Bruegel 97 Masterpieces of Flemish Renaissance Art

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: 97 Masterpieces of Flemish Renaissance Art
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Jun 17, 2024  #ArtHistory #RenaissanceArt #PieterBruegel
Explore the captivating world of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a monumental figure in Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. This video delves into the life and legacy of Bruegel, an artist whose work has influenced generations. Known for his masterful landscapes and vivid peasant scenes, Bruegel's art provides a unique window into the culture and society of the 16th century.

;;;;VIDEO CHAPTERS;;;;
00:00 Master of Flemish Renaissance Art
01:51 Early life.
04:23 Travel.
08:21 Historical background.
10:25 Subjects. Peasants.Landscape elements. Months of the year.
18:10 Prints and drawings.
21:47 Family.
23:29 Reception history.
27:53 Works. References in other works.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1530 – 1569) is celebrated as one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. His innovative approach to genre painting, where he depicted everyday life with a keen eye for detail, set him apart from his contemporaries. Unlike many artists of his time who focused on religious subjects, Bruegel chose to capture the essence of peasant life and the natural world, making him a pioneer in his field.

In this video, we explore Bruegel’s early life, his training under the influential painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and his travels to Italy, which greatly impacted his artistic development. We will look at how these experiences shaped his unique style, characterized by intricate detail, vibrant colors, and complex compositions.

One of Bruegel's most famous works, "The Hunters in the Snow," exemplifies his ability to combine landscape with narrative. This painting, part of his series on the seasons, is a masterclass in creating mood and atmosphere, depicting the harshness of winter with striking realism. Similarly, "The Peasant Wedding" and "The Peasant Dance" showcase Bruegel's talent for capturing the joy and simplicity of rural festivities, filled with movement and life.

Bruegel's influence extended beyond painting. His designs for prints were highly sought after, and he worked closely with the leading publisher of his day, Hieronymus Cock. This collaboration resulted in a series of prints that disseminated Bruegel’s ideas far and wide, cementing his reputation across Europe.

Despite his focus on everyday scenes, Bruegel’s work often carried deeper meanings. His paintings like "The Blind Leading the Blind" and "The Triumph of Death" offer profound social and religious commentary, reflecting the turbulent times in which he lived. The Reformation and the ensuing conflicts influenced many of his works, infusing them with layers of allegory and symbolism.

In the latter part of his career, Bruegel shifted towards creating larger paintings, where he began to emphasize individual figures more prominently against detailed backgrounds. This evolution in his style can be seen in works such as "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" and "The Tower of Babel," which demonstrate his continued innovation and mastery.

Bruegel's legacy is immense, influencing countless artists, including his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, who carried on his artistic tradition. His works have inspired not only painters but also writers and filmmakers. Notable examples include W.H. Auden's poem "Mus;e des Beaux Arts," which references Bruegel’s "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," and films by directors like Andrei Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier, who have incorporated Bruegel’s imagery into their cinematic narratives.


***



Jun 17, 2024  #ArtHistory #RenaissanceArt #PieterBruegel
Explore the captivating world of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a monumental figure in Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. This video delves into the life and legacy of Bruegel, an artist whose work has influenced generations. Known for his masterful landscapes and vivid peasant scenes, Bruegel's art provides a unique window into the culture and society of the 16th century.

VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Master of Flemish Renaissance Art
01:51 Early life.
04:23 Travel.
08:21 Historical background.
10:25 Subjects. Peasants. Landscape elements. Months of the year.
18:10 Prints and drawings.
21:47 Family.
23:29 Reception history.
27:53 Works. References in other works.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1530 – 1569) is celebrated as one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. His innovative approach to genre painting, where he depicted everyday life with a keen eye for detail, set him apart from his contemporaries. Unlike many artists of his time who focused on religious subjects, Bruegel chose to capture the essence of peasant life and the natural world, making him a pioneer in his field.

In this video, we explore Bruegel’s early life, his training under the influential painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and his travels to Italy, which greatly impacted his artistic development. We will look at how these experiences shaped his unique style, characterized by intricate detail, vibrant colors, and complex compositions.

One of Bruegel's most famous works, "The Hunters in the Snow," exemplifies his ability to combine landscape with narrative. This painting, part of his series on the seasons, is a masterclass in creating mood and atmosphere, depicting the harshness of winter with striking realism. Similarly, "The Peasant Wedding" and "The Peasant Dance" showcase Bruegel's talent for capturing the joy and simplicity of rural festivities, filled with movement and life.

Bruegel's influence extended beyond painting. His designs for prints were highly sought after, and he worked closely with the leading publisher of his day, Hieronymus Cock. This collaboration resulted in a series of prints that disseminated Bruegel’s ideas far and wide, cementing his reputation across Europe.

Despite his focus on everyday scenes, Bruegel’s work often carried deeper meanings. His paintings like "The Blind Leading the Blind" and "The Triumph of Death" offer profound social and religious commentary, reflecting the turbulent times in which he lived. The Reformation and the ensuing conflicts influenced many of his works, infusing them with layers of allegory and symbolism.

In the latter part of his career, Bruegel shifted towards creating larger paintings, where he began to emphasize individual figures more prominently against detailed backgrounds. This evolution in his style can be seen in works such as "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" and "The Tower of Babel," which demonstrate his continued innovation and mastery.

Bruegel's legacy is immense, influencing countless artists, including his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, who carried on his artistic tradition. His works have inspired not only painters but also writers and filmmakers. Notable examples include W.H. Auden's poem "Mus;e des Beaux Arts," which references Bruegel’s "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," and films by directors like Andrei Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier, who have incorporated Bruegel’s imagery into their cinematic narratives.



Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Dutch and Flemish painter (c. 1525/30–1569)
Transcript

Master of Flemish Renaissance Art
0:00
Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the  Elder also was   among the most significant artists of  Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, 
0:05
a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes  and peasant scenes so-called genre painting; 
0:11
he was a pioneer in presenting both  types of subject as large paintings.
0:16
He was a formative influence on Dutch Golden Age  painting and later painting in general in his 
0:22
innovative choices of subject matter, as one of  the first generation of artists to grow up when 
0:27
religious subjects had ceased to be the natural  subject matter of painting. He also painted no 
0:33
portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish  art. After his training and travels to Italy, 
0:40
he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp, where  he worked mainly as a prolific designer of prints 
0:46
for the leading publisher of the day. At the  end of the 1550s, he switched to make painting 
0:52
his main medium, and all his famous paintings  come from the following period of little more 
0:57
than a decade before his early death in 1569,  when he was probably in his early forties.
1:05
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Bruegel's works  have inspired artists in both the literary arts 
1:11
and in cinema. His painting Landscape with the  Fall of Icarus, now thought only to survive in 
1:18
copies, is the subject of the final lines of the  1938 poem "Mus;e des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden. 
1:27
Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky refers to  Bruegel's paintings in his films several times, 
1:33
notably in Solaris (1972) and The Mirror  (1975). Director Lars von Trier also uses 
1:39
Bruegel's paintings in his film Melancholia  (2011). In 2011, the film production titled 
1:46
The Mill and the Cross was released featuring  Bruegel's The Procession to Calvary (Bruegel).
Early life.
1:51
Life. Early life. Bruegel's birth date is not documented, but  inferred from the fact that Bruegel entered 
1:58
the Antwerp painters' guild in 1551.  This usually happened between the ages 
2:04
of twenty to twenty-five, giving a range for  his birth between 1525 and 1530. His master, 
2:12
according to Karel van Mander, was the  Antwerp painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst.
2:18
The two main early sources for Bruegel's biography   are Lodovico Guicciardini's account of  the Low Countries (1567) and Karel van 
2:25
Mander's 1604 Schilder-boeck. Guicciardini  recorded that Bruegel was born in Breda, 
2:31
but van Mander specified that Bruegel was born  in a village (dorp) near Breda called "Brueghel", 
2:37
which does not fit any known place. Nothing  at all is known of his family background. Van 
2:44
Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant  background, in keeping with the over-emphasis 
2:49
on Bruegel's peasant genre scenes given by van  Mander and many early art historians and critics.
2:56
In contrast, scholars of the last six decades have  emphasized the intellectual content of his work, 
3:02
and conclude: "There is, in fact, every reason  to think that Pieter Bruegel was a townsman and 
3:08
a highly educated one, on friendly terms with the  humanists of his time", ignoring van Mander's dorp 
3:15
and just placing his childhood in Breda itself.  Breda was already a significant centre as the base 
3:21
of the House of Orange-Nassau, with a population  of some 8,000, although 90% of the 1300 houses 
3:29
were destroyed in a fire in 1534. However, this  reversal can be taken to excess; although Bruegel 
3:37
moved in highly educated humanist circles, it  seems "he had not mastered Latin", and had others 
3:44
add the Latin captions in some of his drawings. Between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter 
3:51
Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550. However,  before this, Bruegel was already working in 
3:59
Mechelen, where he is documented between  September 1550 and October 1551 assisting 
4:05
Peeter Baltens on an altarpiece (now lost),  painting the wings in grisaille. Bruegel possibly 
4:11
got this work via the connections of Mayken  Verhulst, the wife of Pieter Coecke. Mayken's 
4:17
father and eight siblings were all artists  or married an artist, and lived in Mechelen.
Travel.
4:23
Travel. In 1551 Bruegel   became a free master in the Guild of Saint Luke  of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, 
4:32
probably by way of France. He visited Rome and,  rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 he 
4:40
had reached Reggio Calabria at the southern tip of  the mainland, where a drawing records the city in 
4:45
flames after a Turkish raid. He probably continued  to Sicily, but by 1553 was back in Rome. There he 
4:55
met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whose will of  1578 lists paintings by Bruegel; in one case a 
5:03
joint work. These works, apparently landscapes,  have not survived, but marginal miniatures in 
5:10
manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel. He left Italy by 1554, and had reached Antwerp 
5:17
by 1555, when the set of prints to his designs  known as the Large Landscapes were published by 
5:24
Hieronymus Cock, the most important print  publisher of northern Europe. Bruegel's 
5:29
return route is uncertain, but much of the  debate over it was made irrelevant in the   1980s when it was realized that the celebrated  series of large drawings of mountain landscapes 
5:40
thought to have been made on the trip were not  by Bruegel at all. However, all the drawings 
5:46
from the trip that are considered authentic are  of landscapes; unlike most other 16th-century 
5:51
artists visiting Rome he seems to have ignored  both classical ruins and contemporary buildings.
5:58
Antwerp and Brussels. From 1555 until 1563, 
6:03
Bruegel lived in Antwerp, then the publishing  centre of northern Europe, mainly working as a 
6:09
designer of over forty prints for Cock, though his  dated paintings begin in 1557. With one exception, 
6:17
Bruegel did not work the plates himself, but  produced a drawing which Cock's specialists worked 
6:22
from. From 1559, he dropped the 'h' from his name  and signed his paintings as Bruegel; his relatives 
6:30
continued to use "Brueghel" or "Breughel". He  moved in the lively humanist circles of the city, 
6:37
and his change of name (or at least its spelling)  in 1559 can be seen as an attempt to Latinize it; 
6:43
at the same time he changed the script he signed  in from the Gothic blackletter to Roman capitals.
6:49
In 1563, he married Pieter Coecke van Aelst's  daughter Mayken Coecke in Brussels, where he 
6:56
lived for the remainder of his short life. While  Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce 
7:02
as well as the art market, Brussels was the centre  of government. Van Mander tells a story that his 
7:09
mother-in-law pushed for the move to distance  him from his established servant girl mistress. 
7:14
By now painting had become his main activity, and  his most famous works come from these years. His 
7:21
paintings were much sought after, with patrons  including wealthy Flemish collectors and Cardinal 
7:27
Granvelle, in effect the Habsburg chief minister,  who was based in Mechelen. Bruegel had two sons, 
7:34
both well known as painters, and a daughter about  whom nothing is known. These were Pieter Brueghel 
7:40
the Younger (1564–1638) and Jan Brueghel  the Elder (1568–1625); he died too early   to train either of them. He died in Brussels on 9  September 1569 and was buried in the Kapellekerk.
7:53
Van Mander records that before he died  he told his wife to burn some drawings, 
7:58
perhaps designs for prints, carrying inscriptions  "which were too sharp or sarcastic ... either 
8:05
out of remorse or for fear that she might come to  harm or in some way be held responsible for them", 
8:11
which has led to much speculation that they  were politically or doctrinally provocative, 
8:16
in a climate of sharp tension in both these areas. Historical background.
Historical background.
8:22
Bruegel was born at a time of extensive change in  Western Europe. Humanist ideals from the previous 
8:28
century influenced artists and scholars. Italy  was at the end of its High Renaissance of arts 
8:35
and culture, when artists such as Michelangelo  and Leonardo da Vinci painted their masterpieces. 
8:42
In 1517, about eight years before Bruegel's  birth, Martin Luther created his Ninety-five 
8:48
Theses and began the Protestant Reformation in  neighboring Germany. Reformation was accompanied 
8:54
by iconoclasm and widespread destruction  of art, including in the Low Countries. 
9:00
The Catholic Church viewed Protestantism and its  destructive iconoclasm of art as a threat to the 
9:06
Church. The Council of Trent, which concluded  in 1563, determined that religious art should 
9:13
be more focused on religious subject-matter and  less on material things and decorative qualities.
9:20
At this time, the Low Countries were  divided into Seventeen Provinces,   some of which wanted separation from the Habsburg  rule based in Spain. The Reformation meanwhile 
9:30
produced a number of Protestant denominations  that gained followers in the Seventeen Provinces, 
9:36
influenced by the newly Lutheran German  states to the east and the newly Anglican   England to the west. The Habsburg monarchs of  Spain attempted a policy of strict religious 
9:47
uniformity for the Catholic Church  within their domains and enforced   it with the Inquisition. Increasing religious  antagonisms and riots, political manoeuvrings, 
9:58
and executions eventually resulted in  the outbreak of the Eighty Years' War.  In this atmosphere Bruegel reached the height  of his career as a painter. Two years before 
10:08
his death, the Eighty Years' War began between the  United Provinces and Spain. Although Bruegel did 
10:14
not live to see it, seven provinces became  independent and formed the Dutch Republic, 
10:20
while the other ten remained under  Habsburg control at the end of the war.  Subjects. Peasants.
Subjects. Peasants.Landscape elements. Months of the year.
10:28
Pieter Bruegel specialized in genre paintings  populated by peasants, often with a landscape 
10:33
element, though he also painted religious works.  Making the life and manners of peasants the main 
10:40
focus of a work was rare in painting in Bruegel's  time, and he was a pioneer of the genre painting. 
10:47
Many of his peasant paintings fall into two  groups in terms of scale and composition, 
10:52
both of which were original and influential on  later painting. His earlier style shows dozens 
10:58
of small figures, seen from a high viewpoint,  and spread fairly evenly across the central 
11:04
picture space. The setting is typically  an urban space surrounded by buildings, 
11:10
within which the figures have a "fundamentally  disconnected manner of portrayal", with 
11:15
individuals or small groups engaged in their own  distinct activity, while ignoring all the others.
11:22
His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of  the rituals of village life—including agriculture, 
11:28
hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are  unique windows on a vanished folk culture, 
11:35
though still characteristic of Belgian life and  culture today, and a prime source of iconographic 
11:41
evidence about both physical and social  aspects of 16th-century life. For example, 
11:48
his famous painting Netherlandish Proverbs,  originally The Blue Cloak, illustrates dozens of 
11:54
then-contemporary aphorisms, many of which still  are in use in current Flemish, French, English and 
12:00
Dutch. The Flemish environment provided a large  artistic audience for proverb-filled paintings 
12:07
because proverbs were well known and recognizable  as well as entertaining. Children's Games shows 
12:13
the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people.  His winter landscapes of 1565, like The Hunters 
12:21
in the Snow, are taken as corroborative evidence  of the severity of winters during the Little Ice 
12:26
Age. Bruegel often painted community events, as in  The Peasant Wedding and The Fight Between Carnival 
12:33
and Lent. In paintings like The Peasant Wedding,  Bruegel painted individual, identifiable people, 
12:40
while the people in The Fight Between  Carnival and Lent are unidentifiable,   muffin-faced allegories of greed or gluttony. Bruegel also painted religious scenes in 
12:50
a wide Flemish landscape setting, as in the  Conversion of Paul and The Sermon of St. John 
12:56
the Baptist. Even if Bruegel's subject matter was  unconventional, the religious ideals and proverbs 
13:02
driving his paintings were typical of the Northern  Renaissance. He accurately depicted people with 
13:08
disabilities, such as in The Blind Leading the  Blind, which depicted a quote from the Bible: 
13:14
"If the blind lead the blind, both shall  fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14). Using   the Bible to interpret this painting,  the six blind men are symbols of the 
13:23
blindness of mankind in pursuing earthly goals  instead of focusing on Christ's teachings.
13:29
Using abundant spirit and comic power, Bruegel  created some of the very early images of acute 
13:35
social protest in art history. Examples include  paintings such as The Fight Between Carnival and 
13:41
Lent a satire of the conflicts of the Protestant  Reformation and engravings like The Ass in the 
13:47
School and Strongboxes Battling Piggybanks. Over the 1560s, Bruegel moved to a style showing 
13:54
only a few large figures, typically in a landscape  background without a distant view. His paintings 
14:00
dominated by their landscapes take a middle course  as regards both the number and size of figures.
14:07
Landscape elements. Bruegel adapted and made more natural the  world landscape style, which shows small 
14:14
figures in an imaginary panoramic landscape  seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes 
14:19
mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings.  Back in Antwerp from Italy he was commissioned 
14:25
in the 1550s by the publisher Hieronymus Cock  to make drawings for a series of engravings, 
14:31
the Large Landscapes, to meet what was  now a growing demand for landscape images.
14:37
Some of his earlier paintings,  such as his Landscape with the   Flight into Egypt (Courtauld, 1563), are  fully within the Patinir conventions, 
14:45
but his Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (known  from two copies) had a Patinir-style landscape,   in which already the largest figure was a genre  figure who was only a bystander for the supposed 
14:55
narrative subject, and may not even be aware  of it. The date of Bruegel's lost original 
15:01
is unclear,[31] but it is probably relatively  early, and if so, foreshadows the trend of his 
15:07
later works. During the 1560s the early scenes  crowded with multitudes of very small figures, 
15:14
whether peasant genre figures or figures in  religious narratives, give way to a small number 
15:20
of much larger figures. Months of the year. His famous set of landscapes with genre figures  depicting the seasons are the culmination 
15:29
of his landscape style; the five surviving  paintings use the basic elements of the 
15:35
world landscape (only one lacks craggy mountains)  but transform them into his own style. They are   larger than most previous works, with a genre  scene with several figures in the foreground, 
15:45
and the panoramic view seen past or through  trees.[32] Bruegel was also aware of the Danube 
15:51
School's landscape style through prints.[33]  The surviving five paintings are The Gloomy 
15:56
Day (February-March), The Hunters in the Snow  (December-January), and The Return of the   Herd (October-November) which are on display in  the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; The Hay 
16:04
Harvest (June-July) is on display in the Lobkowicz  Palace in Prague; and The Harvesters which is on   display at the Metropolitan in New York. The  painting associated with the April-May seasonal 
16:14
transition is assumed to be lost to history. The series on the months of the year includes 
16:20
several of Bruegel's best-known works. In 1565,  a wealthy patron in Antwerp, Niclaes Jonghelinck, 
16:28
commissioned him to paint a series of paintings  of each month of the year. There has been dispute 
16:34
among art historians as to whether the series  originally included six or twelve works.[34] 
16:40
Joseph Koerner in his 2018 book Bosch and Bruegel  states that Archduke Ernst, who took possession 
16:47
of the paintings after Niclaes defaulted on  taxes, had as early as 1569 inventoried only 
16:54
six paintings in this series during the year  of Bruegel's death.[35] The collection is next 
16:59
inventoried to be in the possession of Archduke  Leopold who in 1659 indicated that only five of 
17:06
them were extant. Today, only five of these  paintings are known to have survived into 
17:12
the 21st century. Traditional Flemish luxury  books of hours (e.g., the Tr;s Riches Heures 
17:19
du Duc de Berry; 1416) had calendar pages that  included the Labours of the Months, depictions 
17:26
set in landscapes of the agricultural tasks,  weather, and social life typical for that month.
17:33
Bruegel's paintings were on a far larger scale  than a typical calendar page painting, each 
17:38
one approximately three feet by five feet. For  Bruegel, this was a large commission (the price of 
17:44
a commission was based on how large the painting  was) and an important one. In 1565, the Calvinist   riots began and it was only two years before  the Eighty Years' War broke out. Bruegel may 
17:55
have felt safer with a secular commission so as to  not offend Calvinist or Catholic. Some of the most 
18:01
famous paintings from this series included The  Hunters in the Snow (December–January) and The 
18:07
Harvesters (August-September). Prints and drawings.  On his return from Italy to Antwerp, Bruegel  earned his living producing drawings to be turned 
Prints and drawings.
18:16
into prints for the leading print publisher  of the city, and indeed northern Europe, 
18:21
Hieronymus Cock. At his "House of the Four Winds"  Cock ran a well-oiled production and distribution 
18:29
operation efficiently turning out prints of many  sorts that was more concerned with sales than the 
18:34
finest artistic achievement. Most of Bruegel's  prints come from this period, but he continued 
18:41
to produce drawn designs for prints until the  end of his life, leaving only two completed out 
18:46
of a series of the Four Seasons. The prints were  popular and it is reasonable to assume that all 
18:53
those published have survived. In many cases we  also have Bruegel's drawings. Although the subject 
19:00
matter of his graphic work was often continued in  his paintings, there are considerable differences 
19:06
in emphases between the two oeuvres. To his  contemporaries and for long after, until public 
19:12
museums and good reproductions of the paintings  made these better known, Bruegel was much better 
19:17
known through his prints than his paintings, which  largely explains the critical assessment of him as 
19:23
merely the creator of comic peasant scenes. The prints are mostly engravings, 
19:29
though from about 1559 onwards some are etchings  or mixtures of both techniques. Only one complete 
19:36
woodcut was made from a Bruegel design, with  another left incomplete. This, The Dirty Wife, 
19:42
is a most unusual survival (now Metropolitan  Museum of Art) of a drawing on the wooden   block intended for printing. For some reason, the  specialist block-cutter who carved away the block, 
19:52
following the drawing while also destroying it,  had only done one corner of the design before 
19:58
stopping work. The design then appears as an  engraving, perhaps soon after Bruegel's death.
20:05
Among his greatest successes were a series  of allegories, among several designs adopting 
20:11
many of the very individual mannerisms of his  compatriot Hieronymus Bosch: The Seven Deadly 
20:16
Sins and The Virtues. The sinners are grotesque  and unidentifiable while the allegories of virtue 
20:23
often wear odd headgear. That imitations of  Bosch sold well is demonstrated by his drawing 
20:29
Big Fish Eat Little Fish (now Albertina),  which Bruegel signed but Cock shamelessly   attributed to Bosch in the print version. Although Bruegel presumably made them, 
20:39
no drawings that are clearly preparatory studies  for paintings survive. Most surviving drawings are 
20:45
finished designs for prints, or landscape drawings  that are fairly finished. After a considerable 
20:51
purge of attributions in recent decades, led by  Hans Mielke, sixty-one sheets of drawings are now 
20:58
generally agreed to be by Bruegel. A new "Master  of the Mountain Landscapes" has emerged from the 
21:05
carnage. Mielke's key observation was that the  lily watermark on the paper of several sheets 
21:11
was only found from around 1580 onwards, which  led to the rapid acceptance of his proposal. 
21:18
Another group of about twenty-five pen drawings of  landscapes, many signed and dated as by Bruegel, 
21:25
are now given to Jacob Savery, probably from the  decade of so before Savery's death in 1603. A 
21:33
giveaway was that two drawings including the walls  of Amsterdam were dated 1563 but included elements 
21:39
only built in the 1590s. This group appears  to have been made as deliberate forgeries.
Family.
21:47
Family. Around 1563,   Bruegel moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where he  married Mayken Coecke, the daughter of the painter 
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Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Mayken Verhulst.  As registered in the archives of the Cathedral 
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of Antwerp, their deposition for marriage was  registered 25 July 1563. The marriage itself was 
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concluded in the Chapel Church, Brussels in 1563. Pieter the Elder had two sons: Pieter Brueghel the 
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Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder (both kept  their name as Brueghel). Their grandmother, 
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Mayken Verhulst, trained the sons because "the  Elder" died when both were very small children. 
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The older brother, Pieter Brueghel copied his  father's style and compositions with competence 
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and considerable commercial success. Jan was  much more original, and very versatile. He was an 
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important figure in the transition to the Baroque  style in Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden 
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Age painting in a number of its genres. He was  often a collaborator with other leading artists, 
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including with Peter Paul Rubens on many  works including the Allegory of Sight.
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Other members of the family include Jan van Kessel  the Elder (grandson of Jan Brueghel the Elder) and 
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Jan van Kessel the Younger. Through David Teniers  the Younger, son-in-law of Jan Brueghel the Elder, 
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the family is also related to the whole Teniers  family of painters and the Quellinus family of 
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painters and sculptors, through the marriage of  Jan-Erasmus Quellinus to Cornelia, daughter of 
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David Teniers the Younger. Reception history. Bruegel's art was long more highly valued by  collectors than critics. His friend Abraham 
Reception history.
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Ortelius described him in a friendship album in  1574 as "the most perfect painter of his century", 
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but both Vasari and Van Mander see him as  essentially a comic successor to Hieronymus 
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Bosch. As well as being forward-looking, his art  reinvigorates medieval subjects such as marginal 
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drolleries of ordinary life in illuminated  manuscripts, and the calendar scenes of 
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agricultural labours set in landscape backgrounds,  and puts these on a much larger scale than before, 
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and in the expensive medium of oil  painting. He does the same with the   fantastic and anarchic world developed in  Renaissance prints and book illustrations.
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But Bruegel's work was, as far as we know,  always keenly collected. The banker Nicolaes 
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Jonghelinck owned sixteen paintings;  his brother Jacques Jonghelinck was a   gentleman-sculptor and medallist, who also had  significant business interests. He made medals 
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and tombs in an international style for the  Brussels elite, especially Cardinal Granvelle, 
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who was also a keen patron of Bruegel.  Granvelle owned at least two Bruegels, 
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including the Courtauld Flight into Egypt, but  we do not know if he bought them directly from 
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the artist. Granvelle's nephew and heir was  strong-armed out of his Bruegels by Rudolf II, 
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the very acquisitive Austrian Habsburg Emperor.  The series of the Months entered the Habsburg 
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collections in 1594, given to Rudolf's brother  and later taken by the emperor himself. Rudolf 
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eventually owned at least ten Bruegel paintings.  A generation later Rubens owned eleven or twelve, 
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which mostly passed to the Antwerp senator  Pieter Stevens, and were then sold in 1668.
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Bruegel's son Pieter could still keep himself  and a large studio team busy producing replicas 
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or adaptations of Bruegel's works, as well  as his own compositions along similar lines, 
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sixty years or more after they were first  painted. The most frequently copied works were 
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generally not the ones that are most famous today,  though this may reflect the availability of the 
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full-scale detailed drawings that were evidently  used. The most-copied painting is the Winter 
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Landscape with (Skaters and) a Bird Trap (1565),  of which the original is in Brussels; 127 copies 
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are recorded. They include paintings after some of  Bruegel's drawn print designs, especially Spring.
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The next century's artists of peasant genre  scenes were heavily influenced by Brueghel. 
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Outside the Brueghel family, early figures were  Adriaen Brouwer (c.;1605/6 – 1638) and David 
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Vinckboons (1576 – c. 1632), both Flemish-born  but spending much of their time in the northern   Netherlands. As well as the general conception of  such kermis subjects, Vinckboons and other artists 
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took from Bruegel "such stylistic devices as the  bird's-eye perspective, ornamentalized vegetation, 
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bright palette, and stocky, odious figures." Forty  years after their deaths, and over a century after 
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Bruegel's, Jan Steen (1626–79) continued to show  a particular interest in Bruegelian treatments.
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The critical treatment of Bruegel as essentially  an artist of comic peasant scenes persisted until 
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the late 19th century, even after his best  paintings became widely visible as royal and 
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aristocratic collections were turned into  museums. This had been partly explicable 
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when his work was mainly known from copies,  prints and reproductions. Even Henri Hymans, 
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whose work of 1890/91 was the first important  contribution to modern Bruegel scholarship, 
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could describe him thus: "His field of enquiry is  certainly not of the most extensive; his ambition, 
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too, is modest. He confines himself to a knowledge  of mankind and the most immediate objects", 
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a line no modern scholar is likely to take. As his  landscape paintings, in good colour reproduction, 
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have become his best-loved works, so his  importance in the history of landscape art   has become understood. Works.
Works. References in other works.
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There are about forty generally accepted  surviving paintings, twelve of which are   in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A  number of others are known to have been lost, 
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including what, according to van Mander,  Bruegel himself thought his best work, 
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"a picture in which Truth triumphs". Bruegel only etched one plate himself,   The Rabbit Hunt, but designed some forty  prints, both engravings and etchings, 
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mostly for the Cock publishing house.  As discussed above, about sixty-one 
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drawings are now recognized as authentic,  mostly designs for prints or landscapes.
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References in other works. In literature.  His painting Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus, now thought only to survive in copies, 
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is the subject of the final lines of the 1938  poem "Mus;e des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden:
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“In Brueghel's Icarus, for  instance: how everything turns away  Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
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But for him it was not an  important failure; the sun shone  As it had to on the white legs  disappearing into the green
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Water, and the expensive  delicate ship that must have seen  Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
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It also was the subject of a 1960 poem by  William Carlos Williams and was mentioned 
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in Nicolas Roeg's 1976 science fiction  film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Further, 
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Williams' final collection of poetry  alludes to a number of Bruegel's works. Bruegel's painting Two Monkeys was  the subject of Wis;awa Szymborska's 
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1957 poem, "Brueghel's Two Monkeys" Seamus Heaney refers to Brueghel in 
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his poem "The Seed Cutters". David Jones  alludes to the painting The Blind Leading 
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the Blind in his World War One prose-poem In  Parenthesis: "the stumbling dark of the blind, 
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that Breughel knew about – ditch circumscribed". Michael Frayn, in his novel Headlong, imagines 
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a lost panel from the 1565 Months series  resurfacing unrecognized, which triggers a 
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mad conflict between an art (and money) lover and  the boor who possesses it. Much thought is spent 
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on Bruegel's secret motives for painting it. Author Don Delillo uses Bruegel's painting 
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The Triumph of Death in his novel Underworld  and his short story "Pafko at the Wall". It 
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is believed that the painting The Hunters in the  Snow influenced the classic short story with the 
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same title written by Tobias Wolff and featured  in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs.
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In the foreword to his novel The Folly  of the World, author Jesse Bullington   explains that Bruegel's painting Netherlandish  Proverbs not only inspired the title but also 
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the plot to some extent. Various sections  are introduced with a proverb depicted in 
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the painting that alludes to a plot element. Poet Sylvia Plath refers to Bruegel's painting 
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The Triumph of Death in her poem "Two Views of  a Cadaver Room" from her 1960 collection The 
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Colossus and Other Poems. In film.  Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky refers to  Bruegel's paintings in his films several times, 
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notably in Solaris (1972) and The Mirror (1975). Director Lars von Trier also uses Bruegel's 
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paintings in his film Melancholia (2011). This  was used as a reference to Tarkovsky's Solaris, 
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a movie with related themes. His 1564 painting The Procession 
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to Calvary inspired the 2011 Polish-Swedish  film co-production The Mill and the Cross, 
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in which Bruegel is played by Rutger Hauer.  Bruegel's paintings in the Kunsthistorisches 
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Museum are shown in the 2012 film, Museum  Hours, where his work is discussed in casual 
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conversations between a security guard at the  museum and a visitor from Montreal visiting   a hospitalized relative, and taking time off  between hospital visits to go to the museum. 
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Some attention is given to tour guides making  presentations about some of the Bruegel paintings.


***
Here is a polished, logically structured, and articulate essay based on the transcript, stripped of YouTube metadata, repetitive phrasing, and fragmented spoken transitions.Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Master of the Flemish RenaissancePieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/1530–1569) stands as one of the most inventive and intellectually formidable figures in Northern Renaissance art. Operating during an era of fierce theological schism, imperial oppression, and cultural upheaval in the Low Countries, Bruegel elevated peasant life, proverbial wisdom, and panoramic landscape painting to monumental scale. While long mischaracterized as a naive folklorist or a merely humorous chronicler of rural festivities, modern scholarship recognizes him as an educated humanist whose complex compositions carry profound philosophical, satirical, and crypto-theological resonance.Early Life, Apprenticeship, and Humanist CirclesBecause no birth records survive, Bruegel’s birth between 1525 and 1530 is inferred from his formal admittance to the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1551. Early biographical accounts offer differing perspectives: Lodovico Guicciardini’s 1567 survey of the Low Countries records Breda as his birthplace, whereas Karel van Mander’s 1604 Schilder-boeck posits a nearby village named "Brueghel" and characterizes the painter as a peasant by origin.Modern research largely counters Van Mander's rustic archetype. Breda was an influential cultural center under the House of Orange-Nassau, and Bruegel moved comfortably within sophisticated humanist circles alongside luminaries such as the master cartographer Abraham Ortelius.Before securing master status, Bruegel trained under Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a leading court painter and scholar of classical architecture. Between 1550 and 1551, Bruegel worked in Mechelen assisting Peeter Baltens on a lost altarpiece—likely facilitated by Coecke’s wife, Mayken Verhulst, an accomplished miniaturist in her own right.The Italian Journey and the Large Landscapes (1551–1555)Shortly after joining the Antwerp Guild, Bruegel embarked on an extensive journey south through France to Italy. By 1552, he reached the southern extremity of the Italian mainland at Reggio Calabria—recording the town in flames following an Ottoman naval raid—before crossing to Sicily and eventually residing in Rome through 1553. In Rome, he collaborated with the celebrated illuminator Giulio Clovio.Significantly, while most Northern contemporaries in Rome obsessively copied classical ruins and high-Renaissance statuary, Bruegel focused almost exclusively on nature, topography, and dramatic Alpine vistas encountered during his travels.Upon returning to Antwerp in 1555, he formed an enduring commercial partnership with Hieronymus Cock, the premier print publisher north of the Alps. Working out of Cock’s print house Aux Quatre Vents (The Four Winds), Bruegel designed the widely disseminated Large Landscapes (Grote Landschappen). These drawings pioneered the Northern "world landscape" (Weltlandschaft), harmonizing vast, cosmic panoramas with granular, observational detail. Around 1559, he Latinized his signature from the Gothic "Brueghel" to the Roman capital "BRVEGEL."Antwerp, Brussels, and the Turbulent Habsburg ClimateIn 1563, Bruegel married Mayken Coecke, daughter of his former master Pieter Coecke and Mayken Verhulst, at the Chapel Church (Kapellekerk) in Brussels, subsequently relocating his household from Antwerp to the ducal capital. Brussels placed him near high-ranking patrons, notably Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, chief minister to the Habsburg regent, and the wealthy financier Niclaes Jonghelinck.Bruegel’s final decade coincided with the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). Philip II’s aggressive Catholic Counter-Reformation policies, the arrival of the Duke of Alba's Council of Troubles, and violent outbreaks of Protestant iconoclasm (Beeldenstorm) turned the Netherlands into an ideological battleground.Under these volatile conditions, Bruegel’s secular genre scenes and biblical allegories often functioned as veiled socio-political critiques. Van Mander noted that on his deathbed in 1569, Bruegel instructed his wife to burn several drawings bearing inscriptions that were "too sharp or sarcastic," lest she suffer retribution from the authorities.Visual Vernacular: Peasant Life, Proverbial Satire, and ScaleBruegel fundamentally altered genre painting through two compositional paradigms:The Crowded Cosmorama (Early 1560s): Characterized by high viewpoints and dense, energetic crowds across sweeping village plazas, seen in Netherlandish Proverbs (1559), The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), and Children's Games (1560). In these works, individual actors pursue isolated activities with oblivious fervor, transforming everyday routines into broader allegories of human folly and moral myopia.Monumental Monocular Focus (Late 1560s): Shifting toward fewer, larger figures placed boldly against shallow pictorial space or integrated into expansive seasonal environments, exemplified by The Peasant Wedding (1567), The Peasant Dance (1567), and The Blind Leading the Blind (1568).Rather than romanticizing or mocking the peasantry, Bruegel rendered rural subjects with unsparing realism, earthy vitality, and anatomical dynamism.The Seasonal Cycle of 1565Commissioned by Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jonghelinck for his suburban estate in Ter Gallifort, Bruegel’s 1565 Months of the Year cycle transformed the medieval tradition of Book of Hours calendar illustrations into monumentally scaled panels. Five of the original six (or twelve) panels survive:The Gloomy Day (Early Spring / February–March) — Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaThe Hay Harvest (Early Summer / June–July) — Lobkowicz Palace, PragueThe Harvesters (Late Summer / August–September) — Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkThe Return of the Herd (Autumn / October–November) — Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaThe Hunters in the Snow (Winter / December–January) — Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaThese panels capture seasonal labor, climatic shifts, and human vulnerability within nature's cycles, offering visual evidence of the Northern European "Little Ice Age."Legacy across Art, Literature, and CinemaBruegel died on September 9, 1569, survived by two infant sons who became prominent painters: Pieter Brueghel the Younger ("Hell Brueghel"), who operated an Antwerp workshop reproducing his father's designs; and Jan Brueghel the Elder ("Velvet Brueghel"), who innovated Flemish Baroque landscape and still-life painting alongside Peter Paul Rubens.Bruegel’s compositional framing has continually inspired modern poets, authors, and filmmakers:MediumArtist / CreatorReferent WorkPoetryW. H. Auden"Mus;e des Beaux Arts" (reflecting on The Fall of Icarus)PoetryWilliam Carlos Williams"Pictures from Brueghel" cyclePoetryWis;awa Szymborska"Brueghel's Two Monkeys"LiteratureDon DeLilloUnderworld (engaging The Triumph of Death)LiteratureMichael FraynHeadlong (a missing panel of the 1565 cycle)CinemaAndrei TarkovskySolaris (1972) and The Mirror (1975) (Hunters in the Snow)CinemaLars von TrierMelancholia (2011) (Hunters in the Snow)CinemaLech MajewskiThe Mill and the Cross (2011) (The Procession to Calvary)Today, the world’s most comprehensive collection of Bruegel’s panels resides in Saal X of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where his layered visual riddles, political dissimulation, and humanist insights continue to reward close iconological study.