Pieter Bruegel the Elder (or Brueghel)
1525-1569
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, was probably the most significant and exciting Renaissance painter and printmaker of the Northern Europe, during the middle part of the sixteenth century, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (Genre Painting).
He was a Dutch and his nickname "Peasant Bruegel" indicates to his subjects: peasant life, proverbs and genre scenes, the New Testament topics set among common folks of contemporary Flanders. Attention to the life and manners of peasants was rare in the arts in Bruegel's time. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life-including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games-are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life.
Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants. He is often credited as being the first Western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop to a religious allegory.
His nickname 'Peasant Brueghel' distinguishes him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.
Pieter Bruegel was born to a peasant residing in the village of Breughel. Very probably the young Bruegel was apprenticed to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a leading Antwerp artist, whose daughter Bruegel would later marry. His mother-in-law was also a painter, engaged in miniatures. Pieter Bruegel was the father of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Both became painters, but as they were very young children when their father died, neither received any training from him. According to Carel van Mander, it is likely that they were instructed by their grandmother.
In 1551 Bruegel became a Master of the Antwerp Guild. He traveled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later. He died there on 9 September 1569 and was buried in Notre Dame de la Chapelle, Brussels. The surviving pictures of Bruegel are few in number - under fifty.
He is known for simpler style in his paintings than the Italianate art that prevailed in his time. The most obvious influence on his art is the older Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, particularly in Bruegel's early "demonological" paintings such as "The Triumph of Death" and "Dulle Griet" (Mad Meg). He found his greatest inspirations in nature, mastering in landscapes. In these landscapes Bruegel created a story, with several scenes seemingly combined in one painting. Such works can be seen in "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" and "The Triumph of Death".
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