Pieter Bruegel

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.

The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/30-1569) were marked by stark cultural conflict. He witnessed religious wars, the Duke of Alba's brutal rule as governor of the Netherlands, and the palpable effects of the Inquisition. To this day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to its humanistic content. Starting out as a print designer for publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape panoramas. He would eventually increasingly turn to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels. This monograph is a testament to Bruegel's evolution as an artist, one who bravely confronted the issues of his day all the while proposing new inventions and solutions. Rather than idealizing reality, he addressed the horrors of religious warfare and took a critical stand against the institution of the Church. To this end, he developed his own pictorial language of dissidence, lacing innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to escape repercussions. To produce this XXL-sized collection, TASCHEN undertook a comprehensive photographic campaign, capturing all the breadth and splendid detail of Bruegel's oeuvre like never before. The result gathers all 40 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 engravings in pristine reproductions--each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel's time.Marking the 450th anniversary of his death and his first ever monographic exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, this volume is the most immersive journey into Bruegel's unique visual universe.

In Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community Barbara Kaminska offers the first book-length study of Bruegel’s biblical paintings, and argues that they were inherently linked to Antwerp’s religious, socio-economic, and cultural transformation.

In this delightfully engaging book, Walter S. Gibson takes a new look at Bruegel, arguing that the artist was no erudite philosopher, but a man very much in the world, and that a significant part of his art is best appreciated in the context of humour.

Unique survey of best works by16th-century Flemish printmaker presents 64 engravings and one woodcut, each accompanied by an informative essay. Subjects include landscapes, ships and the sea, peasants, humor, and religion.

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.

A fresh account of the life, ideas, and art of the beloved Northern Renaissance master. In sixteenth-century Northern Europe, during a time of increasing religious and political conflict, Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel explored how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critical eye and peerless paintbrush to mankind’s labors and pleasures, its foibles and rituals of daily life, portraying landscapes, peasant life, and biblical scenes in startling detail. Much like the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bruegel questioned how well we really know ourselves and also how we know, or visually read, others. His work often represented mankind’s ignorance and insignificance, emphasizing the futility of ambition and the absurdity of pride. This superbly illustrated volume examines how Bruegel’s art and ideas enabled people to ponder what it meant to be human. Published to coincide with the four-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Bruegel’s death, it will appeal to all those interested in art and philosophy, the Renaissance, and Flemish painting.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Fall of the Rebel Angels is the first comprehensive book on one of the most cherished masterpieces of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.