Born: 1525/30, Breugel or Antwerp
Died: 1569, Brussels
Pieter Bruegel the Elder in our online collection
Pieter Bruegel the Elder Between everyday life and allegory
Excellent beginnings
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was probably born in Breugel or Antwerp between 1525 and 1530. He learnt his craft from the Flemish painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst and his wife, the renowned miniature painter Mayken Verhulst. In the beginning, Bruegel was mainly active as a draughtsman and created designs for engravings. Inspired by his role model Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel also created fantastic, satirical, and moralistic pictorial worlds full of bizarre figures and grotesque scenes, for which he quickly became very popular.
Off to the south! (1552–1554)
At the beginning of the 1550s, Bruegel set off for Italy. His journey initially took him to Rome via France. The journey continued by boat towards Naples and Messina. He then travelled back to Rome, where he worked with his friend Giulio Clovio, a miniature painter. He returned north via the western Alps, presumably also crossing the upper Rhine Valley. Bruegel recorded his impressions on this journey in numerous sketches and drawings, which he would later use in his landscape paintings.
Johannes Wierix Portrait of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Kupferstich, 203 × 124 mm. In: Dominicus Lampsonius, Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae inferioris effigies, hg. von Hieronymus Cocks Witwe Volcxken Diericx, Antwerpen 1572, Taf. 19. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Inv.-Nr. RP-P-1907-593.
Travel bug – travel blues?
The mere travelling time of the above-mentioned route could take a good year in adverse conditions such as bad weather or accidents, with horse and boat being the main means of transport. Robberies and mudslides also made such journeys an extremely dangerous endeavour. It was best to sign your will before you left!
Today, it would take travellers a good week to complete Bruegel’s route by car, train and boat, while the round trip would probably take two days by plane – excluding rail strikes, flight delays, and car breakdowns!
In good company
He was accompanied on his journey, at least occasionally, by other famous figures such as the cartographer Abraham Ortelius and the sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck. His brother Nicolaes later became one of Bruegel’s greatest patrons, who also commissioned the famous Seasons.
Gloomy Day (Early Spring), Pieter Bruegel d. Ä., 1565
The picture represents late winter or early spring with such seasonal activities as collecting wood and cutting willow switches. Carnival time is signified by the child with the paper crown, the lantern, the waffles and the masquerade with the pot crammed on the head and the broom stuck with candles, similar to how they appear in Bruegel’s “The Fight between Carnival and Lent” (Inv.-Nr. GG 1016). With the awakening of nature in the New Year (which at the time began on March 1st in the Netherlands) the picture is to be seen as the first in the whole cycle.
Title:
Gloomy Day (Early Spring)
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1565
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Haymaking (Early Summer), 1565. Prague, Palais Lobkowicz, Prague Castle © The Lobkowicz Collections,
Palais Lobkowicz
Palais Lobkowicz
© The Lobkowicz Collections, Palais Lobkowicz
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Haymaking (Early Summer), 1565. Prague, Palais Lobkowicz, Prague Castle © The Lobkowicz Collections,
Palais Lobkowicz
Palais Lobkowicz
© The Lobkowicz Collections, Palais Lobkowicz
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters (Late Summer), 1565. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919 © Metropolitan Museum of Art,
© Metropolitan Museum of Art
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters (Late Summer), 1565. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919 © Metropolitan Museum of Art,
© Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Return of the Herd (Autumn), Pieter Bruegel d. Ä., 1565
Bruegel introduced to the art of painting the autumn motif of the returning herd, a subject untypical for the Netherlands. To achieve this, he was able to draw on impressions gained during his travels through Switzerland. Driving the cattle down from the Alpine pastures, a key event in every peasant’s year, is made into the title scene. Yet the main subject is the landscape which the artist has raised to the sublime in its tonal colouring and mood.
Title:
The Return of the Herd (Autumn)
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1565
Hunters in the Snow (Winter), Pieter Bruegel d. Ä., 1565
The group of hunters returns to the low–lying village, accompanied by an exhausted pack of dogs. Only a single fox hangs on one of the spears slung over the men’s shoulders. To the left preparations are afoot to singe a pig over an open fire. Delightful details such as skaters on frozen ponds have added to the picture’s enormous popularity. Yet it is not the sum total of details that make the picture important, rather its overall effect. In a manner both virtuosic and consistent, Bruegel evokes the impression of permanent cold in this first and most prominent winterlandscape of european painting.
Title:
Hunters in the Snow (Winter)
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1565
on view: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
Back to the Netherlands (1554–1563)
After his return from Italy, Bruegel settled in Antwerp in 1554.
At the time, the city was one of the largest trading metropolises and one of the leading art centres in Europe.
Here Bruegel worked with the publisher Hieronymus Cock. Inspired by the impressions of his journey through the Alps, Bruegel created large-format landscape drawings, which were soon published as engravings by Cock. The landscapes enjoyed great popularity among Bruegel’s contemporaries, especially humanistically educated citizens who were very interested in depictions of nature. Bruegel gradually focused more and more on painting. From 1557, he created his first panel pictures, followed shortly thereafter by Children’s Games or The Fight between Carnival and Lent.
At the peak of his career: Brussels
Bruegel moved to Brussels and married the daughter of his teachers Mayken Verhulst and Pieter Coecke van Aelst there in 1563. During this time, he created his most famous masterpieces, such as the Seasons, The Tower of Babel, and the Peasant Wedding, which are also on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Bruegel incorporated his precise observations of nature into his paintings.
In both Brussels and Antwerp, Bruegel worked for influential patrons, including the aforementioned Nicolaes Jonghelinck. In addition, he had contacts in humanist circles, which explains why his works often contain profound allusions to socially relevant topics.
Bruegel continued
Bruegel died in 1569 at the age of about 40. According to one anecdote, on his deathbed he told his wife to burn some of his works so that they would not fall into the wrong hands. This account is a reference to Bruegel’s more socially critical works.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder became the founder of a successful dynasty of painters. Even though his sons were only five and one year old at the time of his death, they followed in their father’s footsteps. His elder son Pieter Brueghel the Younger made a name for himself as his father’s copyist, while his younger son Jan Brueghel the Elder became famous not least for his detailed still lifes.
The apparent “snapshot” of this picture is in fact carefully composed. Dispensing with allegorical meaning the painting is a realistic record of a Flemish peasants’ wedding. The bride sits in front of a green tapestry, a paper crown hangs over her. The bridegroom was not present at the wedding feast in accordance with Flemish custom. A lawyer with a mortar–board, a Franciscan monk and the lord of the manor with his dog (to the far right) are all visible; the porridge dishes carried in on an unhinged door are utterly simple, and the posture and gait of the carriers are similarly striking.
Title:
Peasant Wedding
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1568
on view: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
Bruegel’s monumental composition became the most famous, most often copied and varied classic depiction of the tower. Perspective is provided by the seemingly Flemish port which seems tiny in comparison with the tower. Painstakingly, and in encyclopaedic detail, Bruegel depicts countless technical and craftsmanship processes. He blends elements from antique and Romanesque architecture in the stone structure around the building’s exterior.
Title:
The Tower of Babel
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1563
on view: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
From a bird’s eye perspective – this was the only way Bruegel could render visible the impressive crowd of figures – we look on to a cast square. Over 230 children are occupied with playing 83 different games. For those wishing to decipher all the games, the minuteness of the scenes necessitates slow and selective study – a pleasurable pastime indeed. Bruegel’s composition is without precedent or parallel in the fine arts and can be seen as a painted “encyclopaedia” – albeit without any moralising undertones.
Title:
Children’s Games
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1560
This biblical story describes the battle between Israelites and Philistines on Mount Gilboa which ends in the defeat and suicide of King Saul (to the left in the picture). There are numerous inter-pretations: punished pride, the foolishness and perversity of the world, human delusion, vanity; the main subject is the landscape, while the story is of secondary importance; humanity is subject to the inevitable course of nature.
Title:
Suicide of Saul
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1562
In the foreground of this encyclopaedia of Netherlands customs related to Carnival and Lent, Bruegel presents an allegorical jousting tournament as they actually occurred in the 15th and 16th centuries: on the left “Carnival” rides on a barrel, holding a roast on a spit as his weapon; on the right he is opposed by the skinny “Lent” extending a baker’s shovel with two fishes. The other details in this scene are also in keeping with the reality of the time as recorded in folklore. The depiction of everything happening in the same place at the same time, however, is Bruegel’s invention.
Title:
The Fight between Carnival and Lent
Artist:
Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. (um 1525/30 Breugel oder Antwerpen? - 1569 Brüssel)
Time:
1559
on view: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
