Hello and welcome back to our weekly blog where twice a week we get a new blog article to embark on a new adventure through history.

In the last article, we saw the art of the brilliant and talented artist, Raphael. In this article, we have a new art gallery to see *Drumrolls please*

And our artist for the day is…Pieter Brueghel the Elder
 

A bit about the artist

Pieter Brueghel the Elder was an innovative Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker, known for his sweeping landscapes and peasant scenes. He was apprenticed early in his life to painter Pieter Croecke van Aelst, and in 1551 around the age of 26, he was accepted into a painter’s guild in Antwerp as a master painter.

Nicknamed “Peasant Brueghel,” he would often don peasant’s clothing and attend social gatherings and weddings, to mingle and interact with the locals and gain insight and inspiration for his paintings.

As a pioneer in what would soon be called “genre painting”, he portrayed social aspects of 16th-century life, many of which were paintings of peasants, with a large landscape element.

Now, for the part we've all been eager for,I’m sure you all are curious to see his art. Well then, why don’t we get to it?
 

To the art gallery

One of Bruegel's earlier and well-known paintings was The Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Though the painting may look like any ordinary landscape painting, if we look close to the shore in the bottom right, two legs kick in the air: a comically minute reference to the infamous myth, all of which seems to unfold in the background of the scene.
Some say that the displacement of Icarus from centre stage has been interpreted as a directive to remain focused on one's own daily life.


The Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel The Elder, 1563 painted with Oil on canvas. It is now located in Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts,Belgium.  

This is one of three paintings Bruegel created around the Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel. As we can see, Bruegel’s treatment of this biblical episode is full of meticulous details. Looking closely at the Tower we can see that he’s depicted various architectural styles and building techniques- an allusion to the chaos and confusion which, as the story goes, besieged the project after God created different languages to prevent builders from communicating and thus completing their tower to the heaven.


The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel The Elder, 1563, painted with Oil on panel. It is now located in ‎the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

This painting is one of many created by Bruegel showing rural peasants in scenes of leisure and celebration. The prevailing thought amongst artists of the Renaissance was that only religion, mythology, and the lives of great men were fit subjects for painting, Bruegel was the only artist to ever produce such a piece since, at that time, where peasants were used as figures of mockery, considering them stupid, drunken, and prone to violence.


The Wedding Dance by Pieter Bruegel The Elder, 1566 with Oil on wood. It is now located in The Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan