Thursday, 26 June 2014

Pieter Bruegel The Elder And His Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Pieter Bruegel the Elder was astonishingly independent of the dominant artistic interests during his time, despite his taking the requisite journey to Italy for purposes of study. He deliberately revived the late Gothic style of Hieronymus Bosch as the point of departure from Italian mannerism for his own highly complex and original art.

The Dutch biographer Karel van Mander, who wrote in 1604, was the one major source of information concerning Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Karel was a near-contemporary of Pieter. He claims that Pieter was born in a town of the same name near Breda on the modern Dutch-Belgian border.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder went to Italy between 1552 and 1553, presumably by way of France. He met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio, on his visit to Rome. Giulio listed three paintings by Pieter in his will of 1578. However, the paintings, which apparently consisted of landscapes, did not survive the test of time.

Unlike Big Fish Eat Little Fish, a pen drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1557 that carried the name of Hieronymus Bosch, the series Seven Deadly Sins, engraved in 1558, carried the own signature of Pieter. It was a sign of the increasing importance of Pieter during the time.

In Combat of Carnival and Lent, Pieter Bruegel the Elder showed a new sensitivity to color, specifically in the use of bright primary hues and a rhythmic organization of forms which were unique to Pieter.

The 1562 painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder entitled the Triumph of Death, was interpreted as a reference to the outbreak of religious persecutions in the Netherlands at the time. Meanwhile, the 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel was intended to symbolize the futility of human ambitions and to criticize the spirit of commercialism then reigning in Antwerp.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment