- In his 1567 work on the history of the Netherlands, the Italian humanist and scholar Lodovico Guicciardini reported on one Pieter Bruegel from Breda who was "a great imitator of of the science and functions of Hieronymus Bosch" so much so that he had been given the epithet of "Second Hieronymus Bosch" (Koster).
- Vasari confused the timeline of the two artists but described the works of Bosch and Bruegel as (i) landscapes in oil and (ii) fantasies, bizarre things, dreams and imaginations.
- The humanist Dominicus Lampsonius highlighted Bruegel's gift with pen and design and, in so doing, elevated his drawings over his painterly works.
- Ortelius, the famed cartographer, acknowledged both the Boschian and naturalism aspects of Bruegel's work; as did Karel van Mander in his biography of the artist.
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| The Census at Bethlehem, 1566 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Some understanding of Bosch's style is a prerequisite to understanding Bruegel's style.
Boschian Style
Writing in the New Yorker, Becca Rothfield described Bosch's works thusly:
… Bosch managed to exert an outsized influence on the religious imagery of his day. His fantastic demons, impossible amalgamations of animals, humans, monsters, and household objects had little precedent in earlier devotional art, nor in the somewhat formulaic depiction of heaven and hell that prevailed among his contemporaries. Bosch's hellscapes presented palpable pandemonium, and even his more routine works were enlivened by inventive details: winged fish with an unfriendly expression following Christ across a river; a tottering demon protruding from a funnel.In addition to the grotesque visual images -- some appropriated from initial and bas-de-page (end-of-page) paintings from medieval illustrated manuals -- Bosch's panels (Koster):
- afforded a bird's eye view;
- provided huge, steep perspectival ground planes teeming with strange figures; and
- were painted in a thin translucent painting style.
Pieter Coecke van Aelst is noted as Bruegel's teacher but there are no identified influences passed from teacher to pupil. One area of influence, however, may have been in the area of landscapes. As I noted in an earlier post, all of the works completed immediately on Bruegel's return from Italy were landscapes. And he showed himself to be an accomplished landscapist who adhered to Flemish traditions in that area. The father of Flemish landscaping was reputed to be Joachim Patinir (c. 1480 - 1524) and it is quite likely that his principles and practices were conveyed to Bruegel during his apprenticeship with Coecke van Aelst.
Patinir's painting style can be summarized as follows (Wikipedia):
- Immense vistas exhibitiing observation of naturalistic detail
- Landscape dwarfs figures
- High viewpoint with high horizon
- Consistent and effective color scheme
- Foreground dominated by brownish shades
- Middle ground a bluish green
- Background a pale blue.
Rome Period (1552 - 1553)
In the earliest surviving works Bruegel appears as a landscape artist who hews to the traditions of Patinir but also with some influence from Venetian landscape artists. In Landscape of the Alps and Mountain Landscape with a River, both efforts share steep rock outcroppings and high horizons (a la Patinir). Landscape with Christ appearing to the Disciples at the Sea of Tiberias is textbook Patinir with the rock outcroppings and the three-part color scheme: brownish shades in the foreground, bluish-green in the middle, and a pale blue background.
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Landscape of the Alps, 1553
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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Mountain Landscape with a River, 1553
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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Landscape with Christ appearing to the Disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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Most of Bruegel's work during his time in Antwerp was devoted to the composition of drawings for printmaking and more than 20 of the 60 drawings produced during this time drew on Boschian visuals; so much so that Big Fishes Eat Small Fishes (1556) was initially ascribed to Bosch (probably an attempt by the publisher to exact a higher price for the piece). In The Seven Deadly Sins (1558) series, "Bruegel achieved a tricky, creative synthesis of Bosch's demonic symbolism with his own personal vision of human folly and depravity." The vice of Pride from the series is displayed in the second image following.
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| Big Fishes Eat Small Fishes, 1556 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
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| Pride, 1558 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Bosch's effect can still be seen in Bruegel's earliest signed and dated painting -- The Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559):
- High-horizoned landscape
- Decorative surface patterning
- Many iconographic details.
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| The Fight between Carnival and Lent, 1559 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
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| Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Bruegel's two most Bosch-like paintings are Dulle Griet and Triumph of Death, both completed in 1562, while Tower of Babel (1563) shows a "new panoramic vista of a vast world only distantly related to Bosch's cosmic landscape" and informs most of his subsequent work. This latter work also highlights the artist's attention to detail and the scientific exactness of his representations.
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| The Triumph of Death, c. 1562 Pieter Brueghel the Elder |
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| Tower of Babel, 1563 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Brussels Period (1563 - 1569)
Bruegel moved to Brussels after his marriage to Mayken and it is in this period that he produces his best-known paintings.He returned to landscapes in a big way with a six-painting series honoring the labors associated with the months of the year. These paintings (one of which is lost) were beautifully conceived and executed with the included figures subordinated to great lines of the landscape. Return of the Herd is considered one of the most brilliant panels in the series with a sequence of intersecting diagonals illuminating the scope and grandeur of the natural world.
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| The Return of the Herd, 1565 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Distinct Italianate influences begin to emerge in the Bruegel's last works. The monumentalization of the figure in Peasant and Bird Nester (1565) has hints of the grandeur of Michelangelo while the diagonal arrangement of the figures in Peasant Wedding Feast (1566 - 67) recalls Venetian composition. These two paintings show a reduction of the number of individuals in the picture when compared to, for example, The Census at Bethlehem (1566).
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| The Peasant and the Bird Nester, 1568 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
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| Peasant Wedding Feast, 1566 - 67 Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
Van Eyck and the other stars of the Northern Renaissance used a glaze to "glorify" their oil paintings while Bruegel, in The Census at Bethlehem, mixed layers that had not dried completely. This method is called wet on wet and its light effects are not due to transparency but rather an overlay of material and thick impasto brush strokes of color. This method was first introduced by Bosch.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder reached back into the early phases of the Northern Renaissance to leverage the fantastical works of Hieronymus Bosch and the pioneering landscape works of Joachim Patinir to form the foundation which provided a source of income in his early years and served as a launching pad for the evolution and development of his painting style. The product of his efforts led to widespread recognition and acclaim and, eventually, a noteworthy legacy. I will cover that legacy in my next post.
Bibliography
Joseph Leo Koster, In Love with Multiplicity, New York Review of Books, May 23, 2019.
Nadine M. Orenstein, The Elusive Life of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in Nadine M. Orenstein (ed.), Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 2001.
Becca Rothfield, Hieronymus Bosch's Five-Hundredth-Anniversary Homecoming, New Yorker, March 24, 2016.
Martin Royalton-Kisch, Pieter Bruegel as a Draftsman: The Changing Image in Nadine M. Orenstein (ed.), Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 2001.
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