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Max Ames
Bruegel PowerPoint Notes
1. Intro to Ren.
- Rebirth: was a rebirth of classical ideas. Started to study latin and greek
literary, oratorical, and historical texts.
- Petrarch: father of humanism. Humanists made a program of study aptly
title the humanities, which included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and
moral philosophy
- Giotto is considered one of the first artists to paint in the renaissance style.
Was important in developing linear perspective
- Realism in art was a growing trend, helped along by figures such as Da
Vinci who studied the human anatomy.
- Medici were a banking family in Florence, Lorenzo de’medici was a very
important patron for the arts, helped support figures such as Leonardo da
vinci and Botticcelli
2. The Spread of the Renaissance
- started in the 14th century in Florence italy
- mid 15th century the Gutenberg printing press allowed for the spread of
renaissance ideas to other parts of Europe
- in 16th century the Northern Renaissance began to flourish; Dutch and
Flemish renaissance began in the Low Countries (included Antwerp
Mannerists in the first half of the century to the Northern Mannerists in the
second half)
3. The Early Life of Bruegel
- He was born between 1525 and 1530 and most likely in or near Breda,
Netherlands, though it is uncertain because of a lack of documents from
his life
- Name originally spelled “Brueghel”(changed in 1559 for reasons
unknown)
- young Bruegel was apprenticed to Pieter Coeck van Aelst, a successful
artist in the Italian style who maintained studios in Antwerp and Brussels,
where he died in 1550. Coecke was a sculptor, architect, and designer of
tapestry and stained glass who had traveled in Italy and in Turkey.
- In 1551 Bruegel had completed his training and became a Master of the
Painters' Guild of Antwerp
- For the greater part of the following three years, however, he appears to
have travelled abroad
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1552: in south of Italy. 1553: in Rome, met Giulio Clovio, a friend of El
Greco’s, who bought paintings from him (Tower of Babel), studied Sistine
chapel
On his return to Flanders, Bruegel began working for the Antwerp
engraver and print-seller, Hieronymus Cock
Maintained a shop in Antwerp from 1554-1563 then moved to Brussels
He received the nickname 'Peasant Bruegel' or 'Bruegel the Peasant' for his
alleged practice of dressing up like a peasant in order to mingle at
weddings and other celebrations, thereby gaining inspiration and authentic
details for his genre paintings
4. Influences on Bruegel
- connections with Coecke's compositions can be detected in later years,
particularly after 1563, when Bruegel married Coecke's daughter Mayken.
- In any case, the apprenticeship with Coecke represented an early contact
with a humanistic milieu
- Coecke's wife, Maria Verhulst Bessemers, was a painter known for her
work in watercolour or tempera, a suspension of pigments in egg yolk or a
glutinous substance, on linen. The technique was widely practiced in her
hometown of Mechelen (Malines) and was later employed by Bruegel
- Mechelen artists also used allegorical and peasant thematic material.
These subjects, unusual in Antwerp, were later treated by Bruegel.
5. Subjects of Bruegel’s paintings
- at country fairs, he sketched farmers and townspeople, who became the
focus of his paintings, whether religious or secular
- depicted characters not as unique individuals but as well observed types
whose universatility makes them familiar to us today
- painted large landscapes and peasants
- peasants showed social aspects of 16th century Europe
- landscape such as Hunters in the Snow showed evidence of the Little Ice
Age
- aphorisms (Netherlandish proverbs)
- genre paintings: every day people doing every day things. merrymaking,
feasting, and working
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6. Style
-
tiny figures in a panoramic space
painted in a style that was more simple than the Italian renaisaance
paintings
created demonological paintings
found greatest inspiration in nature
eyes are reduced to round holes, heads resemble footballs, bodies look like
punched sacks of flour and clothing is nearly always generalised
7. Fall of Icarus
- unique because of the size and focus of the genre subject in the foreground
(which is the man plowing)
- Bruegel’s only painting of a mythological subject
- Only oil on canvas
- In ovid’s description of the ploughman, shepherd, and angler, they are
supposed to be astonished at the falling figure
- “And the farmer continued to plough..." Flemish saying
- ignorance of people to fellow man’s suffering
- unobserved death
- life goes on
- William carlos Williams poem
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William Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
8. Tower of Babel
- Bruegel's depiction of the architecture of the tower, with its numerous
arches and other examples of Roman engineering, is deliberately
reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum, which Christians of the time saw as
both a symbol of hubris and of persecution.
- None of the layers are truly horizontal
- Ascending spiral
- Foundations incomplete, still under construction while rest of tower is
being made
9. The Triumph of Death
- the variety of ways in which death comes to people
- death comes to people indiscriminately, nobles, soldiers, peasants
- religion cannot save them from death
- people try to flee from death or challenge death, both of which are vain
attempts
- background to foreground: complete devastation
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10. Netherlandish Proverbs
- original title The Folly of the World indicates he was not intending to
produce a mere collection of proverbs but rather a study of human
stupidity
- To bang one's head against a brick wall
- To wipe one's backside on the door
- Big fish eat little fish
- They both shit through the same hole
- Horse droppings are not figs
- If the blind lead the blind both will fall in the ditch
- To shit on the gallows
- The pig is stabbed through the belly
- He who eats fire, shits sparks
- To shit on the world
11. Later Life
- after about 1562, painting consumed the majority of his time
- he died in September of 1569, only in forties
- During the last years of his life Bruegel was much influenced by Italian
Renaissance art with its inclination towards the monumental
- diagonal spatial arrangement of the figures
- he figures are larger in scale, more in the foreground, with a lower
viewpoint and less emphasis on the setting
- However he still continued to produce works in his earlier style with small
figures in panoramic settings and his only real relationship with the Italian
style in any of his paintings is in the simplicity of form rather than in the
idealization of character.
12. Family
-
Peter Bruegel the younger and Jan Bruegel the Elder
Peter Bruegel the Younger called “Hell Bruegel” for grotesque treatment
of fire in paintings. Made many copies of his father’s paintings.
Jan the Elder: Paradies Bruegel. Floral paintings. Developed a style more
independent from his father than his brother did
Most likely instructed by their grandmother Mayken Verhulst
Painting dynasty. Famous painters down the line to Jan’s grand son. Four
generations of famous painters.
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13. Bruegel The Mystery
- Although Bruegel was famous in his own lifetime, the archaic appearance
of much of his imagery and because he didn’t adopt the idealized style of
portraiture developed by the Italian Renaissance artists, his reputation was
hurt in his lifetime and after he died
- Early historians were inclined to disregard him
- There had been little serious academic study of his work until 20th century
- there are no records of his thoughts on art and no letters by his hand
survive. The result is an absence of significant detail concerning much of
his life.
- Carel van Mander who included a life of the artist in his Schilderboek of
1604