Transmission of Bruegel's techniques and topics into the Dutch Republic

The fall of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma in 1585 signaled the effective partition of the Low Countries into the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces and precipitated the flight of non-Catholics to the north, the Pfalz region of Germany, and England.

Migration actually began with the iconoclastic riots in 1566, intensified when Spain secured strongholds in Flanders and Brabant in the late 1570s, and became a flood with the fall of Antwerp in 1585 and the years immediately after. In the years following 1585, about 38,000 refugees left Antwerp for other shores.

In this post we will focus on the refugee situations in Haarlem and Amsterdam as they were the main beneficiaries of the Brugelian legacy.

Haarlem
A devastating fire in 1576 had destroyed over 400 homes, leaving large spaces open for development. When refugees flowed out of Flanders beginning in the late 1570s, Haarlem had available space on which to resettle them. Further, a treaty signed with William the Silent in 1981 allowed the city to repurpose the property of former monasteries, thus providing additional capacity for refugee support.

The first wave of refugees were drawn from the linen and cloth industries in the south and were followed by the professional class beginning in 1578. The City Magistrate offered subsidies and other perks to lure professionals to set up shop within the city gates.

Flemish artists were among the professionals who made their way to Haarlem. The iconoclastic wars of the summer of 1576 had introduced challenges to the Antwerp artistic community and many had packed their bags and headed for Amsterdam, Middleburg, and Haarlem.

The inflow of artistic talent helped to jump-start the Haarlem art market:

• Local artists were exposed to new genres
• These new entrants set up workshops in their new homeland
• Talented local youth were taken under the wings of these refugee masters.

Amsterdam
Going to Amsterdam was a risky decision for an Antwerp painter as it was still a relative backwater in 1585. From 1585 onwards Amsterdam rapidly caught up with Antwerp thanks to the steady stream of refugees arriving from Flanders and Brabant. What had been a modest provincial town became a bustling metropolis with population rising from 27,000 to 60,000 between 1585 and 1600. This increase in population had a significant positive effect on Amsterdam's economy and as purchasing power grew, so did the demand for art.

The Antwerp painter population decreased by 50% after 1585. One of the beneficiaries, Amsterdam, saw its painter population grow rapidly such that, by 1990, the painter population in both cities was almost equal. Between 1585 and 1600 there were 112 painters registered in Amsterdam, 31 of whom had been born in Antwerp and 24 of the 31 had been active in Antwerp before settling in Amsterdam.

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It is within this environment, and under these conditions, that the Brueghel techniques and topics made their way into the painting scene in the North. The chart below shows the painters who were primarily responsible for the transfer of the Bruegelian themes and techniques from the Spanish Netherlands to the United Provinces.

This group of painters, sometimes referred to as the Amsterdam Circle of Flemish Painters, remained faithful to Bruegelian model and traditions.

Landscape Painting
In the United Provinces, landscapes were primarily done in the Mannerist style. An example from the Utrecht artist Abraham Bloemaert is shown below.

Niobe mourning her children, 1591
Abraham Bloemaert

With the arrival of the Flemings, some of Bruegel's formulas for landscape painting -- especially his thick-forest wilderness -- begin to make their presence felt.

Alongside Jan Bruegel the Elder, Gillis van Coninxloo (1544 - 1607) is the painter usually credited with making the greatest contribution to the development of images in forest settings. Van Coninxloo studied under Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Bruegel the Elder's teacher and father-in-law); taught Pieter Bruegel the Younger; and strongly influenced the works of Jan Bruegel the Elder, Roelandt Savery, and David Vinckboons. Van Coninxloo's early landscapes were influenced by Bruegel the Elder. Note the thick-forest landscape in the painting below.

Forest landscape, 1591
Gillis van Coninxloo

Landscape with a hunting party and an overturned wagon
David Vinckboons

Jacob Savery (1545 - 1603) was a student of Hans Bol and himself taught his brother Roelandt Savery (1576 - 1635). All of his landscape paintings in the 1584 - 1586 period show strong Brueglian influences.Unfortunately Savery is also known for forging a number of works by signing Bruegels name to the paintings and ascribing them dates during which Bruegel was still alive. These forgeries have been discovered and the paintings re-assigned to Savery.

Landscape with the story of Jephte's Daughter, 1585
Jacob Savery

Mountainous Landscape with the return of Jacob from Canaan, 1595

Hans Bol

Hendrick Goeltzius (1558 - 1616) is usually given pride of place in the establishment of an independent Dutch landscape style because of his drawings of panoramic views in the vicinity of Haarlem. His indebtedness to Bruegel is twofold. First, the dot-and-stipple technique that he used to render light and atmosphere derives from Bruegel. Second, Goeltzius was a Spranger-level Mannerist prior to his own trip to Rome in 1590. Upon his return, he began paying fresh attention to Flemish landscapists such as Hans Bol (and Bol, as we know, was one of the foremost Bruegel the Elder disciples).

Mountainous Coastal Landscape, 1558 - 1617

Hendrick Goltzius

Winter Landscape with Skaters
Hans Bol, Coninxloo, the Savery brothers, and Vinckboons all transmitted this style to a new generation in 17th-century Holland.

Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Winter, 1570
Hans Bol

Winter Landscape
David Vinckboons

The Season of Winter, c. 1565 - 1603
Jacob Savery

Traditional Funfair
Hans Bol

Peasant Subjects
This is a crucial part of Bruegel's contribution and a major staple of the emigré community. David Vinckboons, along with Hans Bol and Roelandt Savery, was instrumental in the development of genre painting in the Netherlands. His Kermis and other village vistas were influenced by Bruegel and he is considered second only to Pieter Bruegel the Younger as a paradigmatic Bruegel follower.

Country Fair
David Vinckboons

A Blind Hurdy-Gurdy Player
David Vinckboons

A Group of Peasants Merrymaking
Jacob Savery

Jan Steen (1610 - 1690) was one of the most famous of the 17th-century peasant-life painters. He ewas born in Antwerp and enjoyed immense popularity during the course of his life. He is linked to Bruegel through the peasant scenes -- a more refined version of Brouwer's efforts -- and his marriage to the daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder. He was eventually hired by Archduke Leopold William as the Court Painter and the Keeper of the Art Collections.

Peasants before an Inn
Jan Steen

The Dancing Lesson, c. 1660 - 1679
Jan Steen

Revelry at an Inn, 1674
Jan Steen

With the turn of the century the Netherlandish style of painting began to recede in the face of the Baroque onslaught but the techniques and topics associated with Pieter Bruegel the Elder were seamlessly incorporated into this new art expression.

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The Legacy of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Spanish Netherlands

Merriam-Webster defines legacy as "something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past." Pieter Bruegel the Elder's legacy is clearly the distinctive combination of techniques and subjects which formed the compositional framework for his body of work.

That legacy was elevated and propagated by the market and the commentariat and was reflected in the work of later artists on both sides of the Low Countries dividing line.

The fall of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma in 1585 signaled the effective partition of the Low Countries into the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces and precipitated the flight of non-Catholics to the north, to the Pfalz region of Germany, and to England. Many of those fleeing Flanders were artists and, as the figure below shows, were the conduits for the transmission of Bruegel's influence across the Schildt-Meuse-Rhine line and into the genesis of the art of the Dutch Golden Age.

I treat the observed Bruegel artistic influence in the Spanish Netherlands in this post.

Hans Bol
Hans Bol (1534 - 1593) played  a major role in the further development and spread of Bruegel the Elder's motifs and themes on both sides of the Low Countries dividing line. I will cover his contributions in the United Provinces in a future post.

Bol was born in Mechelen but eventually made his way to Antwerp. He was acclaimed as a painter, print artist, miniaturist, and draftsman who produced works in the areas of landscapes, genre paintings, and allegorical and biblical scenes.

In the area of landscapes, Bol sought to depict the naturalness that was a hallmark of Bruegel's work but told the tale from a lower perspective. Bol produced a Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, as did Bruegel the Elder, but his rendition took up the tale earlier in the cycle and provided the viewer the aforementioned lower perspective. Note also the technique of brown tones to the front, green in the mid-ground, and icy blue in the background.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Hans Bol

Bol showed a preference for producing "months-of-the-year" series, a genre which had been resurrected by Bruegel the Elder in his series done for his patron Jongelinck in 1565.

December
Hans Bol

Bruegel The Elder had begun a series of "seasons" drawings for Hieronymus Cock prints but had only completed the Spring and Summer installations prior to his death. Bol was approached by Cock in 1570 with a request that he complete the designs for Autumn and Winter. The designs were completed and the series engraved by Pieter van de Hayden. Through the completion of this commission, Bol had become the literal and figurative successor to Bruegel the Elder.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Bruegel still served as a model for Flemish painters, driven in no small part by the works of his sons (Pieter the Younger and Jan the Elder). Most of Pieter the Younger's work was comprised of copies of his father's compositions (both drawings and paintings) while Jan, who sometimes collaborated with Ruebens and other contemporaries, was much more innovative.

The Alchemist, 1558, original etching
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Copy of The Alchemist
Pieter Bruegel the Younger

Bath of the Nymphs
Jan Bruegel the Elder

Peter Paul Rubens
Rubens occasionally used Bruegel the Elder as a model for scenes of peasant festivity and panoramic landscapes with peasant laborers. Rubens was known to have owned eight of Bruegel the Elder's works.

Landscape with Milkmaids and Cattle, 1618
Peter Paul Rubens

Adriaen Brouwer
Brouwer was born in Flanders in 1605 but had moved to Amsterdam by 1625 and, therein, had studied under the tutelage of the great Dutch painter Frans Hals. Brouwer was somewhat dissolute, spending a lot of his time smoking and drinking in taverns. Brouwer returned to Flanders around 1631 and worked for a few days in the Rubens workshop but the relationship was short-lived as his drunkenness quickly became a problem.

Brouwer painted mostly peasant scenes and his work was well regarded by his peers. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a major influence on the work of Brouwer (artble.com):

• Informed the bold and clear coloring of his early works
• Informed his choice of subject matter -- painting the daily life of beggars and peasants
• He copied the Bruegel style of non-facial detail and bare outline which gave a general impression of the individual
• His early tavern scenes contain the same simplicity of forms and coloring as does Bruegel's.

The Bitter Draught, c. 1635
Adriaen Brouwer

The Smokers, c. 1637
Adriaen Brouwer

Peasants Brawling over Cards, c. 1636
Adriaen Brouwer

Youth making a face, c. 1636
Adriaen Brouwer

David Teniers the Younger
David Teniers the Younger (1610 - 1690) was the most famous of the 17th-century painters of peasant life, providing a much more "refined" version of Brouwer's peasant scenes. Teniers was born in Antwerp and was most likely taught by his father. Unlike his father, Teniers enjoyed international popularity during his lifetime and, by 1651, was employed by Archduke Leopold William as the Court Painter and Keeper of the Art Collection.

Teniers the Younger links back to Bruegel the Elder through his marriage to Jan Bruegel the Elder's daughter Anna and through his hewing to the Brouwer line in his early works (Wikipedia):

• Similarity of subject matter, technique, color, and composition
• Similar gross types placed in smoky, dimly lit taverns
• Similar monochrome tonality.

Peasants playing cards in an interior, 1630 - 45
David Teniers the Younger

Smokers in an interior, c. 1637
David Teniers the Younger

The Alchemist, c. 1650
David Teniers the Younger

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his gallery in Brussels, 1650 - 52
Dvid Teniers the Younger

Monkeys smoking and drinking, c. 1660
David Teniers the Younger

Joos de Momper
Joos de Momper (1564 - 1635) was one of the leading Flemish landscape painter of his day. Taught by his father Bartholomew, he entered the Antwerp Guild of St Luke at 17 years of age. All indications are that he travelled to Italy in the 1580s.

In addition to the large number (500) of works credited to him (suggesting extensive workshop participation), de Momper also worked collaboratively with other artists to include Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger. Joos utilized the Flemish landscape coloration schema wherein the shades of the image follow the passage of the sun through the atmosphere, resulting in warm tones in the foreground and cold hues towards the rear.

"De Momper's works are chiefly inspired by the steep craggy alpine slopes and high rock masses depicted in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work. His closeness to Jan Brueghel the Elder could have played a role in his exposure to the Bruegel idiom. This is also seen in some of the motifs of de Momper's work which go back to Pieter Bruegel inventions such as winter landscape and grain harvests."

Extensive Mountainous Landscape with Travellers, c. 1620
Joos de Momper

Winter Landscape
Joos de Momper

The Tower of Babel
Joos de Momper

Sebastian Vrancx
Sebastian Vrancx (1573 - 1647) was a Flemish painter known primarily for battle scenes, a pioneer of this genre in the Netherlands. His linkage to Breugel the Elder is through his series of paintings representing the Four Seasons of the year. Bruegel had "founded this genre as an independent category of painting with his influential cycle of the Months painted for the home of his patron Nicolaes Jongelinck."

Spring
Sebastian Vrancx

Summer
Sebastian Vrancx

Autumn
Sebastian Vrancx

Winter
Sebastian Vrancx

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder combined the landscape principles of Patinir and Bosch with his knowledge of the deployment of the mountains in the Alps to create a unique mountain landscape style. That landscape style is reflected in the work of de Momper 60 years later.

Bruegel established painting of the peasantry as "a thing" and Brouwer and Teniers the Younger ran with it deep into the heart of the Baroque period. Brouwer's renditions of the peasantry was the most brutal of the ones that we have encountered and might be the rationale behind the relative elegance of the Teniers renditions.

I have shown Vrancx replicating Bruegel in his painting of the series The Seasons and de Momper providing his rendition of the Tower of Babel.

There can be no doubt that the works of Bruegel the Elder influenced the efforts of many high-level, 17th-century Flemish artists. I will examine the influence on the Dutch painters in my next post.

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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.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Evolution of his compositional and painting styles

When Pieter Bruegel the Elder visited Italy in the early 1550s, the Mannerist School was in full flower, yet, unlike many of his predecessors, he did not adopt this style in his works. Rather, according to a number of contemporary -- and near-contemporary -- commentators, he reached back into old Flemish painting approaches -- specifically the work of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516) -- to serve as the foundation of his early painting style.

• 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.

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.

Landscape Style Influence
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.

Bruegel Painting Style
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.

Landscape of the Alps, 1553

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Mountain Landscape with a River, 1553

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Landscape with Christ appearing to the Disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Antwerp Period (1554 - 1562)
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.

Big Fishes Eat Small Fishes, 1556
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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.

But uniquely Brueglian features are beginning to emerge: sensitivity to color (especially the use of bright primary hues) and the rhythmic organization of forms. When viewed with other paintings of this period -- Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) and Children's Games (1560) -- we see multi-figure compositions with crowds loosely dispersed throughout the picture and usually viewed from above.

The Fight between Carnival and Lent, 1559
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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.

The Triumph of Death, c. 1562
Pieter Brueghel the Elder

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.

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).

The Peasant and the Bird Nester, 1568
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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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