bruegel, Philip Galle and Hieronymus Cock: a proposal for social disciplining and moral ordering for the community of Flanders

• Grant number: 18/17507-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2019
• End date: February 28, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Luis Filipe Silverio Lima
• Grantee: Mariana Stefanny Moises Duzzi
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research analyzes the series of woodcuts "The seven virtues", made between 1559-1560, in Flanders, by Pieter Bruegel ("inventor") and Philip Galle ("engraver"), and put up for sale at the bookstore, Aux quatre vents, owned by Hieronymus Cock. The series represents the three theological virtues - Charity, Faith and Hope -, and the four cardinal virtues - Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. The research aims to: map the series' production and circulation; identify how the understanding of cardinal and theological virtues was depicted; and examine the extent to which the iconographic construction of the series allows to understand the conflicts around the concept of virtue, during the process of "confessionalization" and "social-disciplining". The research hypothesis is that religious reforms and confessional conflicts influenced the understanding of virtues and initiated a confessional dispute around this concept. This confessional dispute produced an iconographic change in the representations of virtue, in which the series "The seven virtues" became an exponent of this process and was a visual rhetorical instrument of disciplining moral behaviors in sixteenth-century Flanders.