Inspecting the Art of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder

Robert L. Bonn, in his book about Pieter Bruegel the Elder, says that the first look at almost any of his
paintings, is to be at once transported back to the life as it was, more than four centuries ago. But with a
second, deeper look, it reveals something more that varies from painting to painting. "It may be secular
or religious. It may be a proverb, a moral, a philosophical dilemma or a social myth."

Perhaps just as mysterious as that something more, is Bruegel himself. The epithet "Peasant Bruegel"
is still attached to him, although most stories about his life are likely to be fantasy inspired by the
imagery his depictions of peasant festivities. The little glimpses and pieces we have about his life, do not
begin to tell about his artistic ideas, used in the extraordinary paintings of peasant life.

Almost nothing is known about his early training. Karel van Mander, who published Breugels biography
in 1604, writes that he studied with Pieter Coecke van Aelst, one of the most important painters in
Netherlands during the early sixteenth century. Yet, the works bear little resemblance to Coecke's,
which is marked by Italian influence of frieze-like compositions as well as ornamentation and muscular
figures. However, there is some visual evidence that Bruegel was aware of Coecke's art.

Meanwhile, we know that Bruegels early reputation was not based on his paintings. Today, we speak of
Bruegel as the first great artist to paint scenes of ordinary peasant life and show common man and
woman as they went about their daily tasks and amusements, but his contemporaries knew him for his
engraved designs. Far from illustrating the rustic life, he won the admirations by his landscape prints or
the prints of fantastic allegories in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch. Giorgio Vasari categorized
Bruegel's art into landscapes and fantasies while pairing him with Bosch, and among many other,
Lodovico Guiccardini described Bruegel as a "great imitator", and even "the second" Bosch.

Bruegel made his earliest landscape drawings when he travelled to Italy, as many of other Flemish artists
did, to complete their artistic education. Like most of them, Bruegel's art was also tempered by his
experience of this countrys art. Titian and Michelangelo were still active, when Bruegel explored Italy.
Beside completing numerous portraits and historical paintings, Titian had reinvigorated the landscape
art. The knowledge of Titian's works spread by the prints and these influenced Bruegel, whose cotton-
wool foliage in Wooded Landscape with Mills is remarkably like that in Titian's woodcut Two Goats at
the Foot of a Tree. However distant Michelangelo was to Bruegel's artistic ambition, it is unimaginable
that Bruegel would have ignored the Sistine Chapel and his other sightings in Rome. The festive rustics in
his paintings could have partly have derived their weighty plasticity from the figures of the sculptor, and
these types reappear in Bruegel's late drawing, the Beekeepers, which quotes from The Sacrifice of Noah
on the Sistine Chapel.

Yet, it was the nature hes seen during his travels, that was the greatest inspiration for Bruegel. Van
Mander famously stated that: "On his travel he drew many views from life, so that it is said that when
he was in the Alps, he swallowed all those mountains and rocks which, upon returning home, he spat
out again onto canvases and panels, so faithfully was he able in this respect and others, to follow
Nature." Bruegel's journey indeed enriched the textures of his landscapes, and his subsequent landscape
drawings rarely deviate from the patterns he set in Italy. Upon his return to Antwerp, he produced
drawn designs for a series of twelve prints known as Large Landscapes, and the two that survived
illustrate those retained Italian links.
But, after being initially preoccupied with landscapes, Bruegel soon concentrated on allegorical designs,
many of them in the style of Bosch. As we turn away from Bruegel's landscapes to his allegorical
drawings, we see the change in style, where he abandoned the lessons from Italy, turning everything
into the symbols and ciphers of the allegorical world. Its even evident in his depictions of nature. The
trees in Desidia, are far from "airily stroked roofs of foliage" that characterize his landscape drawings.
The jettisoned leaves and their branches turn to coral. Even the trees of the most naturalistic scene, Ice
Skating before the Gate of Saint George, dont resemble the earlier style.

Bosch was the first of four old masters who have been celebrated for "fantasies, bizarre things, dreams,
and imagination", with the second being Bruegel, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Blake
and Goya appeared. Bruegels allegorical works, can sometimes even contain direct quotations from
Bosch. Reptile in Luxuria and the upside-down frog in the background mountain of Superbia are both
from Bosch's Last Judgement. The influence is the strongest in Bruegel's Seven Deadly Sins. It echoes
through The Descent of Christ into Limbo and many other. Even in The Calumny of Apelles, despite
resembling the Renaissance tradition of this subject, he nods again to Bosch. Along the line of Van
Manders description of his treatment of the Alps, it may be said that Bruegel also swallowed Boschs
art. But, he did so with his own artistic freedom. Bosch might have been the prototype, but Bruegel
refreshed those elements with new powerful projections, from the reptilian monsters to the precarious
rocks and organic architecture.

In Bruegels early paintings, he once again chose to depart from the prevailing Italian Mannerism, and
revert to the traditional late Gothic style of Bosch. Here, he also used the hellish themes, but brought
them up to date by incorporating modern landscapes into the backgrounds, with contemporary
costumes combined with brighter palette and more structured and refined composition. Example of this
is the painting Fight Between Carnival and Lent, although still an allegorical work paying homage to
Bosch, it went in new direction by having those brighter colors and new compositional approach to
groups of figures. Together with Netherlandish Proverbs and Children's Games, it is one of the Bruegel's
early encyclopedic works.

Bruegels paintings also often accurately depicted cripples or people with disabilities. Such a painting is
The Blind Leading the Blind. In the era before Bruegel, the blind were typically characterized in art by
closed eyelids. But, Bruegel himself took a closer look.

In his religious or mythological paintings, he found a new perspective in illustrating the subjects. In The
Towel of Babel, he shows the futility of human ambition and commercial greed, with the perspective of
the tower that exudes a schizophrenic aura. In The Fall of Icarus, the depiction of the title is but one part
of a broad vision of the vast natural world.

Slowly, in his mature work, Bruegel began to abandon the religious or mythical pretext for the landscape
painting, with a new found realism and a new humanism in the unidealized pastoral life. Bruegel
began humanizing the traditional subjects, and also personalizing them, in a new way, which had not
been attempted before: without sentimentalizing or sensationalizing. His vivid depiction of the rituals of
village life include the agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games. As with his Months of the
year, these are all unique windows of the old folk culture.

To conclude, we may never learn with certainty many of the historical information about Bruegel and
what precisely he intended to express in his work. But the strong impact he had on the later generations
make the gaps in knowledge seem insignificant. What matters is that Bruegel was a passionate observer
of nature in all its forms, including the human nature. If you inspect closely, the full, rich details will
reward and surprise you.