 Not all versions of the painting, by father or son, show exactly the same proverbs and they also differ in other minor details.Proverbs were very popular in Bruegel's time and before; a hundred years before Bruegel's painting, illustrations of proverbs had been popular in the Flemish books of hours.A number of collections were published, including "Adagia", by the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus.