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diff --git a/75540-0.txt b/75540-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a782efa --- /dev/null +++ b/75540-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1412 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75540 *** + + + + + + PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER: + A STUDY OF HIS PAINTINGS + + +[Illustration: HUNTERS IN THE SNOW (DETAIL)] + + + + + PIETER BRUEGEL + THE ELDER + + A STUDY OF HIS PAINTINGS + + BY + + VIRGIL BARKER + + NEW YORK + THE ARTS PUBLISHING CORPORATION + 1926 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1926 + BY THE ARTS PUBLISHING CORPORATION + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + +Note+ + + +Most of the material included in this book was originally published +in a special Bruegel edition of +The Arts+. Mr. Barker’s essay met +with such immediate success that in order to meet the demand the +editor decided to increase the number of illustrations and publish Mr. +Barker’s noteworthy essay in permanent form. + +Comparatively little has been written in English on Pieter Bruegel +the Elder, nothing in fact except a few passing magazine articles. At +the request of the artists +The Arts+ undertook to supply this want. +In selecting Mr. Barker to carry out this important work +The Arts+ +was particularly fortunate. Besides being an ardent student of the +genius of Bruegel, the author, in the course of his duties as European +correspondent of +The Arts+, was able to carry on the special research +necessary to give permanent value to the following essay. + + +Forbes Watson.+ + +[Illustration: THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL (DETAIL)] + + + + + PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER + + A STUDY OF HIS PAINTINGS + + +Aside from the evidence of the signed and frequently dated prints, +drawings and paintings, few things are certainly known about the life +and personality of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Almost all of these, +such as they are, occur in a brief passage concerning him, written +about thirty years after his death, in “The Book of the Painters” by +Carel Van Mander. Herein is no mention of the date of Bruegel’s birth; +even the place of it, despite a seeming definiteness, remains in some +obscurity. His biographer says that the painter was born “not far from +Breda, in a village called Breughel,[1] by which name he called himself +and left it to his descendants.” The village of that name nearest to +Breda is twenty-five miles away; and as distances went in the sixteenth +century, this seems hardly to be bridged by Van Mander’s easy phrase. +As for the year, the guesses of the scholars range all the way from +1510 to 1530, the most widely accepted one being 1525. Any closer +determination of it is a matter of comparative unimportance in its +possible effect on the period of actual productiveness, since this is +very satisfactorily covered by trustworthy dates. + + [1] There are several different ways of spelling this name, each + having some degree of authority; but so far as concerns the painter + himself, the deciding fact is that the signatures now visible on + the paintings (about twenty in number) consistently adhere to + BRVEGEL. + +And whatever the exact year may have been, it had not been long before +when for Europeans the geographical world had been suddenly enlarged +as a sort of materialization of the immediately preceding enlargement +of mind. The succession of discoveries—of America; of India and the +true Indies; of Sumatra, Java and Borneo; and, two hundred and fifty +years after Marco Polo, of China—were only the working on another +plane of the essentially exploring spirit which had been previously +manifested by the scholars, scientists and artists of the Early +Renaissance. National unity on a fresh basis had been realized in Spain +through the expulsion of the Moors, and in both France and England +under absolute monarchies which were headed, at the time of Bruegel’s +birth, by Francis I and Henry VIII. About that time, also, Magellan +was circumnavigating the globe and Cortez was conquering Mexico; +Leonardo and Raphael were dying, and shortly after them went Carpaccio, +Leo X and Signorelli. Martin Luther, preaching the Reformation in +Germany, was thus initiating a movement of ruinous significance for +Bruegel’s homeland; for there the cause of religious liberty, gradually +coalescing with that of political independence, was to meet with the +terrible repressions begun by the newly elected Emperor, Charles Quint, +who was already by inheritance lord of the Low Countries. + +During all this period of ferment and reorientation for the European +mind, Antwerp, where Bruegel was to spend most of his life, was one of +the most important of all ports. Situated in what was then the most +densely populated region of Europe, it had in its own houses a hundred +thousand persons; and of these more than a tenth were foreigners—German +merchants, Italian scholars, Portuguese Jews, French Huguenots, English +sailors and the soldiers of Spain. Far-journeyed vessels brought to +it the spices and rich stuffs, the metal-work and strange animals +of distant lands; and their seamen had tales to tell of things far +off towards the expanding horizons of the world. In this comfortable +and prosperous city, where the sharp demarcations between classes +prevalent in other countries were blurred almost into a real democracy +of the bourgeois, every fresh discovery and important event had its +repercussion in the general consciousness. + +Antwerp was thus a natural center of activity for the religious +propaganda and disputation which formed so large and so tragic an +element in the life of the sixteenth century; creeds of all sorts +readily found adherents among its varied and impressionable populace. +Lutheranism was so strongly advocated by the convent of Augustinian +monks that its inmates were dispersed, after the execution of two +among them, and its buildings razed. Though the terrorism of the +Inquisitor Van der Hulst and his priestly successors imposed silence +on many, there were open preachings as well as clandestine meetings, +and riots in which religion-frenzied women were among the boldest; and +with all the burnings of the books, with all the imprisonments and +the brandings, the full penalties of the imperial edicts could hardly +be enforced by those who were conscious that such enforcement would +destroy the principal source of the Emperor’s precarious revenue. +Even the anarchy of Anabaptism, persecuted by Catholic and Protestant +alike, made headway through the martyrdom of its believers; and from +1544, almost the very year when the young Pieter Bruegel commenced his +apprenticeship, the new sectarianism of Calvin entered the city and +grew rapidly in strength. + +[Illustration: BIG FISH EAT LITTLE ONES (DRAWING). 1556. VIENNA, + ALBERTINA] + +While he was growing up, the English and the French were subduing +the North American continent and in the Andes Pizarro was rifling +the wealth of Peru; Rome was being pillaged by the Germans; Henry +VIII was finally repudiating Catholicism and Ignatius of Loyola was +in a way belatedly replying to Luther by organizing the Society of +Jesuits; Hampton Court Palace, the French chateaux and the palaces of +Venice were being built; Erasmus, Dürer, Machiavelli, Luini, Ariosto, +Correggio died. As yet unconscious of such events and such personages, +perhaps ignorant of the nearer deaths of Quentin Matsys and Lucas +van Leyden, the youth of nameless family was living a peasant among +peasants—and a genius in the making—sharing to full their laborious, +roistering life. Hard drinkers and heavy eaters, they were much given +to feasts and fairs; marriages, baptisms, even deaths were for them +occasions for celebrations as excessive as the labor from which they +thus escaped. Their animal frankness and coarse gaiety blew like a gale +of rude health over all their activities. From life itself, from the +small events in a remote village of the _Campine_, Bruegel absorbed +the great sane grossness which now seems buried in the books of his +day. Bringing with him the peasant vitality which was to develop +into a lofty philosophic humaneness, he came to Antwerp and, a youth +approaching his twentieth year, became an apprentice to the celebrated +Pieter Coeck. Paracelsus, Copernicus and Holbein had just died; Bruegel +had hardly learned to grind his colors when French Francis and English +Henry followed them, even as their sometime enemy, sometime ally, +Charles, was bloodily but only temporarily settling religious questions +at Mühlberg. + +[Illustration: THE LAST JUDGMENT (DRAWING). 1558. VIENNA, ALBERTINA] + +[Illustration: A VILLAGE WEDDING. PHILADELPHIA, JOHNSON COLLECTION] + +From his first master Bruegel must have received somewhat more than a +merely technical training, good as that probably was. Coeck had been +for four years the pupil of Bernard van Orley and had later studied +in Rome; in his own work afterwards he relied to such an extent upon +the formulas then worked out that all of it now seems borrowed; but +the precepts that he would pass on to an apprentice could not dull or +conventionalize so forceful a nature as Bruegel’s. Of more significance +in the development of such a nature must have been the stories of far +countries that were told, adding to his knowledge and stimulating his +imagination; for Coeck had spent the year of 1533 in the Constantinople +of Suleiman the Magnificent and had been one of the _entourage_ of +Charles on his expedition to Tunis in 1538. Painter to the Emperor and +Dean of the Guild of Saint Luke, Pieter Coeck died in 1550. Then or +before Bruegel passed over to the work-shop of Jerome Cock, who was not +so much a painter as a dealer in pictures and a publisher of popular +prints. His establishment “was certainly the rendezvous of all the +artists and all the amateurs of Antwerp and even from abroad. Rendered +in engraving, the greater number of existing masterpieces would pass +under the eyes of the attentive Bruegel.” (Bernard: p. 58.) The very +shop-name, “At the Sign of the Four Winds,” symbolized the range of +influences that played over him, the sights and tales that passed into +his consciousness; and for Bruegel these things could be only so many +more incitements to journey into the world and see it all for himself. + +Therefore it is not surprising that, after he had completed his +apprenticeship and been received into the painter’s guild, in 1551, +he should set out upon his travels. Such a trip in those days was no +light undertaking. All frontiers were insecure since the wars between +Charles and Francis for continental domination; for little or nothing +soldiers turned into robbers. Van Mander mentions neither routes nor +places, writing only that Bruegel “went into France and from there into +Italy.” Even the drawings now preserved afford no positive information +as to the way he went—a circumstance which might be interpreted to +mean that already he was interested less in telling what a specific +place looked like than in rendering the emotional effect of nature +upon himself. But two designs now preserved as etchings are signed +and dated at Rome in 1553, and there is a drawing of the Ripa Grande +which appears to have been done on the spot. The print of a naval +battle engraved by Huys and published by Cock after Bruegel’s return to +Antwerp indicates that he went as far south as Messina. + +[Illustration: DANCING PEASANT. THE HAGUE, VAN VALKENBURG COLLECTION] + +When he passed through France, François Clouet and Germain Pilon were +practising their art of tepid grace; when he reached Rome, the Sistine +Chapel paintings had been completed, but not the church of Saint Peter. +At the height of their working powers were Michelangelo, Titian, +Palestrina, Palladio; and Benvenuto Cellini was doubling in the roles +of artist and bandit. There is no proof that Bruegel had any contact +with these men; that he even saw their works is recorded neither in +words nor in the paintings by which he lives today in their company. +It is certainly reasonable, however, to suppose that the fame of his +contemporaries had not only reached him but actually played a part in +persuading him to his long wayfaring. Though still in his twenties, he +even then had sufficiently a mind of his own to avoid the mistake of +his predecessors, who had gone south specifically to copy and imitate +the styles of the Italian painters. In their journeying they were +following a fashion, doing something because others were doing it; +Bruegel’s urge was both deeper and broader, as his genius was. + +Yes, the artistic, the professional, motive must have had much to do +with sending him to Italy, but the only way of expressing the sum total +of the desires that undoubtedly animated him is to say that he must +have craved more life. + + “For to admire an’ for to see, + For to be’old this world so wide”— + +no motive less comprehensive than this could have moved him. He was a +great artist in the making, but he was even more a man than an artist; +for him the art of other men could be only a part, and not the most +important part, of the all-inclusive experience of which he was in +search. Only such a conception of his personality can account for the +failure of the Italian masterpieces to influence him then or thereafter +and his own immediate and life-long preoccupation with the entire range +of nature and of human life. Moreover, so much can be inferred from Van +Mander’s only other reference to this momentous trip, a reference which +takes the form of reporting somebody else’s remark that “... in the +Alps he swallowed all the rocks and mountains, to return home and vomit +them out on painting-board and canvas....” + + + 2. + +Towards the end of 1553, not long after the deaths of Rabelais and +Lucas Cranach, Bruegel was back in Antwerp. He again became affiliated +with the shop of Jerome Cock, but now as a sort of collaborator, making +drawings for many plates to be engraved by others and published by the +shop. As a successful business man with an eye to the market, Cock’s +specialties were landscapes of all types and grotesqueries in the +manner of Jerome Bosch, dead thirty-five years before, whose works were +a mine of motives for exploitation. The former apprentice proved to be +an even greater source of revenue and popularity for “The Four Winds”; +he shared completely in the contemporary taste served by the shop and +for several years devoted himself entirely to new and increasingly +inventive compositions in each _genre_. + +[Illustration: STUDY FOR A “BATTLE BETWEEN FAT AND LEAN.” 1558? + COPENHAGEN, ROYAL COLLECTION] + +The pure landscapes of this period fall into two very distinct +divisions—the small, intimate ones and the large, composite ones. +Among the first sort those of such obviously picturesque things as +ruins are less interesting, seem less realized, than those depicting +the homely commonplaces characteristic of the Low Countries. An +indefinite and puddled village street, a church set among trees, +the hybrid ruralness where town and country meet—the buildings +and small figures rendered in a clean, unwavering line and the +massed multitude of leaves given without a superfluous or unmeaning +scribble—these things, conveyed with such immediacy by the free and +sensitive pen-work, become sharp-edged and lose their bloom through +the interposition of the engraver’s hand. Though his return gave him +to see all the littlenesses about him with the freshness of a first +encounter, it did not make him forget the mountains which had struck +so deeply into his mind; and he composed a whole series of large, +Latin-titled designs in which the far and low horizons of home were +fabulously combined with Alpine steeps. In these plates, deeper than +the romanticism of their composite character, is an immense and sober +poetry which transpires even through the hardness of the engraving. + +[Illustration: BATTLE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT. 1559. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: BATTLE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT (DETAIL)] + +[Illustration: THE DESCENT OF CHRIST INTO LIMBO (DRAWING). 1561? + VIENNA, ALBERTINA] + +One print, dated the very year of his return, a composition of many +people skating just outside a city wall, is obviously based on direct +observation and is Bruegel’s first essay in the realistic rendering +of the life of crowds which was later to play so large a part in his +painting; but yet awhile the greater part of his labor went into a long +succession of drolleries and diabolisms. + +[Illustration: FLEMISH PROVERBS. 1559. BERLIN, KAISER FRIEDRICH MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: CHILDREN’S GAMES. 1560. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +It is in connection with this part, and this part only, of his +life-work that there arises any necessity of discussing the influence +of another painter on Bruegel. Van Mander treats the matter thus: +“He practised much in the manner of Jerome Bosch and used to make +many such goblin pictures and drolleries, for which he was called by +many _Pieter the Droll_.” The biographer here recorded the general +contemporary estimate which, though it is now seen to fall far short +of the truth, was surely natural enough, since in his own day Bruegel +was popularly known by the widely circulated prints rather than by the +unreproduced paintings. The _Big and Little Fish_ of 1556 is directly +from Bosch, and that his spirit and his manner did have an influence +upon Bruegel is not to be denied. But such influence as Bosch did exert +upon the man who had returned from Italy uninfluenced was possible only +because they shared in a racial streak which can be traced back of them +into the Middle Ages. The quality that allowed Bruegel to be influenced +by Bosch at all would have manifested itself in Bruegel’s art even if +Bosch had never lived. Moreover, Bosch’s art was limited almost to +this one type of subject-matter, whereas Bruegel’s art soon developed +other and far more important characteristics which overshadowed without +obliterating this element of grotesquerie. + +[Illustration: THE FALL OF THE REBEL ANGELS. 1562. BRUSSELS, MUSEUM] + +For the time being, however, it had free rein in a series of _Vices_ +and numerous separate plates such as _The Ass at School_, _The +Sorcerer_, _The Merchant Robbed by Monkeys_. In these prints there are, +in addition, a mastery of design, an inventiveness of detail and a +convincingness of outlandish imagination that far surpass Bosch’s most +ambitious efforts. A little of these qualities is to be discerned in +the two drawings of _The Last Judgment_ and _Christ in Limbo_; and they +also display Bruegel’s entire lack of any mystical fervor, which would +have imparted some sort of impressiveness to his Christs. This negative +trait in Bruegel, which is the exact obverse of the sort of humaneness +which made him great, is further shown in the series of _Virtues_, also +of this period; although these occasionally exhibit a high degree of +skill in handling complex groupings, they are what professionalized +virtues are apt to be—tedious. + +[Illustration: BATTLE BETWEEN THE ISRAELITES AND THE PHILISTINES. 1562 + OR 1563. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +Midway in this prosperous and fertile time of development the Emperor +Charles, taken with the notion of enjoying all the benefits of being +dead while yet alive, partitioned the empire between his brother and +his son, and himself retired in state to a monastery in Spain. From +this haven, free of governmental responsibilities, he was able, through +his dutiful son Philip, to instigate increasingly severe measures of +religious and political repression for the people of the northern +lowlands. Yet such things did not affect the personal liberty of +Bruegel, who was maintaining an irregular establishment described by +Van Mander in the following anecdote: “As long as he lived in Antwerp, +he kept house with a servant-girl, whom he might have married had it +not misfortuned him that she was always telling lies, a thing repugnant +to his love of truth. He made an agreement or contract with her that he +should mark all her lies on a stick—and he took a pretty long one—and +when the stick should be full of marks the marriage should be off; +which then happened before much time had passed.” + +[Illustration: HEAD OF AN OLD PEASANT WOMAN. 1564? MUNICH. ALTE + PINAKOTHEK] + +More important is what Van Mander tells us of a friendship: “He worked +much for a merchant named Hans Frankert, an admirable and excellent +man, who found pleasure in knowing Bruegel and was with him whole +days at a time. With this man Frankert, Bruegel often went among the +peasants, to fairs and marriages, both dressed like peasants; and they +took presents like the others, just as if they belonged to the family +or acquaintance of the bride or the bridegroom. Here Bruegel found his +pleasure in observing the manners of the peasants in eating, drinking, +dancing, jumping, loving and other fun-making; which things he then +very skilfully and carefully rendered again in colors, in water-color +as well as in oil, in both which mediums he was extraordinarily +talented.” Then Van Mander proceeds to stress the faithfulness and +accuracy of Bruegel’s peasant pictures in the details of costumes and +movements. In short, Bruegel had begun to paint. + +The earliest dated painting, _Twelve Flemish Proverbs_, is interesting +only because of its connection with Bruegel; its relative clumsiness +of execution and utterly unpictorial conception as a whole render it +very likely the first of his attempts in a new medium. However, this +picture and the others that must be grouped immediately with it mark +the definite emergence of what was thenceforward to be his predominant +interest—the life of the peasants, between whom and himself there +existed the unbreakable bonds of a common origin and a common destiny. +Thus he began at once to paint in accordance with the dictates of his +essentially realistic genius, but the first works of capital importance +still retain a large admixture of the fantastic spirit which had +been running riot in his recent designs for the engravings. These +two pictures are the _Carnival and Lent_ and the _Flemish Proverbs_ +in Berlin, both of the year 1559; in both fantasy is made convincing +through realistic treatment, just as the Van Eycks and Roger Van +der Weyden had made convincing their religious idealism, Bruegel’s +difference from them being simply a difference of subject-matter and a +still greater reliance upon realistic skill for its own sake. In the +_Children’s Games_ of the next year there occurs the first complete +union on a great scale of realism in both matter and manner; and two +years later, with the _Fall of the Rebel Angels_, a recurrence in +greatly intensified form of the combination between fantastic idea +and realistic treatment. This last painting, credited to Jerome Bosch +himself until the discovery of Bruegel’s signature, is infinitely +superior in conception and execution to anything by the earlier man, +and would alone rank its creator as a great painter; yet the greatness +it confers upon its maker is not the kind that is most truly Bruegel’s. +Through all these paintings of the Antwerp period there runs a rapidly +increasing technical skill—in drawing, color and design—until the +last picture that could possibly have been done before his removal to +Brussels, the _Israelites and Philistines_, is for minute workmanship +a world’s wonder. On a small panel about thirteen by twenty-two inches +Bruegel has put several hundred human beings, the largest of whom is +less than two and one-half inches, in a landscape setting of great +beauty, all done in such detail that one can count the spots on the +giraffes far away across the river—and all seen with so careful a +regard for values and design that it is a satisfactory picture from +whatever distance it is regarded, its details merging into the larger +relations as one views it from further off. Craftsmanship of this type +in painting can go no farther. + +[Illustration: “DULLE GRIET.” 1564. ANTWERP, VAN DEN BERGH COLLECTION] + + + 3. + +The cause of his leaving Antwerp was his marriage, which took place +in 1563. His choice had fallen upon the daughter of his first master, +Pieter Coeck. Twice during his brief notice on Bruegel, Van Mander +refers to the fact that “he had, while she was still small, often +carried her in his arms.” Her mother, after the father’s death, +had removed to Brussels and there successfully engaged in her own +profession of miniature painting; in consenting to the marriage she +“stipulated that Bruegel should leave Antwerp and settle down in +Brussels, in order that he might efface former love-affairs from his +eyes and his mind.” In this marriage was the beginning of what has +been well called the Bruegel dynasty. The two sons produced copies and +variations of their father’s paintings in such abundance that it is an +exceptional picture gallery in Europe which does not boast its +“_Breughel le Vieux_”; and these sons in their turn fathered a dozen +more painters. + +[Illustration: THE TOWER OF BABEL. 1563. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: THE CARRYING OF THE CROSS. 1564. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: THE CARRYING OF THE CROSS (DETAIL)] + +[Illustration: THE CARRYING OF THE CROSS (DETAIL)] + +[Illustration: THE ADORATION OF THE KINGS. 1564. LONDON, NATIONAL + GALLERY] + +But of them all, none approached the greatness of their original, +whose six years of married life were filled by the creation of +masterpieces—of realistic observation in the _Wedding Feast_ and +the _Peasant Dance_; of sheer imagination in the _Dulle Griet_ and +the _Triumph of Death_; of narrative power in the _Massacre of the +Innocents_; of the purest pictorialism in the _Conversion of Paul_; of +the indescribable _Carrying of the Cross_; of realism, imagination, +emotion and thought merged into the large harmonies of that great +series of five paintings, the _Months_. + +[Illustration: THE MISANTHROPE. 1565. NAPLES, NATIONAL MUSEUM] + +While he was achieving all this ordered beauty of art, the disorders of +the life around him were increasing at a fatally rapid pace. In Ghent +a mob sacked the Abbey of Saint Peter and, made drunk by the wine of +its cellars and the intoxication of destructiveness, ran smashingly at +large through the city. In Antwerp another mob totally destroyed the +rich and famous church of _Notre Dame_. Conflicts multiplied between +Catholics and Protestants, between civilians and soldiers; bands of +foreign mercenaries coursed through the country and open towns. The +Duke of Alva’s execution fires cast lurid lights upon the ruin and +decimation of what had once been the most prosperous region of Europe. + +Of Bruegel’s own reactions to all this his biographer, writing at a +time when it was almost a well-forgotten nightmare, makes no mention. +Van Mander’s single sentence of direct characterization is this: “He +was a very quiet and skilful man, who spoke little but was sociable +in society, and loved to frighten his companions, often also his own +pupils, with all kinds of goblin noises....” This does little to round +out the portrait of Bruegel the man, for once more the emphasis is +thrown upon that droll and amusing side of his nature which seems to +have appealed most to his own circle and thence been transmitted to Van +Mander. But that Bruegel was intensely aware of the tragedies about +him is evident enough in his works. The things he saw for himself are +set down in such pictures as the _Massacre of the Innocents_, yet with +such an all-sufficing objectiveness that it requires an effort of mind +to realize that that very convincingness comes from his having felt +the tragic reality he records. But it is impossible to escape from +the overwhelmingly personal quality of the thoughts set forth in the +hell-mouth horrors of the _Dulle Griet_ and the apocalyptic terrors +of the _Triumph of Death_. Moreover, Van Mander writes that Bruegel +had made many other “inventions” which were “so satirical and mordant +that on his death-bed he ordered them burnt by his wife, either from +repentance or from fear that his wife would get into trouble on account +of them.” + +[Illustration: THE PROVERB OF THE BIRD-NESTER. 1564–65? VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +Not many months before this happened the people of the Low Countries +commenced their final effort of revolt which was to establish their +freedom not until eleven years later. Bruegel left a world that was +hardly less black than the death into which he descended with open +eyes. At that very moment Montaigne was setting about to depict one +entire man with a vision as veracious as that of Bruegel; Cervantes was +soon to rival in words Bruegel’s power of making the fantastic real; +and only forty years later Shakespeare was to accomplish a re-creation +of human life that is more complete than Bruegel’s simply because the +medium of literature itself permits a more comprehensive embodiment +of the soul of man than is possible to the medium of paint. And the +painter who more than any other kept close to life belongs in the +company of these three. + +[Illustration: THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH. 1565 OR 1566. MADRID, PRADO] + +[Illustration: THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH (DETAIL)] + + + 4. + +The subject-matter of Bruegel’s great paintings is limited only by the +world and life.[2] The whole cycle of nature is in them—the seasons as +they pass over mountain, plain and moving waters; the dazzling beauty +of the southern sea, the northern cold. The entire range of human life +is in them; somewhere in these multitudes every emotion finds its +expressive gesture. Even all the animals that are intimately a part of +human life are given in their degrees of individuality. These pictures +seem to set before the eye every experience possible to man. + + [2] The succeeding remarks upon Bruegel’s art and mind, + disregarding both the minor and the debatable works, are based + specifically upon the paintings which are characteristically great. + +Always a tale is being told, but always it is story-telling of a +very definite kind. It is never a continuous narrative with a plot +involving the same characters in different circumstances. Thus Bruegel +was never obliged to arrange successive episodes of the same story +within one frame, as the older painters had done. All the things that +happen in his paintings could happen—do happen—just as he shows them, +at the same time and in just the relationship to each other that he +depicts. He always observes time unity and pulls together his wealth of +episode and by-play through unity of theme. + +[Illustration: THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH (DETAIL)] + +But on a given theme, at first, he attempted to say everything than can +be said about it. The picture in Berlin illustrates seventy proverbs; +the _Children’s Games_ is said to contain every one of the one hundred +and fifty-four varieties of play listed by Rabelais as the games of +Gargantua; the _Tower of Babel_ has been called a builders’ handbook; +the _Massacre of the Innocents_ apparently depicts every possible +attitude of parental grief and frenzy. This exuberance of episode, this +encyclopedic narrative utterance, had its literary counterpart in the +book just mentioned; it was in full accord with the taste of the time, +and Bruegel’s personal aptitude had been fostered and disciplined by +his long succession of drawings for the plates published by Cock. For +the paintings of this type he has thought out every possible visual +aspect of his story-matter and swept them all into a unity of design +not less remarkable than his unity of theme. + +[Illustration: THE NUMBERING AT BETHLEHEM. 1566. BRUSSELS, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 1566? VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +The astounding thing to be noted just here is the completeness with +which such an excessive amount of anecdote is arranged into a +functioning organism of narrative. In the _Carrying of the Cross_ the +movement of every one of the five hundred figures, the very expression +of every face, is determined by a completely organized story-action. +All the figures, even the minutest ones, play their parts in the whole +design as such; but their momentary relations as human beings, equally +complex, have been thought out and set down with equal thoroughness. +Every episode is a bar, every gesture a note, in Bruegel’s orchestrated +narrative. + +[Illustration: THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS (DETAIL)] + +But other paintings show that Bruegel realized the fundamental weakness +of this—the weakness of diversity of visual motive, distraction from +the pictorial whole. He exhibited a tendency towards the elimination +of all side-play, towards the reduction of subject-matter to a single +motive and a reliance upon emotional unity for the abiding impression. +His picture-making is still story-telling in that something happens +in terms of human action; but it is a single and casual event, and +the main interest is shifted from events to design and color as the +expression of mood. In the _Months_ he forgot all about narrative +complexity for its own sake, fixed his attention on the pure pictorial +beauty of people and of nature, and sought only the emotional meaning +of his theme. + + + 5. + +The nature of Bruegel’s work previous to taking up painting is written +at large and in detail over his early technical habits, but in these +also can be traced a development corresponding to the change just noted +in subject-matter. + +[Illustration: THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS (DETAIL)] + +[Illustration: THE FALL OF ICARUS. BRUSSELS, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL. 1567. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +In the earlier pictures color in general is conceived somewhat as +the worker in mosaic is compelled by his material to conceive it—as a +weaving-together of brilliant bits of pure color into a color design +which is itself thought out independently of other technical qualities. +There is harmony and richness, but there is not that melting tonality +which afterwards came to be looked upon as the last word in painting. +Above all else, there is an unbelievable brilliancy, especially where +Bruegel made a lavish use of vermilion. The chain of soldiers woven +through the multitude in the _Carrying of the Cross_ is one of the most +daring things to be found in painting; but for general sumptuousness of +color approaching to the fusion of later times there is, outside of the +_Months_, no equal in Bruegel’s work to the _Conversion of Paul_. And +always it is color used for its own sake, with great sensuous delight. +Yet always, again excepting the _Months_, it is color laid on to form +which has already been conceived as drawing; the color, superb in +itself, follows the form superbly; but the color and the drawing exist +independently of one another. + +[Illustration: THE WINE OF SAINT MARTIN (FRAGMENT). VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +At the beginning of his painting career it was his drawing especially +which was determined by his work for the engravers. For the masculine +style of engraving that prevailed in his day the preparatory drawings +had to show absolute precision of outline. The edges of everything +had to be clean and unmistakable in order that the engraver might +know what was intended; the artist of the first instance had to make +it impossible for the engraver to mistake his meaning as to this +contour or that shape. Drawing in this manner for years before he +began to paint, Bruegel necessarily continued to do so afterwards. +This accounts for the prevailingly silhouette character of his +multitudes of tiny figures. Often-times, even from the beginning, the +form that meets the eye within the shape is substantially filled out +without being accompanied by the feeling of all-aroundness; but a full +three-dimensional quality is more and more often attained until in the +_Paul_, again, it fills the picture to a degree elsewhere unequalled in +Bruegel’s work. + +[Illustration: THE PARABLE OF THE BLIND MEN. 1568. NAPLES, NATIONAL + MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE. 1567. MUNICH, ALTE PINAKOTHEK] + +[Illustration: THE CRIPPLES. 1568. PARIS, LOUVRE] + +But another consequence of his early professional training—and a +consequence which enabled him to accomplish some of his most amazing +feats—was his skill in composition. His training in draftsmanship +gave him the power to render exactly all details that contribute +to individuality of character, and the simultaneous training in +composition taught him how to arrange immense numbers of such +individualized figures without loss of mass unity. Was it the Alpine +mountain-sides or merely the upper window of a house on a village +square that suggested to him the device of a slightly elevated +viewpoint? It is this more than anything else that enables him +to impose upon his multitudes that order of art by which may be +expressed the disorder of life; and it is this that gives him his long +perspectives of village streets or far horizons dominated by oblique +lines. These last, starkly visible at first and gradually becoming more +broken and concealed, constitute the characteristic mark of Bruegel the +designer. + +But it is in design that there is to be discerned the least amount of +technical advance on Bruegel’s part; what he learned before he began +to paint seems to have come nearer to sufficing him in design than in +drawing or in color. His composition scheme in the set of the _Months_ +is shockingly, though intentionally, repetitious; in the hands of a +less vigorous artist it must quickly have become the deadest recipe. He +divides his panel into two practically equal parts by a bold diagonal +from one upper corner to the opposite lower one; one of these parts +he fills with things and people seen close at hand, and the other +with a far-spreading panorama. And he does it five times over with +such freshness that doing it seven times more does not seem beyond his +powers. But the design remains a pattern, conceived in the same way as +the large composite landscapes done soon after his return from Rome. + +[Illustration: THE MAGPIE ON THE GALLOWS. 1568. DARMSTADT, MUSEUM] + +In drawing and color, on the other hand, the _Months_ show a marked +departure from earlier habits in the direction of an essentially modern +practice. In the drawing as such there is an increase in looseness +with no loss of surety; tightness is sacrificed, but not precision. +The figures are still silhouettes to a great extent, but there is an +approach to the coalescence of color and drawing. In color by itself +there is ever an opposition of large areas of some shade of brown and +some shade of green, and a weaving of these areas together by bits of +each color in the other and of other colors in both. Though there is +never the full impressionistic fusing of edges in atmosphere, there is +yet a decided approximation to the vision of a genuinely naturalistic +landscape painter, as distinguished from the vision of a draftsman or a +miniaturist. + +While this is true, and must be accounted to Bruegel as a merit, an +evidence of mental and technical growth, it is still in a measure +unfair to the never-failing largeness and unity of vision in the +earlier work. Whether the other qualities of this work be regarded as +merits or defects in themselves depends, of course, upon the technical +tenets or preferences of him who makes the judgment. But in Bruegel +they were neither merits nor defects; they were characteristics which +had to be present in his pictures if he painted at all. They were +necessitated by the time in which he lived and by his professional +practice previous to painting. They were as much a part of him as his +fondness for telling stories; and in the fluctuations of taste stranger +things have already happened than would be the return of even this +latter element to professional as well as popular favor. + +[Illustration: WEDDING FEAST. 1568? VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: WEDDING FEAST (DETAIL)] + + + 6. + +In Bruegel’s time story-telling in pictures generally was still one +of the principal means of communicating ideas—even, perhaps mainly, +ideas that were not inherently pictorial; prints were still the nearest +things to books in popular circulation. Moreover, a nation living +under the necessity of never speaking out openly on either politics +or religion naturally resorted to symbol, the concrete proverb or the +image that said one thing and meant another. The print of the big and +little fish not only meant that the great oppressed the small but +carried an idea beyond the words of the proverb in showing the big fish +ripped up and disgorging; and upon a people so apt at interpreting +images the significance of that would not be lost. This people could +not only take a hearty enjoyment of the good things of life but they +could also face the whole of it without shrinking from any part of it, +whether of grossness or of terror. For the latter, indeed, they even +had a gusto and the former they laughed away with a saving healthiness. +The distinguishing mark of their living and their thinking was a robust +realism. + +[Illustration: PEASANT DANCE. 1568? VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: PEASANT DANCE (DETAIL)] + +In Pieter Bruegel there emerged from among them a man of genius in +complete sympathy with their realistic attitude towards life; knowing +it from childhood, he gave it in his art a more complete expression +than it had ever had before. The whole originality and fertility of +his mind were for long expended upon feeding the popular taste not +only for the familiar or exotic beauty of nature but also for a rough +philosophy, unorganized but none the less genuine; and a habit so well +established in him by years of labor would not vanish all at once +even when more purely painter-like interests assumed for him a major +importance. His predecessors in painting had been realistic in their +measure; in them, however, realism was largely confined to details of +execution and was more than counterbalanced by markedly idealistic +conceptions. Even in the grotesqueries of Bosch the older disparity +between idea and embodiment existed; the diabolism in them was only +the obverse of the conventional religious idealism, and its distance +from a true realism of content remained the same. When Bruegel came +to painting, he both carried the manner of realism farther than his +predecessors had done and informed that manner with its appropriately +realistic matter, bringing about a new harmony between the body and the +spirit of the art. He became the first complete realist in the history +of painting. + +[Illustration: MARINE. VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +The _Fall of the Rebel Angels_ is the nearest thing to a rule-proving +exception among Bruegel’s great works, the single one which exhibits +any of the older disparity between container and content; and this +picture, great as it is, could vanish without impairing in the least +Bruegel’s essential greatness. To examine the Berlin _Proverbs_ in +detail is to get a feeling of being among mad folks because so many +of the sayings here illustrated turn upon outlandish actions; but as +a picture it is a piece of masterly realistic sanity showing a whole +village, in which some of the inhabitants happen to be crazy, intensely +busy about its own affairs. The _Triumph of Death_, so far from being +a piece of wild and gross fancy, is actually the lucid statement of +an idea as true as any gesture in the picture; it is precisely the +relentlessness of its realism in thought as well as in embodiment which +frightens people into calling it untrue. The latter two paintings only +show that if an artist is realist enough, if he penetrates sufficiently +into the actual, he necessarily becomes imaginative; they only +reiterate and strengthen Bruegel’s right to be considered the supreme +realist in painting. + +[Illustration: FLEEING SHEPHERD. 1569? PHILADELPHIA, JOHNSON COLLECTION] + +Part of his realism is his refusal to depict what he did not feel. +Only once did he venture upon any of the religious emotionalism that +had played so large a part in the work of his predecessors, and then +he found the emotion so foreign to his own feelings that he openly +borrowed the imagery of it; in relation to the great panoramic realism +of the _Carrying of the Cross_, the group of mourning women remains +a mere formalism, dissociated in spirit and in manner from all about +it. Jesus himself is simply an unfortunate creature whose approaching +execution is the pretext for this holiday. What passes for the +conversion of Paul might be the delusion of a man knocked in the head +on falling from a shying horse; there is about the event none of the +conventional supernaturalism because for Bruegel that sort of thing +was not real. The religious subject as such disappears from his work; +and this, coming after the ecstatic idealisms of his predecessors, +amounts to the expression of an idea concerning the significance—or +lack of it—inherent in the churchly religion. He will have nothing +to do with what is not human; not even nature enters into the great +paintings except as a setting that enhances, by sympathy or contrast, +the emotional life of human beings. To these, whom he knows and loves, +Bruegel gives himself wholly, to share in their sorrows and their joys. +His religion is that of the great humanists in all ages, and his faith +is given only to life itself. + +[Illustration: DARK DAY (JANUARY?). VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: DARK DAY (DETAIL)] + +Part of his realism is the robust laughter which is the only solution +for the fix in which human beings find themselves. It is the spirit +that animated Rabelais in describing the birth of his hero and +Shakespeare in creating Falstaff. To come closer home to Bruegel, +perhaps, it is the spirit of _Till Eulenspiegel_, whose gross +pleasanteries were probably relished by the painter along with the +rest of his generation. Bruegel’s passion for completeness in his +realism abolishes privacy, and the state of affairs brought to pass by +this slicing away of all walls is saved only by humor. Humor is the +safety-valve for a spirit resolute to probe life to its last refuge—to +probe life, but not to break through by main force, as attempted by +later realists so-called. + +[Illustration: HUNTERS IN THE SNOW (FEBRUARY?). VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +Another element in Bruegel’s realism is the objectivity of his work. +Van Mander’s anecdote already quoted shows that Bruegel went among +the peasants, not as a professional artist in search of material, but +as a participator in their life; and the great pictures themselves +strikingly bear this out. This is not to say that Bruegel never worked +directly from life, for there are many drawings which could not have +been done otherwise—a team of horses resting, soldiers standing in the +way, old market-women squatting beside their wares. But when he came to +paint the great pictures, Bruegel worked from a memory stocked with the +gestures and actions of people who are unconscious of being watched. +Bruegel’s mind was centered upon their life and he was concerned with +technic hardly beyond the point where it would enable him to crowd +all their life into his given space and shape. His concentration upon +the story he was telling, from the encyclopedic narrative of the +early works to the simple and straightforward emotionalism of the +_Months_, put him on the crest of a wave of energy which carried him +through many an undertaking that would have been impossible for a more +self-conscious man. We who see the pictures now are unconscious of the +painter because he was himself lost in his subject; and because of +this, also, we are unconscious of ourselves. “No glance ever strays +across the footlights to the audience,” wrote Meier-Graefe of Hogarth’s +scenes. In Bruegel’s work there are no actors, no footlights and no +audience. There is only life and participation in life by painter and +by us. + +And everywhere in these pictures it is the life of Bruegel’s own +time. His predecessors had clothed religious themes in contemporary +dress, but the outer and the inner remained separate things; Bruegel, +retaining the outer, put into it its own proper content. He ousted +religious stories by contemporary stories. These he painted so +completely that a thorough sociological knowledge of the age might be +founded upon or tested by his pictures. The whole life of the time is +set down by a hand that never falsifies, that swerves neither to the +right of idealization nor to the left of caricature. + +Yet to leave him as a painter of contemporary manners only would be +almost as false to his greatness as to consider him only as Bruegel the +Droll. For he penetrates below the temporary appearances of his time to +the permanent in human nature. His pictures can be a means of access +to the life of his age, to be sure; but no lover of them would think +of using them in this fashion. The important thing is that they give +access to a life that is of more than one age; under the costume of the +time exists the same humanity that now wears another dress. + +In giving himself over so unreservedly to the impermanent, Bruegel took +what was for him the only way to the permanent. This cannot be captured +by going out after a vague and unlocalized something called life in +general; what is presented to the artist for his use is always life in +particular. There is an all-life in the steady and swelling succession +of human generations; but the only means of access to that is the +now-life. The great artist’s major accomplishment lies in revealing the +universal through the particular, the permanent through the transitory, +the inevitable through the accidental. + +This Bruegel does; and how well he does it is to be found by analyzing +the thought behind his varied rendering of events and people. Even in +his early pictures each creature has his own individuality and yet is +part of the crowd, which remains a crowd in spite of all detail; each +individual retains his own value of personality and yet is integrated +into a collective being. Bruegel’s minute accuracy of drawing expresses +his love for the individual as such; his great masses of people express +his desire to see life largely and as an interwoven whole. Moreover, +the device of making the ostensible subject of a picture an almost +invisible incident in it is an expression of an idea as to the relative +importance of the individual and what happens to him. Though the +actions of the _Carrying of the Cross_ and the _Conversion of Paul_ do +actually center around the subject-incident, the incident itself is +reduced almost to the vanishing-point; so that the story emphasis is +thrown entirely upon the larger life of which the incident is only the +temporary focus. The _Fall of Icarus_ likewise expresses this heresy +against conventional thinking as to what is truly sublime; only +here the unimportance of a particular event is made more emphatic by +such a detail as the position of the shepherd as well as by the large +indifference of this great luminous calm expanse of land and sea and +sky. + +[Illustration: HUNTERS IN THE SNOW (DETAIL)] + +[Illustration: HAYMAKING (JUNE?). RAUDNITZ, COLLECTION OF PRINCE + LOBKOWITZ] + +Moreover, the sequence of changes in the relative importance of the +human figures in the paintings is but the story of Bruegel’s developing +conception of the relative importance of man in the scheme of things. +In one group of pictures the individual, though fully personalized, is +a part of the crowd and the crowd a mass of insects swarming over the +landscape. In another group of large-figured peasant subjects man is +all-important, filling the whole and shutting nature out. The former +are amazing, and one can hardly get too much of them; the latter are +interesting and one likes them long. But for the final expression of +his mind one must turn to the set of the _Months_; these five, with the +addition of the _Paul_ and the _Icarus_, form the summit of Bruegel’s +art. In them Bruegel reached the solution of the two problems of his +life, the life of nature and the life of man; and the solution was the +life of man in nature. + +The _Months_ sum up his life’s endeavor both in the material he had +all along been dealing with and in the conceptions between which all +along he had been alternating. They are full of motives and incidents +taken from his earlier works—the church he drew so often, children at +their games, the great stretches of landscape that he loved. But all +things are adjusted to one another in a new way; the people are seen +neither too large nor too small, but in a perfect relationship to an +immensely embracing nature; and each picture is pervaded by an unbroken +harmony of mood. This set marks the attainment of final insight into +everything that had concerned him; they constitute his acceptance and +affirmation of life. + +[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art._ + + THE HARVESTERS (AUGUST?). NEW YORK, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART] + +[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE HERDS (NOVEMBER?). VIENNA, MUSEUM] + +[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art._ + + THE HARVESTERS (DETAIL)] + + + 7. + +The more Bruegel’s work is studied the stronger grows the feeling that +almost everything may be attributed to him. To go to Vienna and through +that group of fifteen pictures to come into direct contact with his +mind across three hundred and fifty years is to be convinced that his +is one of the inexhaustible minds of the world. The material brilliancy +of the painting is more than matched by the brilliancy of the creative +soul behind them. Whether he himself was conscious of all that can now +be perceived in his work does not much matter; whether it came there +with him aware or unaware, it is enough to make him superbly great. But +this much is true: the more his mind is apprehended, the more vast and +purposeful it appears. + +He was fortunate in finding his means of expression in what was then +a popular art; everything about that art was so alive that it drew +to itself some of the greatest minds of the time. There existed a +tremendous amount of give-and-take between the artist and his age, and +this degree of interaction it was which had most to do with endowing +both art and artist with vitality; they were fed from sources outside +of and larger than themselves. Thus it was that Bruegel attained to so +comprehensive an expression of himself and his age together that his +work has become one of the permanent things of art. + +Each picture is a completely functioning organism with several +different aspects. There is the aspect of story-telling, that of +technical picture-making and that of philosophic thought. Each aspect +functions harmoniously with the others. Not only can one analyze out +at will the elements proper to each aspect, but one can move from one +to another without any feeling of shifting gear or changing speed. +(The one exception is the group of mourning women in the _Carrying of +the Cross_.) All these aspects function at the same mental rate. They +are all interwoven into powerful wholes. Every picture is a world in +itself, and coming to know them is one of the completest experiences +that can be found anywhere in the art of painting. + +[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE HERDS (DETAIL)] + +Yet even with this completeness of expression attained, one has +before Bruegel’s work a feeling of still more behind, an immensity +of mind larger than any art can be. It is the feeling one has before +Michelangelo, but not before Raphael; before Shakespeare, but not +before Marlowe. The greater ones are not only greater in their art, but +they have something left over in themselves which their art suggests +but does not directly express. Of this greater company is Pieter +Bruegel. + +There are purer painters, but for the purity of their art they pay +the price of going without something of importance to a complete +life. And even their gain in intensity seems hardly a gain in the +face of Bruegel’s intensity on all the levels of his completeness. +He transposes all life into his pictures in a scale of relative +relationship that preserves the values of human life itself. Every +other painter lacks something or has something in excess. Bruegel is +the most comprehensive and the best balanced, the most energetic and +the mellowest. Of all painters he is the greatest realist, and of them +all the most humane. + +[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE HERDS (DETAIL)] + + + + + AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +The object of the following book-list is to mention not everything +that has been printed about Pieter Bruegel but only such volumes and +articles as have definite value. The major cause of its shortness, +however, is the fact that the literature of the subject is surprisingly +small in quantity; in English, particularly, there is almost nothing +beyond short paragraphs in some histories of art and the usual +unilluminating brevities of general reference works. + ++Pieter Bruegel l’Ancien.+ Son Oeuvre et son Temps. Par +René Van + Bastelaer+ et +Georges Hulin De Loo+. Bruxelles: G. Van Oest & Cie.: + 1907. + +This, the first volume to be published on Bruegel, remains the standard +work. For the handsomeness and completeness of its reproductions +combined with the accuracy and thoroughness of its text, treating every +aspect of the painter’s life and work, it is a notable accomplishment +in book-making and in scholarship. What has since been written and +the pictures that have since been discovered still do no more than +supplement certain phases of it; nor can it be superseded until someone +is prepared to give time and money to a thorough search of European +galleries and private collections. It is now, however, somewhat +difficult to obtain. + ++Les Estampes de Peter Bruegel l’Ancien.+ Par +René Van Bastelaer+. + Bruxelles: G. Van Oest & Cie.: 1908. + +Within its chosen field this volume also remains the standard and needs +only supplementing by later researches. Its 278 plates reproduce all +the prints then thought to be by Bruegel or after his designs. + ++Pierre Bruegel l’Ancien.+ Par +Charles Bernard+. Bruxelles: G. Van + Oest & Cie.: 1908. + +This, which appeared immediately after the two preceding volumes, may +fairly be described as a good popularization of them, with additional +historical material drawn from other sources. The thirty reproductions +are very good half-tones; the text gives a satisfactory account of the +painter’s life and times, although there is too much reliance upon the +mere subject-matter of the pictures and although parts of Van Mander’s +clumsy narrative are transposed into French of debatable suavity. It is +the only generally available biography in French. To any reader of it +my indebtedness to it for facts (other than those given by Van Mander) +and my occasional difference of interpretation will be equally evident. + ++Der Bauern-Bruegel.+ Von +W. Hausenstein+. München & Leipzig: R. Piper + & Co.: 1910. + +This is commended by Herr Friedländer (see eighth item) as a portrait +of the man Bruegel; as a discussion of his work, however, it has been +superseded in German by Herr Friedländer’s own book. + ++“The Adoration of the Kings” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.+ By +C. J. + Holmes+. In The Burlington Magazine; vol xxxviii, no. ccxv: London: + February 1921. + ++The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.+ By +B[ryson] + B[urroughs]+. In The Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: vol. + xvi, no. 5: New York: May 1921. + +The fact that these two articles ostensibly deal each with a single +picture should not obscure either their general interest or their +significance as indications and instruments of the contemporary +tendency to assign to Bruegel a higher rank than he has had heretofore. + ++Von Eyck bis Bruegel.+ Studien zur Geschichte der Niederländischen + Malerei. Von +Max J. Friedländer+. Berlin: Julius Bard: 1921. (Of + Bruegel: p. 169 to end). + +The main point of interest about Bruegel in this book is that the +author gives a catalogue of paintings which differs considerably, both +in its omissions and in its additions, from that given by M. Hulin (see +first item). + ++Pieter Bruegel.+ Von +Max J. Friedländer+. Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag: + 1921. + +This is the standard general work in German, and contains a trustworthy +translation of the entire text of Van Mander concerning Bruegel. Even +those who do not read German might well possess this book for the +clearness and frequent brilliancy of its 101 half-tone reproductions, +the majority of which are from drawings and prints. Herr Friedländer is +the only continental scholar so far whose work takes cognizance of the +picture now in the Metropolitan Museum. + ++Bruegel.+ Von +Kurt Pfister+. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag: 1921. + +This short essay merits notice as a piece of writing. The 78 half-tone +reproductions are not very clear, but they include more than a dozen +which are in neither Friedländer nor Bernard. + ++Pieter Bruegel.+ Vierzehn Faksimiledrucke nach Zeichnungen und + Aquarellen. Mit einer Einleitung von +Kurt Pfister+. München: R. + Piper & Co.: 1922. + +This handsome series of large plates is a publication of the +_Marées-Gesellschaft_ and for faithfulness in facsimile reproduction is +not to be surpassed. + ++Pieter Brueghel’s “Fall of Icarus” in the Brussels Museum.+ By +Arthur + Edwin Bye+. In Art Studies: Mediæval Renaissance and Modern: No. 1. + Princeton: University Press: 1923. + +A sympathetic though not stylistically distinguished essay in +appreciation, written around the _Fall of Icarus_ in the Brussels +Museum. + ++Renaissance Art.+ By +Elie Faure+. New York: Harper & Brothers: 1923. + (Of Bruegel: pp. 276–286). + +This author’s habitual saturation with his subject-matter has enabled +him to convey the multitudinous quality to be felt in many of Bruegel’s +pictures and also to adumbrate the humanity of soul behind them; but +he has almost nothing to say about the more narrowly æsthetic merits +which permit of Bruegel being ranked among the great; and even on the +score of subject-matter Bruegel’s livingness is almost smothered under +a rhetoric made sluggish with anecdotal detail. + ++Breughel.+ By +Aldous Huxley+. In The Calendar of Modern Letters: vol. + 1, no. 6: London: August 1925. + +This essay is a little sermon on the virtue of comprehensiveness in the +appreciation of art, with Bruegel as an ideal text. It is not itself a +comprehensive presentation of the painter or his work and it has very +few traces of the verbal brilliancy which has had so much to do with +putting this author’s novels in the best-selling class; but it may +make the name of Bruegel known to many who are not in a position to +penetrate his work on their own account. I note a curious slip in the +transposition of titles between the Brussels _Numbering at Bethlehem_ +and the Vienna _Massacre of the Innocents_. + ++Die Zeichnungen Pieter Bruegels.+ Von +Karl Tolnai+. München: R. Piper + & Co.: 1925. + +This book has immediately taken rank as the standard authority on the +drawings; its 104 large half-tone plates reproduce every drawing listed +in its catalogue. + ++Pieter Bruegel der Aeltere.+ Siebenunddreissig Farbenlichtdrucke nach + seinen Hauptwerken in Wien und eine Einführung in seine Kunst. Von + +Max Dvořák+. Wien: Oesterreichischen Staatsdruckerei. + +This wonderful production is just being completed; its magnificent +plates embody the utmost resources of modern color-printing. An edition +with the text translated into French is announced for the month of +July, and another with a translation into English is expected during +the year. + + * * * * * + +The foregoing annotations are based upon actual reading and examination +of the books and articles mentioned. I think it well to append a few +additional items which I have had no opportunity as yet to examine; +my study of the volumes already listed, however, leads me to believe +that they possess interest and importance. The words in italics at the +end of each entry indicate its source among the books in the previous +section. + + * * * * * + ++Pierre Brueghel Le Vieux.+ Par +Henri Hymans+. (Gazette des + Beaux-Arts: Paris: 1890 et 1891.) _Pfister: Bibliography._ + ++Les Brueghel.+ Par +Emile Michel+. Paris: 1892. _Van Bastelaer & + Hulin, p. 294._ + ++Pieter Brueghel der Aeltere und sein Kunstschaffen.+ Von +Alex + L. Romdahl+. (Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des + Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, Bd. 25: Wien: 1905.) _Tolnai and Pfister: + Bibliographies._ + ++Pieter Bruegel im Kupferstichkabinett zu Berlin.+ Von +Ludwig + Burchard+. (Amtliche Berichte aus der Königliche Kunstsammlung in + Berlin, Bd. 34: Berlin: 1912–13.) _Tolnai: Bibliography._ + ++Die Niederländische Landschaftsmalerei von Patinir bis Bruegel.+ Von + +Ludwig von Baldass+. (Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen + des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, Bd. 34: Wien: 1918.) _Tolnai: + Bibliography._ + ++Der Bauern-Bruegel und das Deutsche Sprichwort.+ Von +Wilhelm + Fraenger+. (München: 1923.) _Tolnai: Bibliography._ + + + + + NOTES + + +The illustrations of Bruegel’s paintings accompanying this article are +confined to those accepted as authentic by M. Hulin in his catalogue +(see Bibliography, first item), with certain additional ones discovered +since its publication. Seventeen of the paintings are positively dated; +the rest must be distributed through the eleven years of painting on +other evidence. Wherever a date appears under an illustration, it is +the one assigned by the authority just mentioned, with the exceptions +noted. The only alteration in the chronological order, so far as that +may be determined, has been the grouping of the _Months_ at the end, to +correspond with the text, in which they are treated as the summing-up +of Bruegel’s work as a painter. All the drawings reproduced are dated +on the authority of Herr Tolnai (see Bibliography, fourteenth item). +The following paragraphs give certain supplementary facts: + +_Village Marriage_: Two copies by Pieter II are known. A comparison of +this picture with them shows that the arm and hand of the man kneeling +near the bottom of the stairway have been repainted “for reasons of +decency”! + +_Dancing Peasant_: This is doubtful. Herr Friedländer considers it a +copy; M. Hulin leaves the matter undetermined, but reproduces it. + +_Descent of Christ into Limbo_ (drawing): Herr Tolnai says that the +date and signature are apocryphal, but assigns it to no other year. + +_Flemish Proverbs_: Not known to M. Hulin; date given on the authority +of Herr Friedländer. + +_Battle Between the Israelites and the Philistines_: also called _The +Death of Saul at the Battle of Gilboa_. The uncertainty of this date +turns upon whether an extra figure can or can not be discerned at the +end of the Roman numerals. + +_Dulle Griet_: The literal subject is the quarrelsome woman, Terrible +Margaret, she who frightens the devil himself. + +_The Carrying of the Cross_: Also called _The Road to Calvary_. + +_The Misanthrope_: Also called _The Perfidy of the World_. The proverb +lettered at the bottom is + + Om dat de vverelt is soe ongetru + Daer on gha ic in den ru. + +The translation is: Since the world is so untrustworthy, I go in +mourning. + +_The Proverb of the Bird-Nester_: The proverb is + + Dije den nest vveet dije vveeten: + Dije rooft, dije heeten. + +It may be translated: Who knows where the nest is has his knowledge; +who rifles it has possession. + +_The Numbering at Bethlehem_: Also called _The Payment of Tithes_. + +_The Fall of Icarus_: Not catalogued by M. Hulin. Here put next to the +_Paul_ in order to follow the text, in which these two are joined with +the _Months_ as representing the height of Bruegel’s achievement. + +_The Wine of Saint Martin_: Admitted by M. Hulin, but with strong +doubts; regarded as the fragment of a larger work; done originally in +tempera and repainted in oil, perhaps in the seventeenth century. + +_The Magpie on the Gallows_: This picture was bequeathed by Bruegel to +his wife. + +_Marine_: Not dated by M. Hulin. Placed here because it appears to be +unfinished, and so possibly very late. + +_The Months_: The months suggested in the titles given under the +illustrations follow M. Hulin’s catalogue. Herr Friedländer assigns +that given as January to March, the February to December, the August +(New York) to July, leaving the other two as given. + +M. Hulin dates the whole set about 1567. The only trace among them of a +date is on the picture in the Metropolitan Museum; on the strength of +this Herr Friedländer assigns it positively to 1565, but Mr. Burroughs +is inclined to agree with M. Hulin. In any case the violation of time +order in placing this set last is not very great and the gain is +considerable in giving a culminating impression of Bruegel’s art. + + + 2. + +No paintings in Bruegel’s manner are reproduced which are definitely or +even probably by the sons. They are a multitude in themselves, and are +mostly attributed to the father. They are to be met with everywhere, +from London to Palermo, from Madrid to Petrograd. Herr Friedländer +authenticates (without reproducing) one in Budapest and another in +Csàkány. In Hampton Court Palace there is an extremely interesting +smaller version of the Vienna _Massacre of the Innocents_ in which +eatables are substituted for most of the children, and a companion +piece of coarser workmanship giving an entirely different picture of a +massacre. In Vienna there are a dozen or more by the sons which throw +much light on the entire question of Bruegel’s own pictures; the most +interesting of these is in the Lichtenstein Collection and is in the +manner of the _Fleeing Shepherd_ in Philadelphia. The problems raised +by all these pictures are many and complex, but the scope and intention +of this essay did not permit of its touching upon such matters. +However, there are all sorts of ways to spend life, and not the least +interesting way would be to go a-Bruegeling through Europe. + + ++Erratum+: On page 33 the date of the _Massacre of the Innocents_ +should read 1566(?) instead of 1556(?). + +_The Land of Cockaigne_, reproduced on page 39, is now in the Alte +Pinakothek in Munich. + +[Illustration: THE FALL OF ICARUS (DETAIL)] + +[Illustration: MASTER AND PUPIL (DRAWING). ABOUT 1560–61. VIENNA, + ALBERTINA] + + + + + THE ARTS + + A MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF ART + + + +Forbes Watson+, _Editor_ + +William Robb+, _Manager_ + +Lloyd Goodrich+, _Associate Editor_ + +Virgil Barker+, _European Editor_ + ++The Arts+ is not exclusively a magazine of modern art or exclusively +a magazine of the art of the past. 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