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Pieter Bruegel, the Elder
c. 1525-1569 Netherlands/Northern Renaissance
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Brief Biography-Scholars can only establish a few facts about Pieter Bruegel’s life, a painter of comic peasant scenes. He was born in the town of Breda in the duchy of Brabant. Pieter Coecke van Aelst apprenticed him, and in 1551, he became a member of the painter's guild in Antwerp before travelling to Rome. On his way there, he made sketches of the Alps, which he later incorporated into paintings such as Hunters in the Snow.
He worked for the publisher and print-seller Jerome Cock designing engravings for proverbs after he returned to Antwerp in 1555. During this time, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch influenced his work.
In 1562 he did drawings in Amsterdam before going to Brussels and marrying Mayken, the daughter of Pieter Coecke, his former master. Brussels gave him a leaning towards the Italian style through the influence of Raphael's tapestries, and he received the commission for The Months of the Year. He spent the last six years of his life in Brussels. |
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wedding dance
in the open air

haymaking
Blind Leading
The Blind

Hunters
in the snow

Massacare of
the Innocents

The Peasant
Dance

The Tower
of Babel

a tower
of babel

tower
of babel

two
monkies

The Corn
Harvest

The
Wedding Feast

The Suicide
of Saul

Fall of the
Rebel angels

Fight Between
Carnival and Lent

The Adoration
of the Kings

Old
Woman

Netherlandish
Proverbs

Christ Carrying
the Cross

Children's
Games

The
Triumph of Death

The Fall
of Icarus

The Peasant and
the Birdnester

The
Beggars

Winter Landscape
with a Bird Trap

Fight between
Carnival and Lent

Children's
Games

Tower of
Babel

Triumph of
Death

Christ Carrying
the Cross

Dulle
Griet

Fall of Rebel
Angels

Proverbs
Detail

The
Procession

detail
1

detail
2

detail
3

detail
4

detail
5

Land of
Cockaigne

Dulle
Griet

the animals entering
noah's ark
