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pieter Bruegel the Elder
(1525, Breda- Sep.5, 1569 Brussels) Dutch oil painting artist biography.
Usually known as Pieter Bruegel the Elder to distinguish him from his elder son, he was the first in a family of Flemish painters. He spelled his name Brueghel until 1559, and his sons retained the "h" in the spelling of their names. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, generally considered the greatest Dutch painter of the 16th century Northern Renaissance, is by far the most important member of the family. He was born in Breda, now in The Netherlands. He was accepted as a master in the Antwerp painters guild in 1551. In 1552 he was in the south of Italy, visiting Messina, Palermo and Naples and in the following year he was in Rome. On his return journey to the Netherlands, Bruegel evidently spent some time in Switzerland, where he made many drawings of the Alps. His Alpine sketches formed the basis for a number of elaborate landscape oil painting designs, which were actually copied by other artists. Returning home in 1553, he settled in Antwerp and ten years later moved permanently to Brussels.
During the last six years of his life Pieter Bruegel was much influenced by Italian Renaissance art with its monumentality of form. This influence is evident in Peasant Wedding Feast. The figures are now larger in scale and closer to the spectator, the viewpoint is lower and there is less concern with the setting. In spite of these radical developments, however, Bruegel continued to produce paintings in his old style, with tiny figures in a panoramic space. He was sometimes called the "peasant Bruegel" because of such works. In 1563 Bruegel married and the couple settled in Brussels. In 1564 their first son, future painter Pieter Bruegel the Younger was born, in 1568 his second son, Jan Bruegel the Elder, also a future painter, was born. His association with his wife's family also drew Bruegel to the the Malines region in which allegorical and peasant themes run strongly. His oil paintings, including his landscapes and scenes of peasant life, stress the absurd and vulgar, yet are full of zest and detail, they also expose human weaknesses and follies.
He developed an original style that uniformly holds narrative or story-telling meaning. In subject matter he ranged widely, from conventional religious Biblical scenes and parables of Christ to mythological portrayals as in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, religious allegories in the style of Bosch and social satires. But it was in nature that he found his greatest inspiration. His mountain landscape oil paintings have few parallels in European art. Popular in his own day, his works have remained consistently popular to this day, enough to classify him as one of the worlds artist.
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Peasant Wedding Feast
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Hunters in the Snow
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The Corn Harvest
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