Bruegel

This stunning compilation of the work Pieter Bruegel, the 16th century's most famous Netherlandish artist, is being published in anticipation of the 450-year anniversary of the artist's death.

A bold new interpretation of two northern Renaissance masters In this visually stunning and much anticipated book, acclaimed art historian Joseph Koerner casts the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel in a completely new light, revealing how the painting of everyday life was born from what seems its polar opposite: the depiction of an enemy hell-bent on destroying us. Supreme virtuoso of the bizarre, diabolic, and outlandish, Bosch embodies the phantasmagorical force of painting, while Bruegel, through his true-to-life landscapes and frank depictions of peasants, is the artistic avatar of the familiar and ordinary. But despite their differences, the works of these two artists are closely intertwined. Bruegel began his career imitating Bosch's fantasies, and it was Bosch who launched almost the whole repertoire of later genre painting. But Bosch depicts everyday life in order to reveal it as an alluring trap set by a metaphysical enemy at war with God, whereas Bruegel shows this enemy to be nothing but a humanly fabricated mask. Attending closely to the visual cunning of these two towering masters, Koerner uncovers art history’s unexplored underside: the image itself as an enemy. An absorbing study of the dark paradoxes of human creativity, Bosch and Bruegel is also a timely account of how hatred can be converted into tolerance through the agency of art. It takes readers through all the major paintings, drawings, and prints of these two unforgettable artists—including Bosch’s notoriously elusive Garden of Earthly Delights, which forms the core of this historical tour de force. Elegantly written and abundantly illustrated, the book is based on Koerner’s A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, a series given annually at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

The perfect companion for the Bruegel year of 2019: an introduction to the famous painter through stunning large close-up details in a beautiful coffee table book. Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569), known for his beautiful landscapes and peasant scenes, is among the most popular artists in the history of Netherlandish painting. Reproducing all of Bruegel's best-known paintings, drawings and prints, this book reveals them as never before, in stunning large close-up details that showcase his mastery. Organized by his major themes - landscapes, daily life, biblical subjects and festive celebrations - it offers astonishing views of popular works of art such as Hunters in the Snow, Peasant Wedding and The Tower of Babel. The printings and drawings section includes his series on Sins and Virtues. Bruegel expert Manfred Sellink reveals how the painter introduced new subject matter into fine art and examines his use of landscape, perhaps the artist's greatest innovation.

The question of how to understand Bruegel’s art has cast the artist in various guises: as a moralizing satirist, comedic humanist, celebrator of vernacular traditions, and proto-ethnographer. Stephanie Porras reorients these apparently contradictory accounts, arguing that the debate about how to read Bruegel has obscured his pictures’ complex relation to time and history. Rather than viewing Bruegel’s art as simply illustrating the social realities of his day, Porras asserts that Bruegel was an artist deeply concerned with the past. In playing with the boundaries of the familiar and the foreign, history and the present, Bruegel’s images engaged with the fraught question of Netherlandish history in the years just prior to the Dutch Revolt, when imperial, religious, and national identities were increasingly drawn into tension. His pictorial style and his manipulation of traditional iconographies reveal the complex relations, unique to this moment, among classical antiquity, local history, and art history. An important reassessment of Renaissance attitudes toward history and of Renaissance humanism in the Low Countries, this volume traces the emergence of archaeological and anthropological practices in historical thinking, their intersections with artistic production, and the developing concept of local art history.

In this brilliant, original and lavishly illustrated book, Edward Snow undertakes an inquiry into a single painting by the Flemish master Peter Bruegel the Elder—the kaleidoscopic Children's Games—in order to unlock the secrets of the great painter's art.

Derived from the XXL monograph which saw TASCHEN undertake a comprehensive photographic survey of the artist's oeuvre, this compact edition explores Bruegel's 40 paintings through exceptional details and reproductions. We discover how, using his own pictorial language in scenes teeming with minutiae, Bruegel captured the theater of life.

The complete graphic work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, published in one luxurious edition. One of the greatest Netherlandish artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30–1569) is best known today for his paintings of peasant life. Yet it was, above all, through his exceptional graphic work that he achieved widespread fame during the sixteenth century. Bruegel offers readers the opportunity to get up close and personal with Bruegel’s famous prints, reproduced at actual size. The book provides a wonderful showcase of Bruegel’s imaginary world, featuring meticulous reproductions of his preparatory drawings and finished prints depicting Italian landscapes, the seven deadly sins, extraordinary figures, and more. Essays by a distinguished group of Bruegel scholars open the book. They discuss the Royal Library of Belgium’s collection of Bruegel prints; the results of the Fingerprint research project; Bruegel as draftsman and printmaker; Bruegel’s editions, in particular his collaboration with Hieronymus Cock; and the posthumous survival of his art. This luxurious book accompanies a major exhibition at the Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, a center of Bruegel scholarship that holds an unparalleled collection of the artist’s graphic work.