The Legacy of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Commentariat and Markets

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was unequalled as a painter during the latter portions of the Northern Renaissance.

... the 16th-century Flemish painter, draughtsman, and printmaker became known as the "peasant Bruegel" because of his extensive focus on the life of the ordinary people ... Wonderfully inventive, Bruegel gained particular esteem for his images of daily life and naturalistic landscapes. His influence on other painters of the Dutch Golden Age, as well as among later artists, was profound.

As the chart below shows, in addition to the works of later artists, Bruegel's legacy has been bolstered and propagated by the actions and words of collectors and commentators.

I will explore the  Bruegel legacy beginning with the Commentariat and Markets aspects in this post, followed by the painterly aspects in a subsequent post.

Commentators
Contemporary and near-contemporary chroniclers -- Guicciardini, Vasari, Lampsonius, Ortelius, Karel van Mander -- lauded the works of Bruegel but this acclaim began to recede in the latter half of the 17th century and ceased completely in the 18th century.

It fell upon the centralizing instincts of Napoleon to initiate the rehabilitation of the artist. Napoleon had ordered the art collection of Emperor Leopold II be transported from Vienna to the Louvre, a process undertaken between 1809 and 1815. Goethe was the first to remark on Bruegel's work, identifying him as an accomplished landscape artist.

Baudelaire, in his 1568 article "Some Foreign Caricaturists," described Bruegel's genius thusly: "these fantastic paintings of Bruegel the Droll reveal the full power of hallucination. I defy anyone to explain the hellish and droll Capernaum of Bruegel the Droll other than by a sort of special satanic grace."

The Belgian artist James Ensor wrote thusly in a 1924 commemorative speech (Google Arts and Culture):

Let's be proud of our Flemish painter, the most beautiful, solid, ornate, scented, honest, civil of painters. Let's lift our eyes and our glasses to he who created all ... Creator of modern art, of the modern landscape, he predicted it all: light, atmosphere, mysterious life between beings and things. ... Let's lift our glasses higher: To Bruegel, pillar of the world, miracle of Flemish art!"

And the acclaim continued through to modern times. "There has never been a better painter than Bruegel," according to Joseph Leo Koster. "Always flawless in his design and execution, yet different in each of his works, the peerless painter of the low-life genre yet attaining a monumental vision of the whole, a virtuoso in the ways he manipulates paint yet never contrived, he makes his only rivals (Jim van Eyck, Titian, and Velázquez) seem limited, repetitive, or artificial by comparison."

According to metmuseum.org, "Bruegel brought a humanizing spirit to traditional subjects and boldly created new ones. He was an astoundingly innovative painter and craftsman" whose "impact was widespread and long lasting."

Demand for his Works

Bruegel's paintings were owned by members of Antwerps's professional merchant class and were most often displayed in private social rooms. These complex panels would probably have functioned as conversation pieces and the focus for debate during conversation among like-minded people.

Five of Bruegel's works were in the inventory of Jean Noirot, a former master of the Antwerp Mint, 12 in the inventory of the banker Niclaes Cornelius Cheras, and 16 in the possession of businessman Nicolas Jonglelinck. 

His patrons included:

• Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granville
• Nicolas Jongelinck, prominent Antwerp merchant and royal official (owned 16 of Bruegel's works
• Abraham Ortelius, cartographer.

He was well-known and well-regarded by the elite during his lifetime, as demonstrated by the demand for his works. And this demand did not abate upon his death. Rather, the demand for his works, and works which could be considered Bruegel-like, fueled the efforts of a number of painters, to include Pieter Brueghel the Younger, the artist's eldest son.

Brueghel the Younger worked like his father almost his entire career, producing "numerous copies, variations and pastiches of his father's work." In that many of Bruegel the Elder's works were held by private collectors, Brueghel the Younger would have had to tap into a fount of goodwill to gain access to these works.

The two images belowshow Pieter Brueghel's 1601 copy of his father's 1566 The Preaching of St. Paul the Baptist. It is thought that Brueghel the Younger made as many as 25 copies of this particular painting. The paintings differ in clothing colors as well as the construct of the framing trees and the riverine landscape in the distance.

The Preaching of St John the Baptist, 1566

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Preaching of St John the Baptist, 1601 - 1604

Pieter Brueghel the Younger

The "in the style of Bruegel" and "Bruegel imitations" markets were served by the two Bruegel sons (working anonymously) along with other painters. The most copied of the Elder's works was Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap (1565). This work has 140 known copies, 50 of which originated from the Younger's workshop. The original and one of the copies are shown in the images immediately following.

Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Winter Landscape with a Bird trap, 1620s

Pieter Brueghel the Younger

In my next post I will examine how Bruegel's techniques and subjects were reflected in, and propagated by, subsequent generations of painters.

©EverythingElse238