Pieter Bruegel the Younger: Works and Paintings with Titles. Brief biography of Pieter Brueghel

The name of the artist Pieter Brueghel is known to all connoisseurs and art lovers. This Dutch painter added to the world collection of masterpieces with masterful landscapes and genre paintings, however, in my whole life I have never tried to describe the subtleties own creativity neither in articles, nor in letters, nor in treatises, which was rather unusual for that time. Also, few people know that the name of Pieter Bruegel began a dynasty of artists who left their mark on world painting. Unfortunately, even Brueghel himself was not destined to find out about this.

Childhood and youth

The date and place of birth of the master is still disputed. By official version, Pieter Brueghel was born in 1525 in a city called Breda (now this place is located in the province of North Brabant). However, some art historians and researchers of the artist's biography call more later dates the alleged birth of Brueghel, and the place of his birth is called the village of Bregel, the name of which is allegedly reflected in the name of the painter.

Biographers did not find reliable information about the childhood years of the genius. Presumably, the father and mother of Pieter Brueghel were simple peasants. Around the beginning of the 1540s, Peter, who was barely 20 years old, began to study painting and drawing with the artist Cook van Aelst. After the death of his first teacher, Pieter Brueghel joined the painters' guild of the city of Antwerp, and in 1551 got a job with the artist Hieronymus Cock, who for some time became Brueghel's mentor and main customer.

Painting

There, in the workshop of Kok, Peter got acquainted with the works of another great artist -. These paintings (or rather, prints of paintings that the owner of the workshop sold) made such an impression on Brueghel that the novice master spent a lot of time trying to reproduce the work of the “master of horror”.

This did not escape the gaze of Hieronymus Kok, who was quick to take advantage of the naivety of the novice artist and asked Peter to draw a couple of sketches in the style of Bosch. Later, these works (in particular, the painting "Big fish eat small ones") Kok will sell with a fake signature of Bosch.

In parallel with painting, Pieter Brueghel also became interested in traveling. For several years, the artist traveled all over Europe, visited Switzerland, Italy, France and tried to express the emotions presented by new countries on canvas. So, for example, one of the first professional creations of the master was born in Italy - the painting “Landscape with Christ and the Apostles”, and the Swiss Alps “gave” the world a series of marvelous landscapes.

In 1561, the artist left the workshop of Jerome Cock and moved to Brussels. There, Pieter Brueghel's customers were Cardinal de Granvel, as well as wealthy collectors, in particular the merchant Nicholas Jongelinck.

Most significant work in the works of Brueghel of that time they consider the “Triumph of Death” - an image of a desert land covered with skeletons and dying, as well as terrible instruments of torture, which even now make you shudder. And the figure of a man playing the lute in the middle of a nightmare further emphasizes the horror of what is happening on the canvas.

Also, art connoisseurs note the canvas " tower of babel"And a cycle of paintings, called" Paintings of the months and seasons ". Pieter Brueghel created, according to various sources, from 6 to 12 canvases, reflecting the charm of the periods of the year, but only five works have survived, among which “Hunters in the Snow” and “Harvest” are known.

The artist paid the main attention to simple and understandable images, revealing the beauty of nature, as well as the way of life and characters of the villagers and hard workers. The paintings of Pieter Brueghel are considered a visual demonstration of the clothes and home furnishings of the people of that time. Such are the "Flemish Proverbs", "Peasant Wedding".

Personal life

The personal life of Pieter Brueghel developed happily. In 1553, the artist proposed to the girl Maria, daughter of Cook van Aelst, his former mentor. Maria happily agreed to the wedding with her lover. In this marriage, three children were born.

There is no reliable information about the fate of Pieter Brueghel's daughter, but it is known about life path two sons of the artist. Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder followed in their father's footsteps and became eminent painters.

The first for the nature of the work received the nickname "Hellish", and the second - "Paradise". Pieter Brueghel himself, in order to avoid confusion, began to be called "Peasant". Pieter Brueghel's grandchildren, Jan and Abraham, also became artists.

Such heredity is surprising, because at the time of the death of Pieter Brueghel, the eldest son was barely five years old, and the artist did not even have time to transfer the subtleties of craftsmanship to his sons.

Death

When Bruegel was just over 40, Brussels was occupied by Spanish troops, led by the Duke of Alba. Chaos began in the city, people lived in constant fear and an atmosphere of distrust even towards each other. Perhaps these experiences crippled the health of the master. The artist died on September 5, 1569. According to bibliographers, Pieter Brueghel died due to an unknown disease.

The last creations of the artist are the paintings “Forty on the Gallows” (which Peter Brueghel allegedly bequeathed to his wife), as well as the painting “The Triumph of Truth”, the existence of which is disputed by some biographers and art historians. The fact is that this work has not survived to this day, and, according to historians, there are serious reasons to doubt that it really existed.

Most of the paintings by Pieter Brueghel that have survived to this day are stored in European museums and private collections. There are no paintings by the artist in Russian museums.

In 2011, the Polish director Lech Majewski made the film The Mill and the Cross, which was based on some facts from the biography of Pieter Brueghel, as well as plots of the artist's paintings. This picture received flattering reviews from critics, as well as several major film awards. The actor appeared in the image of the great master, Michael York and Joanna Litvin also starred in the film.

Artworks

• 1559 - "Battle of Maslenitsa and Lent"
• 1559 - "Dutch Proverbs"
• 1562 - "The Triumph of Death"
• 1563 - "Tower of Babel"
• 1564 - "Suicide of Saul"
• 1565 - "Return of the herd"
• 1566 - "Census in Bethlehem"
• 1566 - "Massacre of the Innocents"
• 1567 - "Land of lazy people"
• 1568 - "Peasant wedding"
• 1568 - "The Parable of the Blind"

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Dutch. Pieter Bruegel de Oude, MPA: [ˈpitər ˈbrøːɣəl]; c. 1525 - September 9, 1569, Brussels), also known with the nickname "Peasant" - a Dutch painter and graphic artist, the most famous and significant of those who bore this surname artists. Master of landscape and genre scenes. Father of painters Pieter Brueghel the Younger (Infernal) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (Paradise).

BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST

Pieter Brueghel was probably born between 1525 and 1530 ( exact date unknown). The place of his birth is most often called the city of Breda (in the modern Dutch province of North Brabant) or the village of Bregel near this city.

My creative biography he started out as a graphic artist. By the mid-1540s, he ended up in Antwerp, where he studied in the studio of Peter Cook van Aelst, the court painter of Emperor Charles V. Brueghel worked in Van Aelst's studio until the death of his teacher in 1550.

In 1551, Brueghel was accepted into the Antwerp guild of painters and went to work in the workshop of Hieronymus Cock, who printed and sold engravings. In Kok's workshop, the artist saw prints from paintings that made such an impression on him that he painted his own variations on the themes of the great artist.

In 1552-1553, at the suggestion of Kok, Brueghel traveled to France, Italy, and Switzerland to make a series of drawings of Italian landscapes intended for reproduction in engraving. I was shocked by the ancient monuments of Rome and the masterpieces of the Renaissance, sea ​​elements and picturesque harbors of the Mediterranean. Presumably in Rome, he worked with the miniaturist Giulio Clovio.

In 1563, Brueghel married the daughter of his teacher Van Aelst, Maria (Meiken).

In 1556, Brueghel worked in Antwerp for the Four Winds printing workshop, owned by the Dutch publisher Hieronymus Coke. Based on Brueghel's drawings, engravings "Big fish eat small ones" and "Donkey at school" were made here. Wanting to please the tastes of wealthy customers, Kok did not even hesitate to forge signatures on engravings. So, the engraving "Big fish eat small" was sold with the signature of the famous Dutch artist.

In 1557, Brueghel painted a series of engravings illustrating the seven deadly sins.

In 1563 he moved with his family to Brussels.

In 1565, the series "Pictures of the Months or Seasons" was written, from which only five works have survived. In late medieval illustrated prayer books for the nobility, religious texts were often preceded by a calendar, where there was a page for each month. The change of seasons was depicted most often through the prism of the occupations corresponding to each month. But for Brueghel, nature plays the main role in the change of seasons, and people, as well as forests, mountains, water, animals, become only part of the vast landscape.

"Return of the herds. Autumn”, “Hunters in the snow. Winter” and “Haymaking” are of the same format and, possibly, made for the same customer. The other two are Harvest. Summer" and "Gloomy Day. Spring". Karel van Mander names the rich Antwerp merchant Nicholas Jongelinck as the customer of the entire series of Months, who then, urgently in need of large sum money, gave all these paintings as collateral and never redeemed them.

Pieter Brueghel was about forty when the army of the Spanish Duke of Alba entered Brussels with orders to exterminate the heretics in the Netherlands. Over the following years, Alba sentenced several thousand Dutch people to death. Last years lives were spent in the atmosphere of terror planted by Alba. About one of recent works Brueghel, "Forty on the gallows", van Mander writes that: "he bequeathed to his wife a picture with a magpie on the gallows. Magpie means gossipers whom he would like to see hanged. The gallows were associated with Spanish rule, when the authorities began to sentence to a shameful death by hanging predicates, and the terror of Alba itself was based almost exclusively on rumors and denunciations.

The painting "Massacre of the Innocents" contains an image of a sinister man in black, watching the execution of the order of King Herod; this man is very similar to Alba; it means that the artist compares King Philip II with Herod.

The artist died on September 5, 1569 in Brussels. He was buried in the Brussels church of Notre Dame de la Chapelle.

Of all the surviving paintings by Brueghel, about a third are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. There are no works by Brueghel in Russia.

CREATION

More than thirty of the approximately forty-five paintings by Brueghel (or attributed to him) are devoted to depicting nature, the village and its inhabitants. Faceless representatives of the rural lower classes become the main characters of his work: in his drawings, he often hides his face altogether.

None of the artists had previously dared to create works on such topics. But many later works testify to the artist's growing interest in individual figures. The artist begins to paint large figures of people, in relation to which the environment plays an already subordinate role. Such paintings include "The Parable of the Blind", "The Destroyer of Nests" (another name is "The Peasant and the Destroyer of Nests"), "The Cripples" and "The Misanthrope".

Adoration of the Magi

Find artistic means to depict what was happening in his homeland, the fantastic canvases of Hieronymus Bosch helped the artist.

In the Adoration of the Magi, the artist allegorically showed that the birth of a child does not cause joy if war and death reign in the world. The compositional center of the picture, completely filled with people, is the sad figure of the Virgin Mary with the Baby on her knees. She is wrapped in a blue cloak, and her face is almost invisible. Her figure, painted in cold colors, contrasts with the environment, solved in warm colors, and therefore involuntarily attracts the viewer's attention. Behind her, the figure of Joseph rises in a light silhouette, attentively listening to the whispering of a passerby. In front of Mary are three wise men. Two, kneeling, offer their gifts to the Christ Child.

The expressions of their senile faces are like grimaces. On the left side of Madonna Belshazzar. His dark Negro face contrasts sharply with his white robes. At the entrance, inside and around the barn, where Mary gave birth to the Christ Child, people are crowding mocking the event, their facial expressions are extremely cruel. Among them are many soldiers with lances, the tips of which are directed to the sky. Thus, the artist, as it were, transfers the Birth of Christ to his contemporary, war-torn Netherlands. Artistic images Brueghel are overloaded with semantic content: allusions to topicality, biblical allegory, the play of the artist's own imagination - all this is included in the narrow framework of one work.

Brueghel's creations require intense attention from the viewer, disturbing with their ambiguity, awakening the imagination.

All this gives the deepest meaning to his painting Adoration of the Magi, which is kept in the London National Gallery.

HARVEST

There are five known paintings by Brueghel (1525/1530-1569) dedicated to the seasons, and one of them is Harvest located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She, like the rest, was commissioned by the long-term patron of the artist Niklas Jongelinck for his house near Antwerp.

This series reflects the medieval tradition of decorating calendars with images of human activities related to a particular month of the year. "Harvest" is believed to correspond to August. At the same time, this is already a purely Renaissance work, the influence of Italian painting Renaissance, the wealth of which Brueghel could see during his journey. However, everything perceived by him was greatly reworked, and his own, Brueghelian, perception of the world comes to the fore. Take, for example, the fact that none of his contemporaries created such landscapes and panoramic pictures of peasant labor.

The landscape spreads freely - a golden sea of ​​wheat, a village and yellow fields in the distance - goes into a foggy haze, to a distant lake. This space is inhabited by people who reap, knit sheaves, carry a huge cart of wheat, eat and sleep under a tree, and there, in the village, they also do household chores. Brueghel often visited countryside and knew well peasant life. She was a constant source of inspiration for him.

Able to mercilessly expose the bad sides of human nature, Brueghel portrayed the peasants with sympathy and admiration for their work and rest.

Here, as in other works of the cycle, the balance of nature and man is emphasized, which is achieved only decent life. To the conclusion about the contract between man and nature - read God - the world rests, Brueghel unobtrusively sums up his picture.

P. Brueghel "The Misanthrope" (1568). Museum of Capodimonte, Naples

The main thing in the work of Pieter Brueghel (the Elder) is a reflection on human vices, frailty, stupidity or earthiness of human life.

Pieter Brueghel (the Elder)(circa 1525-1569) - Dutch painter and graphic artist, master of landscape and genre scenes. His work is attributed to Northern Renaissance(stages of development of the Renaissance in Italy and in the countries Western Europe do not match).

Pieter Brueghel did not paint commissioned portraits, but people are constantly present in many of his paintings, and most often they are villagers. Nature and man in it - that's what interested the artist most of all. Only at the end of his work began to appear pictures in which the main attention is riveted to the personalities of people. But even in them in the foreground there is a philosophical understanding of life, as well as a satire on human weaknesses. Brueghel was the founder of the democratic direction in the Netherlands art XVI century, in his paintings he reveals the prisoners among the people vitality, his dignity and inexhaustible love of life, but does not ignore the vices common to all mankind.

Many of Brueghel's paintings are allegorical. He is often called the "wise man" in painting. Allegory required the time in which the artist lived - then the Spanish Duke of Alba came to the Netherlands to destroy heretics (not Catholics) in the Netherlands. During his presence in a foreign land, he sentenced to death several thousand of the Netherlands, planted terror. The last years of the artist's life just passed at this time.

P. Bruegel "Massacre of the Innocents" (1565)

P. Breigel "Massacre of the Innocents" (1565)

Oil, 109.2 x 158.1 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

In the painting The Massacre of the Innocents, Brueghel uses the gospel story told by the Apostle Matthew, but this story is modified, only associations remain. And they are not random. The Gospel of Matthew says that Herod the Great, illegally occupying the Jewish throne, was horrified at the mere thought that the throne he had seized could pass from him to the true king of the Jews. When Jesus Christ was born, Herod ordered the destruction of all babies under 2 years old (corresponding to the age of Christ) in order to preserve the throne. And the painting by Brueghel depicts an attack by Spanish soldiers on a Flemish village. The village was cordoned off, there is nowhere to escape. In the picture, Herod's soldiers are dressed in Spanish uniforms, and Bethlehem is associated with the Dutch countryside.

Having a gospel basis, the picture is still about contemporary life for Brueghel, about specific circumstances and people. The people in the picture are depicted as a defenseless and faceless mass, which is not able to resist foreign soldiers.

Another philosophical picture-association is “The Parable of the Blind”.

P. Brueghel "The Parable of the Blind" (1568)

Tempera on canvas, 86x154 cm. Capodimonte Museum, Naples

The plot of the picture is based on the biblical parable: "If the blind lead the blind, then both of them will fall into the pit." The parable, of course, speaks of spiritual blindness. The artist also depicted physical blindness: six blind people are walking, holding on to each other. The dam on which they move descends and makes a sharp turn. The guide does not see this, stumbles and falls into the water, followed by the next one. The third has not yet fallen, but its fate is already sealed. And the other three do not yet know what happened and continue to move ...

The theme is amazing in its tragedy. Look how serene nature is in the artist’s picture, and against the background of this serenity, a catastrophe occurs, for dying people this is exactly the case. The laws of nature are immutable and exist on their own, and people, with their own laws, exist on their own.

In principle, Brueghel shows only one episode, everyday and ordinary on the scale of humanity: well, an accident, how many people die tragically(and especially nowadays!) Will anyone pay attention to this? If only one of the relatives sigh with regret. And perhaps it won't. The event is not historical at all. But the artist puts into it philosophical meaning: no one will escape the fate of the blind, because we always hope that we are leading, but in fact they are leading us, and sometimes we don’t even know who exactly is leading us and where. Maybe we are one step away from the abyss?

P. Brueghel "The Fall of Icarus" (1558)

Oil on canvas, 73.5x112 cm. Royal Museum Fine Arts, Brussels

This painting by Brueghel is the most famous, but mysterious. However, like almost all other paintings by this author. Everyone can interpret the meaning by virtue of their artistic preferences or by virtue of their imagination. What is shown in the picture? An ordinary everyday scene: a peaceful plowman goes about his business; the fisherman, apparently, began to peck the fish, and this moment is very important for him; shepherd and his flock. And again, as in other paintings by this artist, amazing nature ... Yes, here the shepherd is looking into the sky with interest. What did he see there? But in the name of the canvas there is the word "Icarus". Where is he? It is difficult to notice him right away, you have to peer into the picture - and here are the legs sticking out of the water ... This is Icarus. The artist depicted him not at the triumphant moment of the flight, but in a humiliating pose, which somehow does not suit the hero ... However, his face is not visible either. And the shepherd, perhaps, is looking at the flying Daedalus ...

We all remember Greek myth about Daedalus and Icarus, there is no point in retelling him here. But why is Icarus depicted by Brueghel not at all in a romantic halo, but as a loser who has suffered a complete defeat? This can only be guessed at. Perhaps the artist shows the logical end of pride - disobedience to the father, flight to the sun itself ... Or maybe, on the contrary, depicts heroic personality through the eyes of the townsfolk, for whom their current well-being is most important. The sublime and the mundane are contrasted. The flight of human thought and fantasy - and earthiness. No one cares about the daredevil who dared to fly up to the sun itself, everyone is only busy with their own pressing problem. Years, decades, centuries pass, they talk a lot about the value of a person. But nothing changes.

P. Brueghel "Forty on the gallows" (1568)

Art Gallery, City Hall, Darmstadt

it last picture artist. In it, the image of the gallows is associated with Spanish rule, and the magpie is associated with gossips. It was on denunciations and rumors that the terror of Alba rested.

But at the same time, the people are surprisingly careless and indifferent: under the very gallows, they arranged a dance, as if the gallows could be for a person an ordinary object of his being. The landscape of the picture is magnificent, a romantic haze covers the surroundings, palaces ... And a person is swarming in his narrow little world and does not understand the meaning of life. "Life, why are you given to me"?

Fate and time, the grandeur of the universe and the place of man in it - these are the questions that Pieter Brueghel the Elder asks us with his work. Dutch art in his person received a powerful basis, giving rise to the art of Holland and Flanders in the 17th century, although the artist himself combined in his work the traditions of I. Bosch and L. Leydensky.

Self-portrait by Pieter Brueghel (1565)

Brueghel had two sons, both of whom became artists. One is known as Pieter Brueghel the Younger (nickname Infernal), the other, Jan Brueghel, had the nickname Velvet. They were talented artists. But they could not rise to the heights of their father's creativity.

) or the village of Bregel near this city.

The artist's name was originally written brueghel(this spelling was preserved by the names of his children), however, from 1559 he began to sign his paintings Bruegel.

He began his creative biography as a graphic artist, by the mid-1540s he ended up in Antwerp, where he studied in the workshop of Peter Cook van Aelst, the court painter of Emperor Charles V.

Brueghel worked in Van Alst's workshop until the death of his teacher in 1550. In 1551, Brueghel was accepted into the Antwerp guild of painters and went to work in the workshop of Hieronymus Cock, who printed and sold engravings. In Kok's workshop, the artist saw prints from Bosch's paintings, which made such an impression on him that he painted his own variations on the themes of the great artist.

As far as is known, Brueghel did not paint commissioned portraits and nudes. Of the portraits attributed to Brueghel, only one undoubtedly belongs to him - "Portrait of an Old Woman" (1564, Alte Pinakothek). Surely the artist had no shortage of orders for portraits of his contemporaries, but apparently, Brueghel did not accept them.

In 1564, the painting "Adoration of the Magi" was painted, and in 1565 - a cycle of six paintings "The Seasons" (or "Twelve Months"), one of which is currently lost. In late medieval illustrated prayer books for the nobility, religious texts were often preceded by a calendar, where there was a page for each month. The change of seasons was depicted most often through the prism of the occupations corresponding to each month. But for Brueghel, nature plays the main role in the change of seasons, and people, just like forests, mountains, water, animals, become only part of the vast landscape. All pictures of the cycle - “Return of the herds. Autumn”, “Hunters in the snow. Winter”, “Haymaking”, “Harvest. Summer "and" Gloomy day. Spring "- the same format and probably made for one customer. Karel van Mander calls them the rich Antwerp merchant Nicholas Jongelinck, who later, urgently in need of a large sum of money, gave all the paintings as collateral and never redeemed them.

More than thirty of the approximately forty-five paintings by Brueghel (or attributed to him) are devoted to depicting nature, the village and its inhabitants. Faceless representatives of the rural lower classes become the main characters of his work: in his drawings, he often hides his face altogether. But many later works testify to the artist's growing interest in individual characters. The artist begins to paint large figures of people, in relation to which the environment plays an already subordinate role. These paintings include "The Parable of the Blind", "The Destroyer of Nests" (another name is "The Peasant and the Destroyer of Nests"), "Cripples" and "Misanthrope".

Pieter Brueghel was about forty when the army of the Spanish Duke of Alba entered Brussels with orders to exterminate the heretics in the Netherlands. Over the following years, Alba sentenced several thousand Dutch people to death. The last years of his life were spent in an atmosphere of terror planted by Alba. About one of Brueghel's last works - " Magpie on the gallows" (1568, Hesse Museum) - van Mander writes that "he bequeathed to his wife a picture with a magpie on the gallows. Magpie means gossipers whom he would like to see hanged. The gallows were associated with Spanish rule, when the authorities began to sentence to a shameful death by hanging predicates, and the terror of Alba itself was based almost exclusively on rumors and denunciations. The painting "Massacre of the Innocents" contains an image of a sinister man in black, watching the execution of the order of King Herod; the resemblance of this character to Alba hints at the comparison of King Philip II with Herod.

Van Mander also reports on the last painting by Brueghel, The Triumph of Truth, which he calls the best in the artist's work, which has not survived to our time.