Brueghel’s paintings of 1562: the Brussels Fall of the Rebel
Angels, the Antwerp Dulle Griet, and the Madrid Triumph
of Death. However, naturalism reigns supreme in the five
paintings of the Months, dated 1565 and currently divided
between Vienna, Prague, and New York. Although the
subject matter of these works derives from 15th-century
manuscript illuminations, they are fundamentally innova-
tory as depictions not only of seasons but also of specific
effects of weather.
For most of his career Brueghel was primarily con-
cerned with the depiction of landscapes peopled with
multitudes of tiny figures. Larger figures predominate in
his Peasant Dance and Peasant Wedding (1566–67; Vi-
enna). This development culminates in the Vienna Para-
ble of the Bird’s Nest, executed the year before his death.
Brueghel was certainly the most accomplished landscape
painter of the 16th century. On account of his penchant
for peasant scenes, he is often considered as the originator
of the genre scene popularized by 17th-century Dutch
artists. However, the thrust of Brueghel’s own peasant
paintings was directed principally at questions of morality
and the human condition. Historically, he may be consid-
ered as the artist who concluded the great chapter of
northern painting initiated more than a century earlier by
Jan van EYCK.
Further reading: Nadine M. Orenstein (ed.), Pieter
Bruegel the Elder: Prints and Drawings (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001); Philippe Roberts-
Jones, Pieter Bruegel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002).
Bruges (Flemish Brugge) A city in the province of West
Flanders, Belgium, situated a few miles from the coast, to
which it is now linked by canals. The Flemish name,
Brugge (bridge), is of Norse origin. The town was a trad-
ing center by 1000, the capital of Flanders, and chief resi-
dence of its counts. Although the capital moved to Ghent
in the late 12th century, Bruges continued as a major mer-
cantile center, especially for the wool trade with England,
under the auspices of the HANSEATIC LEAGUE; during the
14th century its bourse governed the rates of exchange in
northern Europe. Like the burghers of the other rich
Flemish cities, the merchants of Bruges stubbornly re-
sisted any attempts by princes to encroach upon their
privileges. In 1440 Bruges’s defiance of its Burgundian
overlord, PHILIP THE GOOD, brought upon it severe pun-
ishment, but generally it continued to thrive under Bur-
gundian rule and under the early Hapsburgs, and some
fine buildings remain from this period. The silting up of
the Zwyn, total by 1490, however, ended Bruges’s position
as a maritime trading center and in the late 16th century
it suffered depopulation and depression as a result of the
Netherlanders’ uprising against their Spanish Catholic
rulers (see NETHERLANDS, REVOLT OF THE).
Bruges was a significant cultural center during its
14th- and 15th-century heyday. Jan van EYCKand Petrus
CHRISTUSworked there, and later Hans MEMLING. It was
home to perhaps the most famous of the CHAMBERS OF
RHETORIC, De Drie Santinnen, one of whose stars was the
poet and comic playwright Cornelis Everaert (c. 1480–
1556). The city’s first printing press was set up in 1474/75
by CAXTON.Brunelleschi, Filippo (1377–1446) Italian architect
He trained first as a goldsmith, but at some time (c. 1401)
appears to have gone to Rome where his studies of antique
monuments led him to formulate the law of perspective
(developed by ALBERTIin his treatise Della pittura) and
provided him with structural solutions to technical build-
ing problems. His execution of the dome (1420) for the
cathedral of his native Florence was an achievement of
constructional engineering which looked to the Pantheon
for inspiration and inaugurated the Renaissance in Italy.
The lantern (1445–67) exemplifies Brunelleschi’s experi-
mental approach to the antique with the employment of
inverted classical consoles, in place of flying buttresses.7722 BBrruuggeessPieter BrueghelThe Beekeepers, one of
Brueghel’s many scenes of rural peasant
life, engraved in the 1560s.
Photo AKG London