Pieter Bruegel the Elder .................................................................

Lecture 26

Pieter Bruegel, which is what we are going to do this afternoon. Pieter

Bruegel the Elder, to distinguish him from his many progeny who

were also painters, was born about 1528 to 1530 (as close as we can

determine) and died in 1569.

I

n this lecture, we look at the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and examine
aspects of his art that set him apart from his contemporaries. In addition,
we will focus on the great variety of Bruegel’s art, from his imaginative
depiction of the Fall of Icarus, to his vast, detailed landscape of Hunters in
the Snow, to the political implications of The Blind Leading the Blind.

The birthplace of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1528/30–1569) is uncertain, but it
may have been ‘s-Hertogenbosch or Breda. Although he probably apprenticed
in Antwerp, we also don’t know much about his teachers. Bruegel is recorded
as a master in the Antwerp guild in 1551, but he probably left to visit Italy
just after that. He traveled to Sicily by 1552 and was in Rome in 1553.
During his return north, he lingered for some time in the Alps but was back
in Antwerp by 1554. After his marriage in 1563, he moved to Brussels, his
wife’s home. For the ¿ rst six years of his career, Bruegel designed drawings
to be made into prints. His engravings spread throughout Europe during his
lifetime, and he was known primarily as a printmaker, although today, he is
regarded mostly as a painter.

Our ¿ rst example is Bruegel’s drawing Artist and Connoisseur (c. 1565).
This is not a literal self-portrait, because Bruegel never attained the apparent
age of the painter here, but it may be considered a spiritual self-portrait. This
is a very subtle satire of the “connoisseur” looking over the artist’s shoulder,
not a barbed caricature, because the poor man cannot be blamed for what he
does not know. He is ignorant in matters of art; he literally does not know
what he sees. The viewer cannot see the painting in front of the artist. It is
typical of Bruegel to avoid the literal, the obvious statement, leaving our
imagination free to work things out.