The Misanthrope

The Misanthrope is a tempera painting on canvas by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, created during 1568. It currently is held and exhibited at the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy. Description The circular painting is encased in a square frame and depicts a black-robed, white-bearded elderly man clasping his hands before him. A smaller barefooted man behind him uses a knife to cut the strings to the elderly man's moneypouch. The elderly man appears so lost in thought that he notices neither the theft nor the caltrops that lie in his path. A globus cruciger encloses the thief. A Flemish inscription at the bottom reads: Om dat de werelt is soe ongetru / Daer om gha ic in den ru("Because the world is perfidious, I am going into mourning").