Pieter Bruegel the Elder (also spelled Brueghel or Breughel; Dutch: [ˈpitər ˈbrøːɣəl]; c. 1525–1530 – 9 September 1569) was one of the most important artists of the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance. He was a painter and printmaker known for creating large paintings of landscapes and scenes showing people working or living in villages, which are called genre paintings. He was among the first artists to focus on these subjects instead of religious images, which were common before his time. Bruegel did not paint portraits, which were another major type of artwork in his region.

After studying and traveling in Italy, Bruegel returned to Antwerp in 1555. There, he worked as a designer of prints for a major publisher. In the late 1550s, he began painting more often, and most of his famous works were created in the decade before his death in 1569, when he was likely in his early 40s.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Bruegel’s art has inspired writers and filmmakers. His painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, which now exists only in copies, is mentioned in the poem Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden from 1938. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky included references to Bruegel’s paintings in his movies Solaris (1972) and Mirror (1975). Director Lars von Trier also used Bruegel’s artwork in his film Melancholia (2011).

Life

Bruegel’s exact birth date is unknown. However, records show he joined the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1551. People usually joined the guild between the ages of 20 and 25, so his birth is estimated to be between 1525 and 1530. His teacher, according to Karel van Mander, was Pieter Coecke van Aelst, an artist from Antwerp.

The earliest sources about Bruegel’s life come from two writings: Lodovico Guicciardini’s description of the Low Countries (1567) and Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck (1604). Guicciardini said Bruegel was born in Breda, but van Mander claimed he was born in a village near Breda called “Brueghel,” a place that does not exist today. Nothing is known about Bruegel’s family. Van Mander believed Bruegel came from a peasant background, which may explain why early art historians focused heavily on his paintings of peasants.

Modern scholars, however, argue that Bruegel was likely a well-educated man from a city family who had close ties with humanists of his time. They ignore van Mander’s claim about a village and place Bruegel’s childhood in Breda itself. Breda was an important city, home to the House of Orange-Nassau, and had a population of about 8,000 people before a fire destroyed most of its buildings in 1534. While Bruegel was connected to educated humanists, he did not know Latin well and had others write Latin captions for some of his drawings.

Between 1545 and 1550, Bruegel studied under Pieter Coecke, who died on December 6, 1550. Before this, Bruegel worked in Mechelen, where he helped paint an altarpiece (now lost) between September 1550 and October 1551. He may have gotten this job through Mayken Verhulst, the wife of Pieter Coecke. Mayken’s family included many artists who lived in Mechelen.

In 1551, Bruegel became a free master in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp. Soon after, he traveled to Italy, likely through France. He visited Rome and reached Reggio Calabria in southern Italy by 1552, where a drawing shows the city burning after a Turkish attack. He may have also visited Sicily but returned to Rome by 1553. There, he met Giulio Clovio, a miniaturist, whose will from 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel. These works, which were landscapes, have not survived, but some small drawings in Clovio’s manuscripts are believed to be Bruegel’s.

Bruegel left Italy by 1554 and returned to Antwerp by 1555. That year, a set of prints based on his designs, called the Large Landscapes, was published by Hieronymus Cock, a major printmaker in northern Europe. It is unclear how Bruegel traveled back to Antwerp, but in the 1980s, it was discovered that some large landscape drawings thought to be from his Italian trip were not actually his. Most of Bruegel’s authentic drawings from this period are landscapes, and he did not focus on classical ruins or modern buildings, unlike other artists who visited Rome.

From 1555 to 1563, Bruegel lived in Antwerp, the center of northern Europe’s publishing industry. He worked as a designer for more than 40 prints by Cock, though he rarely painted the plates himself. He produced drawings that Cock’s specialists used as models. In 1559, Bruegel changed the spelling of his name to “Bruegel” and signed his paintings with Roman letters instead of Gothic script, a move that may have been an attempt to make his name look more like Latin.

In 1563, Bruegel married Mayken Coecke, the daughter of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, in Brussels. He lived there for the rest of his life. Brussels was the political center of the region, while Antwerp was known for its art market. Van Mander wrote that Bruegel’s mother-in-law encouraged the move to keep him away from a servant girl he was close to. By this time, painting had become Bruegel’s main work, and his most famous paintings were created during these years. Wealthy collectors and Cardinal Granvelle, a powerful Habsburg official, owned his works. Bruegel had two sons, Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1638) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), and a daughter about whom little is known. Neither son was trained by Bruegel, as he died before they could learn from him. He died in Brussels on September 9, 1569, and was buried in the Kapellekerk.

Van Mander wrote that before his death, Bruegel told his wife to burn some drawings, possibly print designs, that had sharp or sarcastic inscriptions. This has led to speculation that the drawings may have been politically or religiously controversial, given the tense climate of the time.

Historical background

Pieter Bruegel was born during a time of major changes in Western Europe. Ideas from the humanist movement, which focused on learning and the value of people, influenced artists and scholars. In Italy, the High Renaissance, a period of great artistic and cultural achievements by artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, was ending. In 1517, eight years before Bruegel was born, Martin Luther wrote the Ninety-Five Theses, starting the Protestant Reformation in nearby Germany. This movement led to the destruction of religious images and artworks, a practice called iconoclasm, which spread to the Low Countries. The Catholic Church saw Protestantism and its destruction of art as a threat. In 1563, the Council of Trent decided that religious art should focus more on religious themes and less on decorations or worldly details.

At this time, the Low Countries were divided into seventeen provinces, some of which wanted to break away from Spanish rule by the Habsburg family. The Reformation created new Protestant groups that gained followers in these provinces, influenced by Lutheran Germany to the east and Anglican England to the west. The Habsburg rulers of Spain tried to enforce strict religious unity through the Catholic Church, using the Inquisition to control religious practices. Rising religious conflicts, political struggles, and executions eventually led to the Eighty Years' War.

During this time, Bruegel became one of the most successful painters of his era. Two years before his death, the Eighty Years' War began between the United Provinces and Spain. Although Bruegel did not live to see the outcome, seven provinces gained independence and formed the Dutch Republic, while the other ten remained under Habsburg control after the war ended.

Subjects

Pieter Bruegel painted scenes of everyday life, often showing peasants in landscapes. He also painted religious scenes. At the time, it was unusual to focus on the lives of peasants in art, and Bruegel helped start this style. Many of his paintings can be grouped into two types based on size and layout, both of which influenced later artists. In his earlier works, he painted many small figures from a high angle, spread across the center of the painting. These scenes usually took place in towns surrounded by buildings, with people doing their own activities without interacting with others.

Bruegel’s paintings show the daily lives of villagers, such as farming, hunting, eating, and playing games. These works help us understand life in the 16th century. For example, his painting Netherlandish Proverbs (also called The Blue Cloak) includes many sayings that are still used today. His painting Children’s Games shows the many activities children enjoyed. His winter scenes, like The Hunters in the Snow, help show how cold winters were during the Little Ice Age. Bruegel painted events like weddings and religious festivals, such as The Peasant Wedding and The Fight Between Carnival and Lent. In The Peasant Wedding, he painted people who could be recognized, but in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, the figures are not real people but symbols of greed or gluttony.

Bruegel also painted religious scenes in large Flemish landscapes, such as The Conversion of Paul and The Sermon of St. John the Baptist. Even though his subjects were not typical, the ideas in his paintings, like religious teachings and proverbs, were common in the Northern Renaissance. He painted people with disabilities, such as in The Blind Leading the Blind, which shows a Bible verse about people who are not paying attention to spiritual matters.

Bruegel’s art often included social messages. For example, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent satirizes religious conflicts during the Protestant Reformation. He also made engravings like The Ass in the School and Strongboxes Battling Piggybanks.

In the 1560s, Bruegel’s style changed. He painted fewer, larger figures in landscapes without distant views. His paintings focused more on the landscape than on people.

Some of his works include:
– The Land of Cockaigne (1567), Alte Pinakothek
– The Peasant and the Nest Robber (1568), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
– The Peasant Dance (1568), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
– The Beggars (The Cripples) (1568), Louvre, Paris

Bruegel made landscapes with small figures in imaginary panoramic views, including mountains, water, and buildings. In the 1550s, he created drawings for a series of engravings called The Large Landscapes for a publisher named Hieronymus Cock.

Some of his early paintings, like Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (1563), followed the style of a painter named Patinir. However, in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the main figure is a small person who is not the focus of the scene. This painting may have been made early in Bruegel’s career and shows a trend toward his later works.

Bruegel’s most famous landscapes with scenes of daily life, such as The Gloomy Day, The Hunters in the Snow, and The Harvesters, show his unique style. These paintings are larger than most earlier works and include genre scenes in the foreground with panoramic views in the background. He was influenced by the Danube School’s landscape style, which he saw in prints. The five surviving paintings are:
– The Gloomy Day (February-March), The Hunters in the Snow (December-January), and The Return of the Herd (October-November), displayed in Vienna
– The Hay Harvest (June-July), displayed in Prague
– The Harvesters (July-August), displayed in New York

In 1565, a wealthy man named Niclaes Jonghelinck asked Bruegel to paint a series of twelve paintings showing each month of the year. Some art historians believe the series originally had six or twelve paintings. Only five are known to survive today. These paintings are larger than calendar pages in medieval books, which also showed monthly activities. Bruegel may have chosen a secular subject to avoid angering Calvinists or Catholics during a time of religious conflict. Famous paintings from this series include The Hunters in the Snow and The Harvesters.

Prints and drawings

After returning from Italy to Antwerp, Bruegel earned money by creating drawings that were turned into prints for Hieronymus Cock, the most important print publisher in the city and northern Europe. Cock operated a business called the "House of the Four Winds," where he produced and distributed many types of prints. These prints focused more on being sold than on achieving the highest artistic quality. Most of Bruegel’s prints were made during this time, but he continued to design prints until his death. He left only two completed works from a planned series called the Four Seasons. The prints were widely sold, and it is likely that all published prints have survived. In many cases, Bruegel’s original drawings also remain. While the themes in his printmaking often appeared in his paintings, there are clear differences in how he focused his work between the two. For many years, Bruegel was more famous for his prints than his paintings, partly because museums and reproductions of his paintings became more widely available later.

Most of Bruegel’s prints were engravings, though some from around 1559 were etchings or a mix of both techniques. Only one complete woodcut was made from a Bruegel design, with another left unfinished. This unfinished woodcut, called The Dirty Wife, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is unusual because it shows a drawing on the wooden block used for printing. The artist who carved the block stopped working after completing only one corner of the design. The unfinished design later appeared as an engraving, possibly shortly after Bruegel’s death.

Among Bruegel’s most successful works were a series of allegories, such as The Seven Deadly Sins and The Virtues. These works shared similarities with the style of his contemporary, Hieronymus Bosch. In these prints, the people representing sins were exaggerated and hard to recognize, while the people representing virtues wore unusual hats. The popularity of works inspired by Bosch is shown in a drawing called Big Fish Eat Little Fish, now in the Albertina Museum. Bruegel signed this drawing, but Cock claimed it was made by Bosch in the printed version.

Although Bruegel likely created them, no clear preparatory drawings for his paintings have survived. Most surviving drawings were finished designs for prints or completed landscapes. After recent research led by Hans Mielke, sixty-one sheets of drawings are now believed to be Bruegel’s. This research was supported by the discovery of a lily watermark on the paper, which only appeared on documents from around 1580 onward. Another group of about twenty-five landscape drawings, many signed and dated by Bruegel, has been attributed to Jacob Savery. This is because two of these drawings, including one showing the walls of Amsterdam, were dated 1563 but included features that were not built until the 1590s. This suggests these drawings were made as deliberate forgeries.

Family

In 1563, Bruegel moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where he married Mayken Coecke. Mayken was the daughter of painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Mayken Verhulst. The marriage documents were recorded in the archives of the Cathedral of Antwerp on July 25, 1563. The ceremony took place at the Chapel Church in Brussels in the same year.

Pieter the Elder had two sons: Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Both sons kept the Brueghel name. Their grandmother, Mayken Verhulst, taught them because Pieter the Elder died when the boys were very young. Pieter Brueghel the Younger copied his father’s style and compositions, achieving success in his work. Jan Brueghel the Elder was more creative and worked in many different art styles. He played a key role in the shift to the Baroque style in Flemish and Dutch painting. He often worked with other famous artists, including Peter Paul Rubens, on projects such as The Allegory of Sight.

Other family members included Jan van Kessel the Elder and Jan van Kessel the Younger, who were descendants of Jan Brueghel the Elder. Through David Teniers the Younger, Jan Brueghel the Elder’s son-in-law, the family is connected to the Teniers family of painters and the Quellinus family of painters and sculptors. This connection was made through the marriage of Jan-Erasmus Quellinus to Cornelia, the daughter of David Teniers the Younger.

Reception history

Pieter Bruegel's art was more highly valued by collectors than by critics for a long time. His friend Abraham Ortelius wrote in 1574 that Bruegel was "the most perfect painter of his century." However, critics like Vasari and Van Mander saw Bruegel as a humorous follower of Hieronymus Bosch. Bruegel’s work looked forward to the future while also bringing new life to medieval themes, such as funny or unusual scenes in the margins of illuminated manuscripts and calendar images showing farming activities in landscapes. He painted these scenes on a much larger scale than before, using the costly material of oil paint. He also expanded on the strange and chaotic worlds found in Renaissance prints and book illustrations.

Bruegel’s paintings were always highly collected. A banker named Nicolaes Jonghelinck owned sixteen of his works. His brother, Jacques Jonghelinck, was a sculptor and medal maker who created items for the Brussels elite, including Cardinal Granvelle, who was also a supporter of Bruegel. Granvelle owned at least two Bruegel paintings, including the Courtauld Flight into Egypt, though it is unclear if he purchased them directly from the artist. Granvelle’s nephew later lost his Bruegel paintings to Rudolf II, the Austrian emperor, who collected many artworks. The series of paintings called the Months entered Habsburg collections in 1594 and were later taken by Rudolf himself. Rudolf eventually owned at least ten Bruegel paintings. A generation later, Rubens owned eleven or twelve of Bruegel’s works, which were later passed to Pieter Stevens, an Antwerp senator, and sold in 1668.

Bruegel’s son, Pieter, continued to create copies or variations of his father’s works, as well as his own paintings, more than sixty years after the originals were made. The most frequently copied paintings were not the ones most famous today, though this may be due to the availability of detailed drawings used for copying. The most-copied painting is the Winter Landscape with (Skaters and) a Bird Trap (1565), which is in Brussels. This painting has 127 recorded copies. Other copies were made from Bruegel’s drawn print designs, especially the Spring scene.

Artists in the next century who painted scenes of peasant life were greatly influenced by Bruegel. Outside the Bruegel family, early artists included Adriaen Brouwer (c. 1605/6–1638) and David Vinckboons (1576–c. 1632), both born in Flanders but working in the northern Netherlands. These artists used techniques from Bruegel, such as a view from above, decorated plants, bright colors, and figures with simple, exaggerated shapes. About forty years after their deaths and more than a century after Bruegel’s, Jan Steen (1626–1679) continued to use Bruegel’s style in his work.

For many years, critics saw Bruegel mainly as an artist of humorous peasant scenes, even after his paintings became widely visible in royal and aristocratic collections turned into museums. This view was partly because his work was once known mainly through copies, prints, and reproductions. Even Henri Hymans, whose research in 1890/1891 was an early important study of Bruegel, described him as someone with limited ambition who focused on everyday life. Modern scholars no longer agree with this view. As his landscape paintings, when reproduced in good color, became his most loved works, his importance in the history of landscape art was recognized.

Works

There are about forty paintings that are still around today. Twelve of these are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Some paintings are known to be lost, including a work that, according to van Mander, Bruegel himself considered his best, "a painting showing Truth winning."

Bruegel only created one etching himself, called The Rabbit Hunt, but he designed about forty prints, which were engravings and etchings, mostly for the Cock publishing house. As discussed earlier, around sixty-one drawings are now considered real, mostly designs for prints or landscapes.

• A Pig Has to Go in a Sty (1557), Bruegel's first genre painting, private collection
• The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562), Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
• Dulle Griet (1563), Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp
• The Wedding Dance (1566), oil on oak panel, The Detroit Institute of Arts
• The Census at Bethlehem (1566), oil on wood panel, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

Selected works

• Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553, possibly with Maarten de Vos, private collection
• Parable of the Sower, 1557, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego
• Twelve Proverbs, 1558, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp
• Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, probably 1550s, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels – Note: Now considered a copy of a lost original painting by Bruegel
• Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. (Originally titled The Blue Cloak)
• The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Portrait of an Old Woman, 1560, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
• Temperance, 1560
• Children's Games, 1560, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• 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 Suicide of Saul (Battle Against the Philistines on the Gilboa), 1562, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Two Monkeys, 1562, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• The Triumph of Death, c. 1562, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), c. 1563, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp
• The "Large" Tower of Babel, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
• Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, 1563, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
• The Death of the Virgin, 1564, (grisaille), Upton House, Banbury
• The Procession to Calvary, 1564, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Adoration of the Kings, 1564, The National Gallery, London

• Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, inv. 8724
• The Months, a series of possibly six 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.–Mar.), 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
• Preaching of John the Baptist, 1566, Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)
• The 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, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1567, versions at Royal Collection, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, at Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, and at Upton House, Banbury
• The Land of Cockaigne, 1567, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
• The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow, 1563, Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur
• 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 (The Cripples), 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, likely Bruegel’s last painting
• Village views with trees and a mule, 1526–1569, The Phoebus Foundation; The Wine of Saint Martin’s Day, Museo del Prado, Madrid (discovered in 2010)

• Large Fish Eat Small Fish, 1556; both Bruegel’s original design and prints based on it exist
• Ass at School, 1556, drawing, Print Room, Berlin State Museums
• The Calumny of Apelles, 1565, drawing, British Museum, London
• The Painter and the Connoisseur, drawing, c. 1565, Albertina, Vienna
• Village views with trees and a mule, 1526–1569, The Phoebus Foundation

References in other works

The painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, now believed to exist only in copies, is mentioned in the final lines of the 1938 poem Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden. It was also the subject of the 1960 poem Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams. The painting was referenced in the 1976 science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth by Nicolas Roeg. Williams’ final poetry collection includes references to several of Pieter Bruegel’s works.

Bruegel’s painting Two Monkeys inspired the 1957 poem Brueghel’s Two Monkeys by Wisława Szymborska. Seamus Heaney mentions Bruegel in his poem The Seed Cutters. David Jones refers to Bruegel’s painting The Blind Leading the Blind in his World War One prose-poem In Parenthesis, writing about “the stumbling dark of the blind, that Brueghel knew about – ditch circumscribed.”

In Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong, a lost panel from Bruegel’s 1565 Months series is imagined to resurface, leading to a conflict between an art lover and a man who possesses it. The story explores ideas about Bruegel’s possible reasons for painting it.

Author Don Delillo uses Bruegel’s painting The Triumph of Death in his novel Underworld and his short story Pafko at the Wall. It is believed that Bruegel’s The Hunters in the Snow influenced the classic short story with the same title by Tobias Wolff, which appears in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs.

In the introduction to his novel The Folly of the World, author Jesse Bullington explains that Bruegel’s painting Netherlandish Proverbs inspired the title and partially shaped the plot. Sections of the novel begin with proverbs from the painting that relate to events in the story.

Poet Sylvia Plath references Bruegel’s painting The Triumph of Death in her 1960 poem Two Views of a Cadaver Room, from her collection The Colossus and Other Poems.

Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky references Bruegel’s paintings in his films, including Solaris (1972) and The Mirror (1975). Director Lars von Trier also uses Bruegel’s paintings in his film Melancholia (2011), which is connected to Tarkovsky’s Solaris through shared themes.

Bruegel’s 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary inspired the 2011 Polish-Swedish film The Mill and the Cross, in which Bruegel is portrayed by Rutger Hauer. The 2012 film Museum Hours features Bruegel’s works in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The film shows conversations between a museum security guard and a visitor from Montreal, who visits the museum between hospital visits. Some scenes include tour guides discussing their interpretations of Bruegel’s paintings.

The album cover of Fleet Foxes’ debut self-titled LP features Bruegel’s 1559 painting Netherlandish Proverbs. The band’s lead singer, Robin Pecknold, chose the artwork after seeing it in a book. He described it as an appropriate symbol for the album’s complex but unified sound. The Gemäldegalerie, which houses the painting, expressed happiness about its use on a modern record. The cover won the Best Art Vinyl Award in 2008, given annually by Artvinyl.com.