Two Chained Monkeys
Two monkeys chained in a stone window, with the harbour and skyline of Antwerp hazy behind them.
Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Two Chained Monkeys — at a glance
- Artist
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569)
- Year
- 1562
- Movement
- Netherlandish Renaissance
- Place
- A window looking over the port of Antwerp, the Netherlands
- Viewpoint
- A distant, atmospheric view of Antwerp framed by a stone window — not a precise topography
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- c. 20 × 23 cm
- Now at
- Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Overview
Two Chained Monkeys is a very small oil panel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, signed and dated 1562. It shows two monkeys — a species of African guenon — sitting in a deep, round-arched stone window, each collared and chained to a ring in the sill, with cracked nutshells scattered around them. Beyond the window opens a wide, pale view over water to a distant city. It is about 20 by 23 cm and hangs in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
Where was Two Chained Monkeys painted?
Museum interpretation The hazy panorama through the window is generally identified as Antwerp, where Bruegel was living: the broad river Scheldt with sailing ships, the low line of the quays, and the faint towers of the city — including, at the horizon, a spire usually read as that of the Church of Our Lady (now Antwerp Cathedral). The view is distant and atmospheric rather than a precise topography, and it is framed and closed off by the massive window, so the city is glimpsed, not entered.
What is in the painting?
The two monkeys fill the shadowed window recess. One faces out, hunched, looking down; the other turns away towards the light, hunched over the chain. The heavy iron collars and links, the ring bolted to the stone, and the litter of hazelnut shells are painted with precise care. Through the arch, the Scheldt estuary spreads out in soft grey-blue, ships small on the water, the city a thin band under a big sky.
Look closely
The iron collars and chains
Each monkey is shackled to a ring bolted into the window sill, painted link by link.
The hazelnut shells
Cracked shells litter the sill — often tied to a proverb about giving up freedom for something trivial.
The two poses
One monkey stares out and down; the other turns away towards the light, hunched over its chain.
Antwerp on the horizon
Ships on the Scheldt and a faint band of towers — the free world, seen through the arch.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A dark, heavy arch in the foreground frames a small, luminous window onto a vast pale distance.
Scholarship Bruegel sets nearly the whole surface to the shadowed stone and the two animals, then concentrates light and space into the arch behind them. The contrast of scale — the huge near window, the miniature far city — makes the outside world feel remote and unreachable.
Meaning and interpretation
Interpretations differ. What the artist documented, what museums and scholars propose, and later or speculative theories are marked and kept separate.
An emblem, but of what?
The tiny picture has drawn many readings and Bruegel left no explanation. Common interpretations: a proverb about greed or folly (selling one's freedom ‘for a hazelnut’); an image of captivity and lost liberty set against the open world beyond; a moralising contrast between the base, chained creatures and the free ships. Some later writers have tied it to the political tensions in the Netherlands on the eve of the revolt against Spain, but that is speculative.
Freedom framed off
Whatever the precise proverb, the design opposes confinement (the dark, walled foreground, the chains) with freedom (the luminous distance, the sailing ships) — and keeps the two apart with a wall of stone.
History & provenance
The panel is in the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Sources
- Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin — collection entry for Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘Two Chained Monkeys’ (1562; oil on panel, c. 20 × 23 cm)
- Manfred Sellink, ‘Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints’ (2007)
Related paintings
More by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
The Procession to Calvary
The Blind Leading the Blind
