The placement of St. Anna's Church of the village of Sint-Anna-Pede has led to both pro- and anti-Catholic interpretations, though it is not clear that the painting was meant as a political statement.

[5] Bruegel expands the two blind men in the parable to six; they are well dressed, rather than wearing the peasant clothing that typifies his late work.

[12] Due to the high perishability of linen cloth and the solubility of hide glue, tüchleins do not preserve well and are difficult to restore.

[18] The flat country features are distinctly Flemish, unlike in most of Bruegel's landscapes, in which he introduced foreign elements such as mountain ranges even into local scenery.

[19] In contrast to earlier depictions of the blind as beneficiaries of divine gifts, Bruegel's men are stumbling and decrepit,[20] and portrayed without sympathy.

Here, Bruegel gives each man a different ocular affliction, all painted with a realism that allowed identification of their conditions by later experts,[20] though there is still some diagnostic disagreement.

[22] French anatomical pathologist Jean-Martin Charcot and anatomical artist Paul Richer published an early account, Les difformes et les malades dans l'art ("The deformed and sick in art", 1889), and French pathologist Tony-Michel Torrillhon followed with more research on Bruegel's figures in 1957.

It was a time of rapid advances in learning and knowledge, and a move towards the empirical sciences—the age of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus and of Gutenberg's printing presses.

[25] Art was now traded in open markets; artists sought to distinguish themselves with subjects different from traditional noble, mythological, and Biblical ones, and developed new, realistic techniques based on empirical observation.

[26] Pieter Bruegel the Elder began his career illustrating landscapes and fantastic scenes in a dense style that earned him a reputation as artistic heir to Hieronymus Bosch.

He soon came to follow the example of another master, Pieter Aertsen, who had made a name for himself in the 1550s depicting everyday scenes in a highly realistic style, such as the detailed array of meat products that dominate his large Butcher's Stall of 1551.

[27] The peasants Bruegel at first depicted were featureless and undifferentiated; as his work matured, their physiognomy became markedly more detailed and expressive.

[8] In 1563, Bruegel married Mayken, the daughter of his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst,[28] and moved to Brussels, the seat of government in the Spanish Netherlands (1556–1714).

[4] Whether Bruegel had Calvinist sympathies or intended a political message in The Blind is not clear, but the evidence indicates he likely held views critical of the Catholic Church.

However, the Protestant doctrine of sola fide rejected the efficacy of works in achieving salvation, prescribing that it depended on faith alone (and the complication of God's predestined will for each individual).

[7] Art historian Gustav Glück noted incongruities in that the beggars are well-dressed and carry staves and full purses.

Academics Kenneth C. Lindsay and Bernard Huppé suggest Bruegel may have implied that the blind men represent false priests who ignored Christ's admonitions not to carry gold, purses, or staves;[35][g] the leader carries a hurdy-gurdy, a musical instrument associated with beggars in Bruegel's time;[36] this perhaps implies a false minstrel, one who sings praises not for God.

Critics Charcot and Richer wrote that the concept of visualizing movement was not formulated until the 17th century,[9] and that Bruegel prefigures motion pictures[37] and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No.

[42] Bruegel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger painted a larger copy in c. 1616[19] with extra details, including a flock of sheep, that hangs in the Louvre;[7] this copy was in the collection of Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, patron of Italian Baroque painter Domenico Fetti, who may have been influenced by the painting when he executed his own version of the parable around 1621–22.

[43] The painting has been the subject of poetry, including works by the Germans Josef Weinheber and Walter Bauer,[44] and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire's "The Blind".

The figures stumble diagonally downward, and—[46] ... onefollows the other stick inhand triumphant to disasterBruegel's painting served as a model for Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck's one-act The Blind.

Pareils aux mannequins; vaguement ridicules; Terribles, singuliers comme les somnambules; Dardant on ne sait où leurs globes ténébreux.

Leurs yeux, d'où la divine étincelle est partie, Comme s'ils regardaient au loin, restent levés Au ciel; on ne les voit jamais vers les pavés Pencher rêveusement leur tête appesantie.