Reviews (1)

Magnificent Book
Pieter Bruegel Elder is a very well known and hugely influential artist, whose relatively small body of survived through centuries paintings and graphics are incredibly important for the art as whole, and that magnificent book - written with deep respect and admiration to the great flemish master is a definite must have to anyone who is intersted in art history and beyond.What impressed me the most in that excellent reference to the Bruegel's time, art and life is a quality of reproduction of the art work-its really,really great-accurate,vibrant and crisp. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Bruegel, Pieter,    4. Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - Museum    5. Criticism and interpretation    6. European    7. History - Renaissance    8. Individual Artist    9. ca. 1525-1569    10. Art / Individual Artist    11. Bruegel, Pieter   

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - General    4. European    5. History - General    6. Art & Architecture | History    7. Art / History / General    8. Early Renaissance (c 1400-1500)    9. High Renaissance (c 1500-1530)    10. History Of Art / Art & Design Styles    11. Individual artists   

Subjects:  1. 16th century    2. Art    3. Art & Art Instruction    4. Criticism    5. Europe - General    6. European    7. General    8. History    9. History - General    10. Laughter    11. Netherlands    12. Peasants in art    13. Wit and humor in art    14. Art / General    15. Europe    16. History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600    17. Individual artists    18. Painting & paintings   

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Graphic Arts - General    3. Individual Artist    4. Individual Photographer    5. Photography    6. Art / Fine Arts    7. Individual artists   

Reviews (1)

Extraordinary
Essentially a long gloss on a single painting, this is the best book of art criticism I have ever come across, bar none. Snow literally forces your eye to slow down, and drink in the detail, the nuance, and the shifting structures of Breugel's astoundingly complex painting "Children's Games". I couldn't disagree more strongly with the Kirkus review above - the language is at times non-conversational, but if read slowly, patiently, and in tandem with the plentiful illustrations, this book will unlock more of the complexities of this fascinating (and very modern) painter than an entire stack of critical studies. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Bruegel, Pieter,    4. Children's games    5. Criticism and interpretation    6. Games in art    7. History - General    8. Individual Artist    9. Individual Painters - Renaissance    10. ca. 1525-1569    11. ca. 1525-1569.    12. Art / Individual Artist    13. Bruegel, Pieter   

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. European    4. Individual Artist    5. History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600    6. Individual artists    7. Netherlands    8. Painting & paintings   

Subjects:  1. Art & Art Instruction    2. General    3. History Of Art / Art & Design Styles    4. Individual artists   

Reviews (3)

Un artiste pour toutes les saisons, surtout l'hiver
L'artiste est un grand maitre lorsque ses oeuvres sont impactants, d'un gout eternel. En fait, le Paysage d'hiver de Pieter Bruegel pere se trouve entre les oeuvres d'art les plus copies et imites du monde. La plupart des quarantaines de ses peintures survivantes datent de la derniere decade de sa vie. Il est le peintre incomparable de la comedie humaine, dans l'Ane a l'ecole; des paysages flamands au style italien, dans Paysage emboise avec une vue lointaine; des paysans, dans Kermis du St George; et des proverbes, dans Des grands poissons mangent des petits poissons. Il honore les manuscrits enlumines et les miniatures, dans la Tour de Babel. Ses dessins destines aux gravures sont des chefs-d'oeuvres de details, grains, nuances et textures.

A WORK TO BE SAVORED AND TREASURED
Arguably the greatest Netherlands painter and draftsman of the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel was a well traveled artist.Documentation shows that between 1515 and 1553 he made an enviable journey through France and then to Italy.While in Rome he worked with a miniaturist, and was inspired by the Alps that he saw during his return to Antwerp. Proof of art
Proof of art is in strong impact on later generations and timeless appeal: both describe this first major exhibition of PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER: PRINTS AND DRAWINGS. His art had been the source of many copies, of which the most often copied was "Winter landscape with skaters," and late 16th- and early 17th-century imitative works, such as dotted atmosphere and forms around grainy ground and trees by Master of the Mountain Landscapes and Jacob Savery, thick forest wildernesses by Gillis van Coninxloo, and winter skating by Hans Bol. We mainly know him through his art and that of sons Jan and Pieter the Younger: most of his 40+ surviving paintings are from his last seven years, such as "Fall of the rebel angels," "Sermon of St John the Baptist," and "Wedding dance"; and terror against heretics, Protestants, and subversives by the Duke of Alba in Brussels wore away his final two years, finding expression in "Blind leading the blind" and "Magpie on the gallows" bitterness and sorrow and in many, ominous "Summer" knives. We think of him immortalizing peasants with "Kermis at Hoboken" and "Kermis of St George," proverbs with "Big fish eat little fish," and winter scenes with "Ice skating before the gate of St George" and "Winter landscape with bird trap": he has been admired for applying an Apelles-type imagination to Hieronymus Bosch-type allegories, with the reptile lying down in "Luxuria" and upside-down frog in "Superbia," and to Eupompas-type nature. He was one of the first Northerners to take on post-Leonardo da Vinci Italian landscape style, coming up with distinctly Flemish scenes, stocky peasants and wide open naturalism, with Sistine Chapel sacrifice of Noah-type hugely solid countryfolk in "Beekeepers," Federico Barocci-type line-flowing tree trunks and white stippled foliage in "Wooded landscape with a distant view," and Cornelis Massys-type commonplace woodland scene and Titan-type balanced composition, broad-reaching lines and cotton-wool foliage in "Wooded landscape with mills." He kept manuscript illumination and miniature painting traditions going in "Tower of Babel" with Giulio Clovio-type teeming, tiny figures. He touched on religion, but by uncommon subject with the Christ-told "Parable of the good shepherd" and "Parable of the wise and foolish virgins" from the New Testament and with "Suicide of Saul" from the Old Testament; and by unusual presentation with the contemporary, stagelike "Death of the virgin." He dipped into comic genre without ending up second-rate with the carefully cross-hatched and solidly outlined "Ass at school." The lasting, widespread popularity of his art was partly due to his designs for prints, whose final look he controlled with Maarten van Heemskerck-type highly specific detail and with printmaker-friendly shading and textures: "Landscape with bears" was the first of 32 drawings directly modeled for prints; and "Rabbit hunt was the only print that he created, with distinctly outlined, light-filled foliage and imposing mountains broadly hatched and finely speckled and with its dark theme of soldiers distressing peasants the same as his "Massacre of the innocents" painting and "Milites requiescentes" print. So Nadine M Orenstein has edited a clearly organized, compellingly written, and wonderfully illustrated book which pools excellent examples of art, along with PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER books by Walter S Gibson, Rose-Marie Hagen et al, and Wolfgang Stechow and PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER AT THE KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM IN VIENNA by Pieter Bruegel. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Bruegel, Pieter,    4. Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - General    5. European    6. Exhibitions    7. Individual Artist    8. Metropolitan Museum Of Art - Exhibition Catalogs    9. ca. 1525-1569    10. Art / History / European    11. Drawing & drawings    12. Exhibition catalogues and specific collections    13. History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600    14. Individual artists    15. Netherlands    16. Prints & printmaking    17. c 1500 to c 1600   

Subjects:  1. 1568-1625    2. Art    3. Art & Art Instruction    4. Bruegel, Jan,    5. California    6. History - General    7. Individual Artist    8. Los Angeles    9. Noah's ark (J. Paul Getty Muse    10. Noah's ark in art    11. Painting    12. Art & Architecture | History | Renaissance    13. Art / Individual Artist    14. Belgium    15. Individual artists    16. c 1500 to c 1600    17. c 1600 to c 1700   

Subjects:  1. 16th century    2. Architecture    3. Art    4. Art and society    5. Art, Renaissance    6. Bruegel, Pieter,    7. Criticism and interpretation    8. Europe, Northern    9. Flanders    10. General    11. History    12. History - General    13. History - Renaissance    14. Individual Painters - Renaissance    15. Peasants in art    16. ca. 1525-1569    17. Art / General    18. Bruegel, Pieter    19. Europe    20. Painting & paintings    21. Renaissance art   

Reviews (1)

Peasants, fools and demons
The title of the review is the book's subtitle.It is not known whether Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 525-1569, favored the Catholic or Protestant side in the disputes in Holland and Belgium, but the authors believe that the paintings contain a subtext.The first mention of Bruegel occurs in 1551.He was enrolled as a master of the guild in Antwerp.Antwerp was a good place for a painter to be.Bruegel's Tower of Babel paintings may reflect the general insecurity of Catholics, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and Calvinists living side by side.The theme was used three times.
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Subjects:  1. Art & Art Instruction    2. European    3. Individual Artist    4. Individual artists    5. Painting & paintings   

Reviews (4)

Lord of the paints
Some said that PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, who started as a landscape painter, swallowed and then spat the Alps onto canvases and panels calling up Italian mountainous landscape masters Giulio Campagnola and Titian. In fact, he played out about 80 real "Children's games" in the Italian city view style of Piero della Francesca and of the woodcut-illustrated works of SebastianoSerlio. But earlier Netherlandish school influences were in Flemish landscape painter Joachim Patinir-type bird's-eye detailed never-never land mapping of "Landscape with Christ appearing to the apostles at the sea of Tiberias," "The flight into Egypt," and "The parable of the sower"; and later in Herri met de Bles-type "Procession of Calvary," as his largest picture, "Sermon of St John the Baptist," and "Suicide of Saul" in all its Albrecht Altdorfer-type impressionistic brilliance, as forerunners along with the brilliantly yellow "Harvesters" and the three "Haymaking" women to Peter Paul Rubens. "The adoration of the kings," as his first large-figure and only upright-formatted picture, was one of two Italian-influenced paintings, with altarpiece-type proportions, Masaccio-type Moor, late Quattrocento-type bending and kneeling kings, and Michelangelo-type upper body for the Christ Child against balanced interweaving of strong and subdued reds, pink, green, dun, chamois, and black. The other was the one work that he kept with him until death, his small picture of Christ with Raphael-type pivotally placed adulteress, as one of his most copied paintings along with "Winter landscape with a bird trap," in a mature, rare grisaille with brown touchings and gray shades, and with his favorite theme of humility and tolerance. His only mythological "Landscape with the fall of Icarus" had its ploughman doing business as usual, thereby acting out the German proverb of no plough stopping for the sake of a dying man. Elsewhere, subtly color-schemed figures and spaces pioneered applying Hugo van der Goes-type stupid staring to bug-eyed, senselessly frenzied human automatons in "Parable of the blind" and bringing together in one artwork about 100 "Proverbs." He foreran Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Rembrandt in daringly artificial light effects for great spiritual depth with the brightly illuminated head of St John the Evangelist asleep and the supernaturally lighted Virgin Mary dying uncustomarily surrounded by patriarchs, martyrs, holy virgins, and confessors. The later bareboned getting across attitudes and moods by key body language, as in "The big fish eating the little fish," and by untraditional symbols, as in gluttonously round bulks of bellies and trees in "The land of Cockaigne," took the place of his earliest image- and motif-crowded works, as in the Botticelli-type Calumny with the King and his advisors, Ignorance and Suspicion, for his print series on "Vices" and in the Hieronymus Bosch-type grotesque animal and human combinations of fantasies running wild, with the "Christ in limbo" and "Last judgment" drawings and with the many-hued, -shaded, -textured, and -tinted "Fall of the rebel angels," "Mad Meg," and "Triumph of death" paintings. Throughout, his art drew on a mastery of color, from the wintry crisp, subdued black, brown, gray and white "Hunters in the snow" to the delicately dun, gray, mauve and subdued green "Misanthrope" and the pointillistically fresh-leafed "Landscape with the magpie on the gallows." So author Wolfgang Stechow leaves readers on good terms with the 16th-century Flemish artist's hugely productive career and scantily documented life. His clearly written and helpfully illustrated book works well with HIERONYMUS BOSCH by Jos Koldeweij et al, SEBASTIANO SERLIO ON ARCHITECTURE, SERLIO ON DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE, and ALBRECHT ALTDORFER AND THE ORIGINS OF LANDSCAPE by Christopher S Wood.

God is in the Details
I got this book two or three years ago in an Italian-language edition.I can't read Italian, so I can't comment on the quality of the text, but I can say that any Bruegel fan will be very happy to have this book, with or without readable words. The World On Wood
Pieter Bruegel The Elder must have been a very interesting fellow. I would have liked to have known him. This lovely book lets you enter the strange world of Bruegel, overflowing with the reality of the 16th centuryNetherlands mixed (in the same painting) with biblical and classicalscenes! To the modern eye and mind these are very disconcertingcombinations! You have the Tower Of Babel being constructed next to awaterway which contains European sailing ships, while off in the distanceyou can see the houses of Antwerp. You have Icarus falling into the seawhile a 16th century farmer walks by with his ox and while another manfishes nearby, both seemingly oblivious to the fate of the poor man.Bruegel's paintings, most of which were done on wood panel, are full ofmany different people doing many different things. You get a sense ofhustle and bustle and life. Oftimes the people are odd-looking and havestrange physiques. Children are indistinguishable from adults. Visual punsabound. Men at a wedding dance have outrageously bulging codpieces; barebuttocks are sometimes visible through windows. Other paintings containmoral lessons and are full of horrible demons or skeletons rampagingthrough the countryside like some awful supernatural army, raping andmurdering. Still other paintings are of idyllic scenes, such as maidenswalking through the countryside at harvest time or children playing gameson the ice during winter. Bruegel was a master of color and the harvestscenes glow with golden yellow and the winter scenes chill you with whitesand subtle greys and leaden skies. Taschen has done it again with anotherfine book with excellent commentary and high quality reproductions. Thepaintings of Bruegel are full of humor and horror and beauty and uglinessand sometimes so much is going on you can't digest it all at one time. Thepaintings of Bruegel are full of life. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Bruegel, Pieter,    4. Criticism and interpretation    5. European    6. History - General    7. Individual Artist    8. Individual Painters - Renaissance    9. ca. 1525-1569    10. Bruegel, Pieter   

Subjects:  1. Art & Art Instruction    2. Flanders    3. History - General    4. Netherlands    5. Painters    6. Painters, Flemish    7. Painting    8. Painting, Dutch    9. Painting, Netherlandish    10. Painting & paintings   

Reviews (1)

Pretty Good
I found the text by Keith Roberts to be informative without going into unnecessary depths, making this volume a good introduction to the artist. The layout is also good: each painting is shown in full, complimented with detailed close-up views, all helpfully annotated. I was disappointed with the reproduction quality. The B&W images are often heavy, reminiscent of photocopies. The colour plates look slightly washed out, desaturated. I have never seen a Bruegel in person, so I cannot say with any certainty if this is the result of poor reproduction or if it is an accurate representation of the work; however I have seen more vibrant versions elsewhere. So, the image reproduction is not excellent. The text is clear and informative enough, the annotations helpful. Very reasonably priced. This volume will satisfy your curiosities about the life and work of the artist. 38 B&W, 54 Colour ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. History - General    4. Individual Artist    5. Individual Painters - Renaissance    6. Art / Individual Artist    7. History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600    8. Individual artists    9. c 1500 to c 1600   

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Bruegel, Pieter,    3. General    4. History - General    5. Individual Artist    6. Photography    7. d. 1569    8. the Elder,    9. Bruegel, Pieter    10. History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600    11. Individual artists    12. Netherlands    13. c 1500 to c 1600    14. c 1600 to c 1700   

Subjects:  1. Netherlands    2. Painters    3. Painting, Dutch   

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Art    3. Individual Artist   

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Bruegel, Pieter    4. Bruegel, Pieter,    5. Criticism    6. Criticism and interpretation    7. Individual Artist    8. Individual Painters And Their Work    9. ca. 1525-1569    10. Art / Individual Artist   

Subjects:  1. Individual Painters And Their Work