Pieter Bruegel the Elder Medieval Banksy?

Medieval Banksy? The Genius Dutch Artist Shrouded In Mystery | The Great Artists

Dec 9, 2023  #History #Art #Painting
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes; he was a pioneer in making both types of subject the focus in large paintings, but his identity remains a mystery.

Subscribe and click the bell icon to get more arts content every week:
   / perspectivearts 

Perspective is YouTube's home for the arts. Come here to get your fill of great music, theatre, art and much, much more!

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free exclusive podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Matt Lewis and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PERSPECTIVE: https://access.historyhit.com/


The English art critic is hilarious! Where did you dig him up from? His condescending manner and speech are priceless!

Without Bruegel, everyone would picture everyone in the Middle Ages dressed as Robin Hood.


The only Perspective shows I watch are those with Waldemar. He gives his information with a cerebral layer that many of the other experts are lacking.


one must see the film 'the mill and the cross'.

A Perspective documentary on my favorite Northern Renaissance painter? Say no more!
; 45:46 this "expert" trying so hard . Brueghel simplicity and subtlety is great Art Sir.


Thanks so much for posting,

Thank you for the video.  A suggestion: try background music from the same period as the artist you're discussing.  Hearing music from centuries later makes no sense,  and suggests to people who don't know,  a wrong sensibility.  A thousand thanks!


So the Art Critic from the Evening Standard provided Monty Python with their model for Pontius Pilate? Well, who'd have thunk it!
"Derring-do"


1 year ago (edited)

To have lived through what common people lived through in an era when the penalty of revealing one’s true feelings of their beliefs was death as a heretic must have been incredibly agonizing on top of dealing with out crops of the plague, poverty and disease. Interestingly enough many very famous scientists and artists of those times who were educated enough to read, listen to or perhaps translate the Greek Septuagint version of the Scriptures or hear  of small but important lessons, knew in their hearts that the deplorable degrading false teachings of the clergy and their way of life clashed directly with what they were supposed to be teaching. Maybe this artist was deeply troubled by the hypocrisy as so many are even to our day. Some courageously spoke up and worked diligently under duress to translate, others made private notations due to the fear of being burnt at the stake. These so called teachings still exist but so does the truth that so many back then gave their lives for to make sure that we could examine it. This artist really appears to have attempted to contrast and show the hypocrisy in his art. What a sad job when he enjoyed painting nature. His harvest paintings and of seasons show so much more joy and happiness of life. ;


***
The Mill and the Cross

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mill and the Cross

Directed by Lech Majewski
Written by Michael Francis Gibson
Lech Majewski
Produced by George Lekovic
Lech Majewski
Freddy Olsson
Dorota Roszkowska
Starring Rutger Hauer
Charlotte Rampling
Michael York
Cinematography Lech Majewski
Adam Sikora
Edited by Eliot Ems
Norbert Rudzik
Music by Lech Majewski
J;zef Skrzek
Production
companies
Angelus Silesius
Telewizja Polska
Arkana Studio
Bokomotiv Filmproduktion
Release dates
23 January 2011 (Sundance)
18 March 2011 (Poland)
Running time 96 minutes
Countries Poland
Sweden
Languages English and Spanish
Budget €1.1 million[1]

Pieter Bruegel's The Way to Calvary
The Mill and the Cross (Polish: M;yn i krzy;) is a 2011 drama film directed by Lech Majewski and starring Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling, and Michael York. It is inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary, and based on Michael Francis Gibson's 1996 book The Mill and the Cross. The film was a Polish-Swedish co-production. Filming on the project wrapped in August 2009.[1] It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2011.[2]

Plot
The film focuses on a dozen of the 500 characters depicted in Bruegel's painting. It consists of a series of vignettes depicting everyday peasant life, interspersed with monologues from some of the principal characters, including Bruegel explaining the structure and symbolism of his painting. The theme of Christ's suffering is set against religious persecution in Flanders in 1564.[3]

Cast
Rutger Hauer as Pieter Bruegel
Michael York as Nicolaes Jonghelinck
Charlotte Rampling as Mary
Joanna Litwin as Marijken Bruegel (Pieter's wife)
Marian Makula as The Miller
Production
In 1996 Michael Francis Gibson published a detailed analysis of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 124 x 170 cm, 500-character painting, The Way to Calvary (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) under the title Le Portement de croix de Pierre Bruegel l'A;n; (No;sis, Paris). He translated the book into English and it was published under the title The Mill and the Cross in 2001 (Acatlos, Lausanne). The New York Times called it "as readable and riveting as a first-rate spy-thriller."[citation needed] In January 2011, Majewski’s undertook production of the feature-length The Mill and the Cross (having cast Charlotte Rampling, Michael York and Rutger Hauer). The film was designed to be a narrative recreation of Bruegel’s painting that (according to Gibson) evokes the sort of scene that Bruegel himself too often had occasion to witness: the execution of a Flemish Protestant by the militia of the King of Spain.[4]

The film intended to combine old and new technologies allowing the viewer to live inside the painting—Flemish master Pieter Bruegel's 1564 "The Procession to Calvary," an epic canvas depicting both Christ's crucifixion and the artist's homeland brutalization by Spanish occupiers. Filming was completed in August 2009.[1]

Release
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2011.[2]

Reception
As of June 2020, The Mill and the Cross holds a 79% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 42 reviews with an average rating of 7.41/10.[5] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 80 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[6]

Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 4 stars out of four and stated: "If you see no more than the opening shots, you will never forget them. It opens on a famous painting, and within the painting, a few figures move and walk. We will meet some of those people in more detail."[7] Joe Bendel: "... one of the standouts at this year’s Sundance".[8] Variety's Dennis Harvey wrote: "While hardly an exercise in strict realism a la The Girl With the Pearl Earring, the pic details rustic Flanders life with loving care, from costuming to simple machinery. Pic's narrative content ... is hardly straightforward or propulsive. ... the film is never dull, and frequently entrancing." Harvey thought that if marketed cleverly, the film "could prove the Polish helmer's belated international breakthrough".[9] Neil Young of The Hollywood Reporter complimented the technical achievements, but called the film "ambitious but frustratingly flat". He described the English dialogue as "mostly clunky" and thought the film "has too much of a stodgy Euro-pudding feel".[10] On the other hand, in his review for the San Francisco International Film Festival, executive director Graham Leggat wrote: "...the narrative is not the point—the extraordinary imagery is. The painting literally comes to life in this spellbinding film, its wondrous scenes entering the viewer like a dream enters a sleeping body."[11]

References
 Production: The Mill And The Cross wraps shoot Archived 2012-03-13 at the Wayback Machine Film New Europe. 17 August 2009
 Billington, Alex (2 December 2010). "SUNDANCE 2011 Sundance Film Festival 2011 Non-Competition Line-Up Unveiled". FirstShowing.net. Retrieved 16 April 2019.
 Grynienko, Katarzyna "All Star Cast of 'The Mill And The Cross' Working in Poland" Archived 2011-02-03 at the Wayback Machine, Film New Europe, 23 November 2008, accessed 22 October 2010.
 Michael Francis Gibson, The Mill and the Cross, Acatos, Lausanne, 2001 and Michael Francis Gibson and Lech Majewski, "The Mill & the Cross," Bosz and Angelus Silesius, Poland, 2011. See also, Lester, Paul Martin (September 2007). "Floods and Photo-Ops A Visual Historiography Approach". Visual Communication Quarterly 14 (2): 114–126.
 "The Mill and the Cross". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
 "The Mill and the Cross". Metacritic. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
 Ebert, Roger. "The Mill and the Cross". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
 "LFM Sundance Review: The Mill and the Cross – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine".
 Harvey, Dennis (27 January 2011). "The Mill and the Cross". Variety. Retrieved 16 April 2019.
 Young, Neil (2011-02-09). "The Mill & the Cross: Berlin Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
 Wr;blewska, Joanna (2015-01-21). "A masterpiece about a masterpiece: "The Mill and The Cross" by Lech Majewski". SAE Alumni. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
External links
The Mill and the Cross at IMDb
The Mill and the Cross at Rotten Tomatoes
Trailer on YouTube
Video interview of Lech Majewski by Gherardo Vitali Rosati
The Mill and the Cross – review
The Mill and the Cross. The Film as Theoretical Object
vte
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
Categories: 2011 films2010s English-language filmsEnglish-language Polish filmsEnglish-language Swedish filmsFilms directed by Lech MajewskiFilms shot in PolandFilms set in FlandersFilms set in the 1560sBiographical films about paintersPolish biographical filmsSwedish biographical filmsPieter Bruegel the ElderFilms based on art2010s biographical films2010s Swedish filmsEnglish-language biographical filmsOpus Film films