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Authors: Emile Michel and Victoria Charles

Essay by Charles Bernard (copyright reserved)

Translation: Chris Murray

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ISBN: 978-1-78310-763-6

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Editor’s Note

Out of respect to the authors’ original work, this text has not been corrected or updated, particularly regarding attribution, dates, and the current locations of works. These were uncertain at the time of the text’s first publication, and sometimes remain so to this day. The information in the captions, however, has been updated.

Emile Michel & Victoria Charles

The Brueghels

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Century of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Beginnings

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Mature Works

List of the illustrated proverbs in Flemish Proverbs

A Prosperous Dynasty

The Brueghel Family Tree

Bibliography

List of Illustrations

Notes

1. Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
The Painter and the Collector, ca. 1565.

Pen and brown ink, 25 x 21.6 cm.

Graphische Sammlung, Albertina, Vienna.

2. Sir Anthony Van Dyck,
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1627-1635.

Charcoal, 24.5 x 19.8 cm.

Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.

Introduction

After an initial period of brilliance, during which time it rose to achieve perfection, Flemish art gradually fell into decline. Although thorough studies of its origins have revealed works, in particular those of the miniaturists, that are deserving of notice and which predate the artistic careers of the two Van Eycks, Hubert and Jan, the genius of the brothers remains stunningly spectacular, surpassing that of their predecessors to such a degree that it would be impossible to find an equally sudden, decisive and glorious evolution in the history of art.

Even so, the lesser artists who followed the Van Eycks, whether they were either directly trained by them or simply influenced by their work, also possessed talent of admirable quality, but their sense and understanding of nature was less penetrating and profound and their execution less scrupulous. In not applying the same closeness of attention, which till then had been a rule of Flemish painting, these artists lost their opportunity for originality, relaxing their focus on nature and placing the primary importance of their work in its details.

It became increasingly common for these painters to travel to Italy, and consequently their native impressions became mixed with those evoked by the lands through which they passed. Upon leaving the Flemish plains, the monotony of which is scarcely interrupted, the emigrant artists could not help but be struck by the imposing nature of the mountainous regions along their route. The Alps, the Tirols, and the Apennines offered the artists the rugged landscapes once sought by the Flemish Primitives, to whom simplicity had been of no interest. In their depiction of panoramas that stretched as far as the eye could see, these nomads remained faithful to their excessive preoccupation with the picturesque. They were of the belief that no amount of detail could be too much, and they tirelessly added bizarre rock formations and countless rivers to the harsh peaks and mountainous landscapes they painted. In addition, they laid out forests, towns, villages and castles that stretched into infinity. When, during their travels, they spent time in towns, at every step the Flemish painters encountered ancient ruins, monuments of various styles, statues, masterpieces by artists of the Classical age, and works of art no less admired by their less worthy successors; and everywhere they went they came across traditions and new ways of thinking vastly different from those they had known until then. How could they resist the seductions that solicited them from every direction? Their Italian colleagues, who were already organized in associations and guilds, welcomed the Flemish artists, affiliated them with their groups and initiated them into the wonders of the ars nova. On their return home, the travellers themselves often became apostles, extolling the principles of Italian painting and art in general, and attempting, though usually with little success, to imitate the Italian style.

In contrast to the strong unity that characterised the Flemish Primitives, these later artists of the Low Countries (who became known as the Romanists) allied themselves to a diverse range of qualities and trends that were frequently conflicting and often irreconcilable. In the treatment of landscapes, followers of academic doctrines, like the Brils and their imitators, aimed primarily for a decorative quality, which, in their somewhat awkward and affected compositions anticipated the noble expression and the poetic inspiration later found in the work of the two French artists Claude Gelée (known as le Lorrain) and Poussin. The Romanists were the only Flemish artists to work in the genre of historical painting, with its emphasis on large and detailed religious and mythological compositions. However, these works became increasingly rare because of the political difficulties that arose during the period: the princes and clergy of the Netherlands were too preoccupied with defending their under-appreciated power, and sometimes even their own existence, to be in a position to encourage painters of historical works.

Having originated with Mabuse, the trend of travelling to Italy was continued by Bernard Van Orley, Michael Coxie, Lambert Lombard, Pieter Coeck, Frans Floris and Martin de Vos, and finally by Otto Van Veen and his illustrious student Rubens. In opposition to these converts, one finds, here and there, a few artists who remained faithful to their national traditions and scrupulous observers of nature down to its most familiar detail. Although they lacked the style of their precursors, these artists nevertheless preserved their sincerity, and left us an irrefutable testimony of the popular customs of the period. In this group, there is no master whose works and life are more interesting than that of Pieter Bruegel. The first in a long line of painters, he was the founder of one of many Flemish families in which artistic talent seems to have been hereditary, for instance, the Van Eycks, the Metsys, the Van Orleys, the Pourbus, the Van Cleves, the Coxies, the Keys, the De Vos, and later, the Teniers.

Having his roots in a line of old Flemish stock, this singular and original artist and thinker drew all of his energy from his native soil and produced a vigorous family tree that sprouted in many directions. One example was his equally renowned son Jan, who is well known by his epithet ‘Velvet Brueghel’, a painter whose exceptional talent contrasted strikingly with that of his father. Through the work of these two markedly different masters, we have the opportunity to follow the different phases of Flemish art during a period when its constitution and aims were undergoing profound change.

The frequent similarity of the names and talents in question makes the relationship between the Brueghels somewhat obscure and difficult to follow. In the reader’s interest, the authors have reproduced a family tree drawn up by Alphonse Wauters of the three generations of Brueghel artists worthy of discussion, which can be found at the end of this text.

3. Petrus Paulus Rubens, Jan Brueghel the Elder
and his family, 1612-1613. Oil on wood,

124.5 x 94.6 cm. Courtauld Institute of Art,

Princes Gate Collection, London.

4. Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
The Numbering at Bethlehem, detail, 1566.

Oil on wood, 115.5 x 163.5 cm.

Königliche Museen der Schönen Künste, Brussels.

The Century of
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Florentine nobleman Guichardin, who lived in Holland from around 1542 until his unexpected death in Antwerp on 22 March 1589, found the town’s inhabitants to be generally cold, staid, and little given to lascivious pleasures, yet gay, and prone to cheerful words “although sometimes too licentiously, and not in the ordinary respect”.

Guichardin was struck by the contrast between the serious and hardworking popular class with its excessive moments of amusement, and the refined bearing of the bourgeoisie who undertook public matters on the Nobility Square. He had an appetite for absorbing the novelty of the country, which he experienced as a singular liveliness, whose rustling is perceptible in his book.[1] Written in a vivid and distinct manner, his impressions illuminate the period, which has grown dry and dusty on the archive parchments, with a life-restoring glow.

Guichardin’s observations on the customs and life of the inhabitants of Antwerp are illustrated by the various drawings and paintings of Pieter Bruegel. This painter’s work constitutes a definitive illustration for the most scholarly of historical treatises of this period. In the same way that even the most accurate pages of official histories always reveal less than a given line of direct observation or turn of phrase by the sagacious Guichardin, the same can be said of the details depicted in a scene by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He succeeded in capturing the soul of his people in his figure of a dancing peasant or in a delicious interior with a few figures seated around a table.

In a study of sixteenth-century Holland, one cannot disregard certain documents of the period. Nor is it possible to speak of Bruegel’s work without also addressing the era, which not only served as its setting, but also its source. An intimate relationship, even a penetration exists between the two. Never has an environment had such an important role in the creation of art, and never has an environment been evoked with such sincerity. As a peasant himself, and the son of peasants, Pieter Bruegel was the Dutch painter who best maintained his sense of the national and the traditional. He was gifted with an originality that was not only powerful enough to resist the trend of Romanism that swept his century, but that was also deaf to the call of Italian masterpieces. It is true that Bruegel travelled to Italy, but he did so more out of his taste for adventure than a wish to round out his artistic education.

The catastrophic wars undertaken by Charles I, Duke of Burgundy, and Pope Leo X’s endless thirst for money did not impede the Netherlands’ development and continuing prosperity. At the beginning of Charles V’s reign, this tiny country, situated on the coast of the North Sea, was the richest in the world and had the densest population, with its towns and villages squeezed up against one another.

5. Melchior Broederlam, The Annunciation and the Visitation,
Presentation at the Temple, Flight into Egypt, 1394-1399.

Tempera on wood panel, 167 x 125 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

6. Jan Brueghel the Elder and
Hans Rottenhammer, Rest upon the Flight
into Egypt with the Temple of Tivoli, 1595.

Oil on copper, 26 x 35.5 cm. Private collection.

“The excellent and splendid city of Antwerp” was the largest port in Europe, and every year it imported over thirty million florins’ worth of goods. The city’s stock market handled business worth forty million ducats. The town had some 100,000 inhabitants, of which between 10,000 and 15,000 were foreigners. Guichardin counted 13,500 “attractive, agreeable, and comfortable” houses, composed generally of six rooms, which could be rented for 200 crowns a year, the larger ones at 500, an enormous sum at that time.[2]

The wealth accrued in Antwerp was not due simply to the city’s cosmopolitan element, but also to its rich and hardworking bourgeoisie, who were very influential in its business. While town dwellers went about their industrious efforts, the rough labour of the peasants also continued. In no other country did the peasantry enjoy more freedom: the edicts of 1515 had abolished the last remnants of serfdom, and in consequence intensive agriculture sprang up across the Netherlands.

These are the reasons for which the inhabitants of Antwerp were “pleasingly well-dressed, their houses kept tidy, well-ordered, and stocked with all kinds of domestic objects”. “There is not a single household that does not butcher and salt a cow or two and just as many pigs every year… The air of the land is heavy and damp, but it is healthy and good for the digestion of meat, and especially for fertility and regeneration”. So much information given in a glimpse of just three lines! They reveal a region with a population that is rustic, fond of eating (and eating well), and prolific.

However, Guichardin also noted the characteristics that particularly offended his refined and civilised sensibilities. He was shocked by the natives’ excessive fondness for alcohol. They drink night and day and “do not know how to abstain or subdue this disorderly passion”. Ultimately, he excuses them this behaviour because their cloudy climate makes them melancholy. Wine brings warmth back into their veins, and beer (which Guichardin praises highly) replaces the function provided to the peoples of the south by the Mediterranean sun.

7. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Flight into Egypt, 1563.

Oil on wood, 37.2 x 55.5 cm. Courtauld Institute of Art,

Count Antoine Seilern Collection, London.

Yet the air is healthy; “Such that, if the inhabitants of the land were not so excessive in their manner of living, and if they did not neglect to care for themselves when they fell ill, they would certainly live very long lives. And though there are very few who grow old, there are also very few who die young, as we saw in the region of Brabant, where the land is naturally fertile and where the inhabitants, living stingily and working enough, live very long lives”. And indeed, nor have the Flemish people changed. They still possess a patience, a love of work and an admirable tenacity that are the results of a certain seriousness at the essence of their character, one that alternates with abrupt bursts of humour and joyful frenzies that push them to the worst excesses. In a sense, these apparently conflicting characteristics constitute the price of their gravity.

Today the soil is no longer as fertile as Guichardin tells us it once was, particularly in certain parts of Brabant, and especially in the north where Bruegel was born. If Guichardin was captivated by the abundance and beauty of the harvest, he should have paid homage to the secular efforts of the inhabitants rather than to the natural fertility of the region. Bent low over the poor soil in a constant struggle against the sand, which the sea left behind long ago, their were only provided with moments of respite when they delivered their exhausted bodies to the interminable feasts and drinking bouts whose typical pretext was a wedding or village fair. “Official events are very dear to them, [...] they are a people so devoted to pleasure, to joy and to pastimes, that it does not bother them to travel 30, 35, or 40 miles to go to a feast”. These thrifty peasants had outbursts of extravagance. “They are open and generous at the births and baptisms of their children, at weddings, wakes, and funerals, or at any festival or ceremony”.

These twin, conflicting, states of festivity and desperately hard work did not leave much place for refined culture or an extremely developed sensitivity. Nor did the Flemish peasant suffer from corrupted morals, in that it seemed that a very permissive display, in regard to manners, went hand in hand with a profound honesty; for example, the spectacle of public lovemaking did not scandalise the typical Flemish person, who found it only a subject of coarse pleasantry. Guichardin also praised Flemish women as being beautiful, clean, and very pleasant.

Since it was the custom of the Flemish to speak freely with everybody from childhood, “they become bold and are always ready to speak with extreme liberty and permissiveness”. Yet Guichardin affirms that they remained honest. Another characteristic of the people was that they married easily. “A teen-age boy will marry an old grandmother, and an old man will couple himself with a young girl”. And it was not uncommon for a commoner to marry a noblewoman, a master his serving girl, or a mistress her servant, thus the intermixing of the classes was an early occurrence in the Netherlands. The nobility speculated on the stock market and worked as traders, and the rich bourgeoisie bought land. The commoner had a great deal of common sense, as well as a sense of equality. He may have lacked certain refinements, but he possessed a sense of the ridiculous.

8. Gentile da Fabriano,
The Adoration of the Magi, 1423.

Tempera on wood panel, 303 x 282 cm.

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

9. Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, Adoration of the Lamb, 1432.

Oil on wood panel, 350 x 461 cm (open) ;

350 x 223 cm (closed). Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent.

10. Jan Van Eyck, The Virgin of
Chancelier Rolin, ca. 1430-1434. Oil on canvas,

66 x 62 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

These unions of disparate qualities shocked Guichardin but also stimulated him. He was a man to enjoy laughter and satire. The ‘Festival of the Fools’, or the ‘Festival of the Ass’, celebrated on the day of the Holy Innocents, even profaned the Church. The pope, the bishop and the priest of the fools and their followers participated in a countless number of eccentric acts on the day of Mardi Gras. It was the custom for the fool to play an important role in the performances, games and processions organised by the chambers of rhetoric. He would jeer at the crowd and their faults with singularly trivial eloquence, and served as the medium through which public opinion was voiced. His subversive zeal, however, was not overly appreciated by the authorities and consequently edicts were soon passed in an attempt to curb his influence.

In order to maintain the traditional aspect of the public festivities, the chambers of rhetoric (i.e., the associations of the rich petit bourgeois) like the Landjuweel of 1561 in Antwerp, deployed unheard of amounts of money, yet their desire to placate the powers from which they derived their privileges is tangible. The rules imposed upon the contests strictly forbade the use of obscenities and disrespectful allusions to the Church, and the texts of the rhetoricians became generally pedantic, casting doubt upon the idea that their heavy-handed allegories mixed with naïve humanism truly corresponded to the true tastes of the popular classes. In contrast, the populace identified with the legend of Ulenspiegel, whose hero entertained them with the crudest of farces. Ulenspeigel’s favourite joke was to throw up into a dish which would then be served to a priest, a detail that provides a clear instance of what constituted the humour enjoyed at village feasts and marriages like those attended by Bruegel in the company of his merchant friend Franckert.

The story of Ulenspeigel, the circumstances of whose birth remained mysterious, was especially popular at the beginning of the sixteenth century when it was translated into French, Latin and English. It takes up the biting satire of the great fourteenth-century Flemish poet Jacob Van Maerlandt, in which a lazy and ignorant bawd of a clergyman is mercilessly ridiculed. Sometimes, however, the laughter would give way to indignation, for religious faith was deeply seated and alive in the hearts of the spectators. This was the eve of the great religious upheavals that marked this ardent and impassioned era.

Beginning in 1520, Lutheranism began to spread in Holland, in particular making astonishing progress in the city of Antwerp where German merchants helped to propagate it and where the Portuguese Maranos (Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity) encouraged it out of their spite for Catholicism.[3] In response, Emperor Charles V increased the number and severity of his edicts, and the famous inquisitor François Van der Hulst imprisoned suspects. While the admirers of Erasmus, the humanists, were careful not to profess the new doctrines publicly, the popular classes eagerly attended secret meetings, where they analysed the Gospels, and outdoor sermons held by defrocked monks at the very gates of the city. The spirits of the people were carried away by a sort of frenzy, and dogmas were even discussed in workshops and taverns. In an attempt to discourage the heretics with fire, the executioner publicly burned their books and tortured their printers. Others were forced to wear a yellow cross to identify them publicly, but the sight of them only stimulated pity and anger.

The Convent of the Augustines in Antwerp was a hotbed of agitation for the Reformation, and in consequence Henri de Zutphen, the Father Superior, was arrested, taken to the Abbey of Saint-Michel and locked in a cell. However, here he was rescued by a group of women “who undertook in that room such violence that they succeeded in pulling him out”.[4] In were the women who proved themselves most ardent. One, named Marguerite Boonams, was condemned to be buried alive for having insulted the representatives of the law undertaking an investigation in the same Convent, but her sentence was commuted on the condition that she undertake a pilgrimage. Soon the judges became less lenient. The regent, Margaret of Austria, who Henri de Zutphen called “the atheist Jezebel” in a letter from Bremen, had the Convent of the Augustines razed and its occupants taken to Brussels where they were tried. Two were burned at the stake on 1 July 1523, dying with composure. Van der Hulst, who was dismissed as an impostor after the death of Pope Adrian VI, was replaced by ecclesiastical inquisitors.

11. Albrecht Dürer, The Adoration of the Magi, 1504.

Oil on wood panel, 98 x 112 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

12. Rogier Van der Weyden, The Adoration of the Magi,
central panel, ca. 1455. Tempera on wood,

138 x 153 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Alongside Lutheranism, the people became increasingly interested in theology and other faiths developed. Eloi Pruystinck, who was a simple slate roof-maker and a native of Antwerp, founded the faith of the Spiritual Libertines, ‘Loistes’ who believed that the Holy Spirit was nothing more than pure reason. “Spiritum Sanctum nihil aliud esse quant ingenium et rationem naturalem!” cried Luther in indignant response.

Not much later, Anabaptism from southern Germany made its appearance. Melchior Hoffman, its prophet, announced the end of the world and the Advent of the Reign of God. He preached a libertarian idealism that the baker Jan Matthys of Haarlem tried to make reality through the use of force but the fall of the city of Munster, which was the New Jerusalem and the stronghold of the leaders of the movement, did not put an end to the crisis. The Anabaptists were hunted down like wild animals by Protestants and Catholics alike, who united their efforts against the sect that desired the downfall of society. A notice condemned all Anabaptists, even the repentant, to death, but the heroism of their martyrs only succeeded in inspiring new followers. Although persecution had rendered public and communal confession of the new faith impossible, it was professed in hiding. Hundreds of heretical writings and songs against the Pope, the Church and its priests, and others that exalted the courage of the executed were circulated under the cover of darkness. In response, the number of edicts against the Anabaptists increased and threatened the penalty of death in each article.

A third doctrine, Calvinism, which would ultimately recruit the greatest number of worshipers, began to spread from 1544. Yet again, in the Low Countries Antwerp became the centre of agitation for the new faith. The cosmopolitan port served as a refuge for exiles, particularly to the French Huguenots who were relatively safe there. Even Philip II of Spain did not dare enforce the edicts to the letter for fear of ruining the commerce that lay at the source of the country’s prosperity. A deep political discontent grew out of the religious crisis, for the Flemish felt increasingly oppressed by their Spanish rulers. A revolution was brewing. Angry hordes freed prisoners and chased down inquisitors and representatives of the law. In Brussels on 5 April 1566, the drafters of the famous ‘Compromise’ gathered for a banquet at the Hotel de Culembourg and shouted the rebellious “Vive le gueux!” (Long live the poor, though the term gueux had an anti-papist connotation, and later came to signify the Protestants of the Netherlands) for the first time in history. The outbreak of the Reformation carried everyone away. Priests publicly abandoned the Church from their pulpits and the authorities were powerless to stop the iconoclasts who spread throughout the country.