Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder or Brueghel (c.1525 – September 9, 1569) was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (Genre Painting). He is nicknamed 'Peasant Brueghel' to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which "Brueghel" is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.

[edit] Life

There are records that he was born in Breda, Netherlands, but it is uncertain whether the Dutch town of Breda or the Belgian town of Bree, called Breda in Latin, is meant. He was the son of a peasant residing in the village of Breughel. He was an apprentice of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose daughter Mayken he later married. He spent some time in France and Italy, and then went to Antwerp, where in 1551 he was accepted as a master in the painters' guild. He traveled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later. He died there on 9 September 1569.

He was the father of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Both became painters, but as they were very young children when their father died, neither received any training from him. According to Carel van Mander, it is likely that they were instructed by their grandmother.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Style

In Bruegel's later years he painted in a simpler style than the Italianate art that prevailed in his time. The most obvious influence on his art is the older Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, particularly in Bruegel's early "demonological" paintings such as The Triumph of Death and Dulle Griet (Mad Meg). It was in nature, however, that he found his greatest inspirations as he is identified as being a master of landscapes. It was in these landscapes that Bruegel created a story, with almost several scenes seemingly combined in one painting. Such works can be seen in The Fall of the Rebel Angels and the previously mentioned The Triumph of Death.

[edit] Themes

Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants. He is often credited as being the first Western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop to a religious allegory.

Attention to the life and manners of peasants was rare in the arts in Brueghel's time. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life. For example, the painting Netherlandish Proverbs illustrates dozens of then-contemporary aphorisms, and Children's Games shows the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people. His winter landscapes of 1565 are taken as corroborative evidence of the severity of winters during the Little Ice Age.

Using abundant spirit and comic power, he created some of the early images of acute social protest in art history. Examples include paintings such as The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (a satire of the conflicts of the Reformation) and engravings like The Ass in the School and Strongboxes Battling Piggybanks. On his deathbed he reportedly ordered his wife to burn the most subversive of his drawings to protect his family from political persecution.^[1]

[edit] Works

There are 45 authenticated surviving paintings, one-third of which are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A number of others are known to have been lost. A large number of drawings, engravings and etchings also exist.

• Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553, probably with Maarten de Vos, private collection
• Large Fish Eat Small Fish, 1556, Albertina, Vienna
• Ass at School, 1556, Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• Parable of the Sower, 1557, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego
• Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1554-55, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
• Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Naval Battle in the Gulf of Naples, 1560, Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome
• Portrait of an Old Woman, 1560,
• Children's Games, 1560, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Temperance, 1560
• Saul (Battle Against The Philistines On The Gilboa), 1562, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Two Small Monkeys, 1562, Staaliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• The Triumph of Death, c. 1562, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
• Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), c. 1562, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp
• The Tower of Babel, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Flight To Egypt, 1563, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
• The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
• The Death of the Virgin, 1564, Upton House, Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK
• The Procession to Calvary, 1564, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Adoration of the Kings, 1564, The National Gallery, London
• The Months. A cycle of 6 or 12 paintings of the months or seasons from the Book of Hours of which five remain:
  • The Hunters in the Snow (Dec.-Jan.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • The Gloomy Day (Feb.-Ma.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • The Hay Harvest (June-July), 1565, Nelahozeves château, Czech Republic
  • The Harvesters (Aug.-Sept.), 1565, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • The Return of the Herd (Oct.-Nov.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565, Bruxelles, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van Belgie, inv. 8724
• The Calumny of Apelles, 1565, British Museum, London
• Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1565, Hampton Court, UK/Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Painter and the Connoisseur, c. 1565, Albertina, Vienna
• Preaching Of John The Baptist, 1566, Beaux Arts Museum, Budapest
• Census at Bethlehem, 1566, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
• The Wedding Dance, c. 1566, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
• Conversion Of Paulus, 1567, Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna
• The Land of Cockaigne/Land Of Milk And Honey, 1567, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
• The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt
• The Misanthrope, 1568, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
• The Blind Leading the Blind, 1568, Museo Nazionale, Naples
• The Peasant Wedding, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Peasant Dance, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Beggars, 1568, Louvre, Paris
• The Peasant and the Nest Robber, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Three Soldiers, 1568, Frick Collection, New York City
• The Storm at Sea, an unfinished work, probably Bruegel's last painting.

[edit] Family tree

[edit] Portrayals in literature and film

• Rudy Rucker (2002) As above, so below: A novel of Peter Bruegel. New York: Forge.
• Michael Frayn (2000) Headlong, ISBN 0-571-20147-4. A novel in which a young art historian discovers the lost painting from The Months cycle.
• Gert Hofmann's novella Der Blindensturz (1985) depicts the figures in The Blind Leading the Blind coming to life.
• Caryl Churchill (1982) Top Girls. One of the characters in the dreamlike first scene of this play is Dull Gret, the subject of Breugel's 'Dulle Griet' (Mad Meg).
• Andrey Tarkovsky: Solaris (1972 film) - the interior of the spaceship contains full size reproductions of Bruegel's Months paintings. Andrei Rublev, 1966 - has a wintertime Calvary sequence suggestive of a Bruegel painting. The Mirror - has a wintertime scene, which is similar to Bruegel's The Hunters in the Snow
• Felix Timmermans (1928). Pieter Bruegel. Novel.
• Uderzo depicts a Belgian feast as an almost perfect copy of The Peasant Wedding in Asterix in Belgium [1].
• W.H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux-Arts"
• William Carlos Williams' Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus.
• William Carlos Williams' Peasant Wedding.
• Carnivàle (2003-2005): In the opening credits of this HBO series, several tarot cards are shown. One of them (the temperance card) shows an etching by Brueghel.
• Don Delillo's novel Underworld (1997) features J. Edgar Hoover looking at Bruegel's The Triumph of Death in the first chapter.
• Nicolas Roeg's, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) The painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is shown in the movie.

[edit] Trivia

• In 2005 Pieter Breugel the Elder was nominated for the title De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian). In the Flemish edition he ended 17th place. In the Walloon edition he came in 58th. A year earlier he came in 152nd place in the election of De Grootste Nederlander (the Greatest Dutchman).