Cocktails with a Curator: Bruegel the Elder's "Three Soldiers"

In this week’s episode of Cocktails with a Curator, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon discusses The Three Soldiers by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of only a few works by the artist outside Europe. Bruegel is best known for his lively and often comical peasant scenes, but here he takes as his subject three landsknechts, or German mercenary foot soldiers. Currently on view on the second floor of Frick Madison, this grisaille painting shows a drummer, a standard-bearer, and a fifer outfitted in flamboyant costume (and presumably urging their fellow soldiers into battle). This week’s complementary cocktail is the Radler, a mixture of lemonade and lager favored in German-speaking lands north of the Alps.

This episode of Cocktails with a Curator is underwritten by Ayesha Bulchandani.

Cocktail Recipe

Radler

equal parts of lager beer and lemonade
serve chilled

Audiences under 21 are encouraged to join with a non-alcoholic drink.

Mocktail

Chilled lemonade
garnish with a thin slice of cucumber