Biography of Peter Bruegel Senior

The biography of Peter Bruegel, written in the Dutch artist and biographer historian Karelus Van Mander, is the main source of the information about the master. Bows in Antwerp B; This makes it possible to suggest that he was born approximately between the place of birth and the circumstances of his life in his youth are mostly unknown. It is believed that Bruegel was a student of Peter Cuke Van Alsta, and later collaborated with the publisher Jeronymus Coca, who engraved many Brueghel drawings.

During and Bruegel traveled around Italy and even reached Sicily. Returning from there, he studied the Alps. Then he lived in Antwerp for some time and eventually settled in Brussels. Here he married and reached prosperity, using the recognition of his contemporaries and receiving more than a sufficient number of orders from influential patrons. Braigel died in Brussels on September 5, his two sons, Peter Bruegel the Younger - and Jan Bruegel - became famous artists.

It is this combination of direct, direct observation with conditional formulas that creates the effect of the inexplicable attractiveness of Bruegel's paintings. The artist considered the landscape not just as a decoration, but as an arena in which the human drama unfolds. One of its earliest paintings is the fall of Ikar approx. In this picture on a hill towering over a bay -down bay, a plowman, a shepherd and a fisherman are engaged in their daily work.

None of them notices Ikar beating on the water, drowning far from the shore. Brueghel interprets the sight of his death as an insignificant detail in the non -violated rhythm of the universe. One of the main topics in the work of Braigel is the image of human weakness and stupidity - the legacy of late medieval thinking. In his drawing, a large fish eats a small, Vienna, Alberthin depicts a small fish crawling out of a huge fish lying on the shore.

Again, a saying was taken as a name, clearly hinting at excesses and gluttony. In the paintings, the battle of post and Shrovetide is approx. Although the names of Brueghel’s paintings are accurate in their description, each of them, apparently, is also an ironic commentary on the aimlessness of human activity. These creatures appear in the series of engravings of Coca according to Brueghel’s drawings seven mortal sins and seven virtues of the Boskhov spirit reappears in such later paintings by Bruegel as the fall of angels, Brussels of the Royal Museum of Elegant Arts and the Mad Greta, Antwerp, the Museum of Mayer Van Dan Berg.

In many paintings, masters are characters, depicted with all the details and colorfully dressed, have deprived of personality persons resembling masks. Brueghel was never interested in human individuality. He was occupied by an ordinary, average person from medieval mystery plays, and it is such anonymous humanity that inhabit the cosmic environment of outstanding religious paintings of the artist.

In the triumph of death of approx. In the carrying of a cross, Vienna, the art-historical museum also shows endless expanses filled with faceless rude hordes. In the middle of the procession, there is an unexplored figure of Christ, which fell under the weight of the cross and almost lost in an indifferent crowd. Bruegel wanted his viewer to see the gospel story in the light of the modern life of Flanders.

In two paintings - the beating of babies approx. In the second of them, Joseph and Maria are barely distinguishable among the city people. In the picture, the Babylonian tower, Vienna, the art-historical museum filled with Boschian characters, the tower itself is placed against the backdrop of a rural landscape, which is very similar to Flanders of the 16th century.

Perhaps the most magnificent paintings by Bruegel are five landscapes called seasons, or months depicting the Flemish rural nature at different times of the year. Only a few artists possessed the ability to catch the mood of one or another of the year so sensitively and express the internal connection of man with the rhythm of nature. In the picture, hunters in the snow, Vienna, the art-historical museum depicts a world constrained by a winter cold.

In the composition of the picture, a technique typical of Brueghel’s painting was used - a high foreground, from which a view of the plain extending below opens. The diagonals of the lines of trees, roofs and hills direct the viewer's gaze strictly into the space of the picture, to where people work and have fun. All their activity occurs in the silence of frosty air.

Trees and figures are depicted as frozen silhouettes against the background of a gray winter landscape, and the peaks of spicy roofs are echoed by the grows of the mountains in the distance. In the picture, the harvest, New York, the metro from the same series depicts the field filled with the sun; The group of peasants located on it interrupted their work for the midday meal.

Van Mander characterizes Bruegel as a peasant artist; However, this assessment overlooks the undoubted complexity of the work of the master and rather comes from the plots of his enjoyed fame of paintings depicting the rude everyday life of the inhabitants of the Flemish village.Both in the beginning and at the end of his life path, Bruegel reflects on the born stupidity of man. In the picture, Misanthropus, Naples, the National Museum and the Capodimonte Gallery placed the inscription: “Since the world is so insidious, I go in mourning clothes” and a evil dwarf is depicted, a stealing wallet from a gloomy old man.

In the picture are blind, there are six Sleptsov, staggering, go to a chain to the stream, into which the first of them had already fallen. The picture is associated with the words of the gospel parable Matthew - "And if the blind man leads the blind, then both will fall into the hole." Brueghel is a diverse: he was simultaneously a medieval moralist and landscape painter in the modern sense of the word; He was a truly northern artist, and at the same time his painting was marked by Italian influence.

Some consider it an orthodox Catholic, others - a adherent of a heretical sect. However, these paradoxes are not irreconcilable. The greatness of Bruegel lies in the assertion of the inextricable connection between man and nature, as well as in a deeply human vision of Christian history as living reality. Also on the topic:.