Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Birth name	Pieter Bruegel
Born	c. 1525, Breda, Habsburg Netherlands
Died	September 9, 1569 (age 44), Brussels, Habsburg Netherlands
Field	Painting, printmaking
Movement	Dutch and Flemish Renaissance
Works	The Peasant Wedding

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 – 9 September 1569) was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (Genre Painting). He is sometimes referred to as "Peasant Bruegel" 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 "Bruegel" is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.

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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 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 painter's guild. He traveled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later. He received the nickname 'Peasant Bruegel' or 'Bruegel the Peasant' for his alleged practice of dressing up like a peasant in order to mingle at weddings and other celebrations, thereby gaining inspiration and authentic details for his genre paintings. He died in Brussels on 9 September 1569 and was buried in the Kapellekerk. 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, it is believed neither received any training from him. According to Carel van Mander, it is likely that they were instructed by their grandmother Mayken Verhulst van Aelst, who was also an artist.

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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 inspiration as he is identified as being a master of landscapes. It was in these landscapes that Bruegel created a story, seeming to combine several scenes in one painting. Such works can be seen in The Fall of the Rebel Angels and the previously mentioned The Triumph of Death.

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Themes

Bruegel specialized in genre paintings populated by peasants, often with a large landscape element, but also painted religious works. Making the life and manners of peasants the main focus of a work was rare in painting in Brueghel's time, and he was a pioneer of the Netherlandish genre painting. 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 (many of them still in use in current Dutch or Flemish), and Children's Games shows the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people. His winter landscapes of 1565 (e.g. Hunters in the Snow) 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)[citation needed] 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.

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References in other works

Bruegel's work plays prominently in Don DeLillo's 1997 novel Underworld (DeLillo novel). In the prologue, titled "The Triumph of Death" and set at the 1951 baseball game between the Giants and the Dodgers in which Bobby Thomson hit the so-called "Shot Heard 'Round the World", a reproduction of the eponymous painting (c. 1562) floats down into J. Edgar Hoover's hands amidst a celebratory hailstorm of loose bits of paper and other pieces of trash after the home run. Later in the novel, the concepts of death and play (activity) are compared with one another as the character Albert Bronzini discusses another Bruegel painting, Children's Games (1560): "I don't know what art history says about this painting. But I say it's not that different from the other famous Bruegel, armies of death marching across the landscape. The children are fat, backward, a little sinister to me. It's some kind of menace, some folly. Kinderspielen. They look like dwarves doing something awful" (U 682).

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Works

There are about 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. There are a large number of drawings. Brueghel only etched one plate himself, The Rabbit Hunt, but designed many engravings and etchings, mostly for the Cock publishing house.

Naval Battle in the Gulf of Naples, 1560, Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome
The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
The Procession to Calvary, 1564, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The Adoration of the Kings, 1564, The National Gallery, London
Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1567, versions Royal Collection, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and London art market (2007)
Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, inv. 8724
Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553, probably with Maarten de Vos, private collection
Ass at School, 1556, drawing, Print room, Berlin State Museums
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 - Note: Now seen as a copy of a lost authentic Bruegel painting[2]
Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Portrait of an Old Woman, 1560, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
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, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
The Triumph of Death, c. 1562, Museo del Prado, Madrid
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 Death of the Virgin, 1564, Upton House, Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK
The Months. A cycle of probably 6 paintings of the months or seasons, 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, Lobkowicz Palace at the Prague Castle Complex, Czech Republic
The Harvesters (Aug.-Sept.), 1565, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Return of the Herd (Oct.-Nov.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (1565), Courtauld Institute of Art, London
The Calumny of Apelles, 1565, drawing, British Museum, London
The Painter and the Connoisseur, drawing, c. 1565, Albertina, Vienna
Preaching Of John The Baptist, 1566, Museum of Fine Arts (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 Paul, 1567, Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna
The Land of Cockaigne, 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 di Capodimonte, 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, The Frick Collection, New York City
The Storm at Sea, an unfinished work, probably Bruegel's last painting.

Prints

Large Fish Eat Small Fish, 1556, a print after a Bruegel design

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder

Tower of Babel (1563)

Tower of Babel (1563)

Artist	Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Title	English: Tower of Babel العربية: برج بابل Deutsch: Turmbau zu Babel Français : La Tour de Babel Español: Torre de Babel Italiano: Torre di Babele Русский: Вавилонская башня Polski: Budowa wieży Babel 中文: 巴別塔
Date	1563
Technique	Deutsch: Öl auf Holz Italiano: Olio su Tavola
Dimensions	Deutsch: 114 × 155 cm
Current location	Deutsch: Kunsthistorisches Museum Deutsch: Wien Français : Vienne, Autriche Italiano: Vienna, Austria

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brueghel-tower-of-babel.jpg

Northern Renaissance (1400-1600)

Northern Renaissance

Centered in Germany and the Netherlands, 15th-16th Centuries. The Northern Renaissance is the term used to describe the Renaissance in northern Europe, or more broadly in Europe outside Italy. Before 1450 the Italian Renaissance had almost no influence outside Italy. After 1500 Renaissance spread around Europe, but Late Gothic influences remained present until the arrival of Baroque. In France, King Francis I imported Italian art, commissioned Italian artists (including Leonardo da Vinci), and built grand palaces at great expense, beginning the French Renaissance. Writers such as Rabelais and Pierre de Ronsard also borrowed from the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. From France, the spirit of the age spread to the Low Countries and to the Holy Roman Empire and Scandinavia in the German Renaissance, and finally to Britain by the late 16th century. During the English Renaissance (which overlapped with the Elizabethan era) writers such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe composed works of lasting influence. The Renaissance was brought to Poland directly from Italy by artists from Florence, starting the Polish Renaissance. The Northern Renaissance was distinct from the Italian Renaissance in its centralization of political power. While Italy was dominated by independent city-states, countries in central and western Europe began emerging as nation-states.

The Northern Renaissance was also closely linked to the Protestant Reformation and the long series of internal and external conflicts between various Protestant groups and the Roman Catholic Church. Western Europe was more uniformly under the embrace of feudalism than Northern Italy. This economic system had dominated western Europe for a thousand years, but was on the decline at the beginning of the Renaissance. The reasons for this decline include the post-plague environment, the increasing use of money rather than land as a medium of exchange, the growing number of serfs living as freedmen, the formation of nation-states with monarchies interested in reducing the power of feudal lords, the increasing uselessness of feudal armies in the face of new military technology (such as gunpowder), and a general increase in agricultural productivity due to improving farming technology and methods. As in Italy, the decline of feudalism opened the way for the cultural, social, and economic changes associated with the Renaissance in western Europe. Finally, the Renaissance in western Europe would also be kindled by a weakening of the Roman Catholic Church. The seeming inability of the church to help with the devastating Black Plague and the Western Schism tore Europe apart. The slow demise of feudalism also weakened a long-established policy in which church officials helped keep the population of the manor under control in return for tribute. Consequently, the early 15th century saw the rise of many secular institutions and beliefs. Among the most significant of these, humanism, would lay the philosophical grounds for much of Renaissance art, music, and science. Forms of artistic expression which a century ago would have been banned by the church were now tolerated or even encouraged. Ultimately, the printing press spurred mass production of the Bible, contributing to the Protestant Reformation. The velocity of transmission of the Renaissance throughout Europe can also largely be ascribed to the invention of the printing press. The printing press was popularized arrived well after the Renaissance was underway in Italy, but its power to mass-produce printed material dramatically affected the course of the Renaissance in northern Europe. The ability to widely disseminate knowledge enhanced scientific research and helped spread the Renaissance from Italy to other parts of Europe. The introduction of the printing press also led to the introduction of public propaganda, which was used by rulers to strengthen nation states. The creation of the printing press also encouraged authors to write in the local vernacular rather than in the classical languages of Greek and Latin, widening the reading audience and further promoting the spread of Renaissance ideas. As Renaissance art techniques moved to northern Europe, they changed and were adapted to local circumstances.

Notable painters of the period include Albrecht Dürer, Hans Dürer, Pieter Bruegel, Hans Holbein, Jean Fouquet, Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden. Paintings by these artists retain a Gothic influence; this is perhaps most evident in the works of Hieronymus Bosch. Northern art was more concerned with Christianity than with Greek and Roman, in part a reflection of the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation. One major difference between the Northern and Italian Renaissances was that of language. While Italy's humanists turned Latin and Greek, the northerners began to write in the vernacular creating literature that was widely accessible. The greater use and respectability of the vernacular languages played an important role in the formation of the new nation states that were largely defined by language. Perhaps the most important technological development of the Renaissance was the invention of the caravel, the first truly oceangoing ship. This combination of European and Arab ship building technologies for the first time made extensive trade and travel over the Atlantic feasible. While first introduced by the Italian states, and the early captains, such as Christopher Columbus and Giovanni Caboto, who were Italian, the development would end Northern Italy’s role as the trade crossroads of Europe, shifting wealth and power westwards to Spain, Portugal, France, and England. These states all began to conduct extensive trade with Africa and Asia, and in the Americas began extensive colonisation activities. This period of exploration and expansion has become known as the Age of Discovery. Eventually European power, and also Renaissance art and ideals, spread around the globe.

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Tower of Babel (1563) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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Northern Renaissance (1400-1600)