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Hieronymus Bosch, The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1495). Note the jerry-built construction of the stable. |
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| Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Peasant Dance (c. 1568). A handful of Netherlandish moral proverbs within this robust scene. |
Two
painters who lived in the same era of the early Renaissance present a type of
artist who was typical of the northern European genre, Hieronymus Bosch (Jeroen
van Aken, c. 1450-1516) and Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Bruegel, c. 1525-1569). And like those artists, from Jan Van Eyck to Albrecht
Durer, both provided fine detail in their imagery whether it was the fur of a
rabbit or the bucket of an old stone well.
Their compositions? I’d say they
were teeming with figures, flora, and fauna though others may have seen these
works as crowded and cluttered. Also,
while they stayed in the mainstream of content with commissions of religious
works, many northern European artists painted daily life of the average person.
What
did other artists of the same era from another region think? Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) stated
that Flemish art was “…without reason or art, symmetry and proportion.” He went on to judge that it appealed to
“women and laggards,” in line with the cultural view of his time that women
were lesser judges of what was fine in the Fine Arts. More of his views can be found here, http://arthistoryresources.net/renaissance-art-theory-2012/michelangelo-on-painting.html.
Apparently, Michelangelo reasoned that only the Italian style was true Art. Of course, he was wrong.
Reviewing both painters, a quick judgement is that Bosch is otherworldly whereas Brueghel is of this world. The former, with his saintly figures and hybrid monsters, does fit that label well; the latter, portraying stout people in their daily chores, also follows that line of description.
Another
look, however, shows that Bosch employed the natural and human environments of
his day in landscape and structures.
Even the fires of hell that he painted may likely have had as a source
of inspiration the blast furnaces of the region within a hundred miles, the new
medieval technique for producing iron would have been important. Of course, it is unknown whether he ever saw
them. Witch-burning? That is another possibility. A more likely and frightening experience for him may have been the disastrous fire of 1463 that destroyed not only his family home but also thousands of others when he was a boy or a young teenager.
Also, the structures he painted with their ad hoc appearance was not a result of sloppy planning on Bosch’s part, but taken from actual houses and barns he observed. Old buildings in rural Netherlands reveal how many repairs were jerry-built since the locals did not have a craftsperson at hand and it was imperative to fix the issue. Surely, this was true of Bosch’s day.
Concerning Brueghel, yes, he engaged daily lives of people in their environment. Nonetheless, like Bosch this deserves scrutiny. It may well be that a painting as Peasant Dance (c. 1568) presents a scene that was typical of his region in that time, a rousing celebration with food, drink, and dance (of course!). This may have been a companion piece to Peasant Wedding painted around the same time, and if so does give a clue to the reality and feeling the artist strived to re-create. And yet, in both there was likely a moral message given as he put in symbols and gestures that indicate that he went beyond the appearance of things. Like many artists of his day, he knew that appearances did not necessarily deceive but presuppositions about them do.
Along with these “everyday” scenes, however, he did paint religious imagery. The Battle Between Carnival and Lent (1559) depicts the conflict between feast and fast, moderation and merriment. Here, the carnival prince and the lady of Lent joust playfully in the bottom center, each approaching from their respective strongholds of inn and church. And throughout, whether drinking or praying, Brueghel tells us that everyone is merely doing what they will for their own convenience.
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say that while Bosch emphasized the supernatural and the fantastic, he relied on his own knowledge of people, nature, as well as human nature, to describe what he wanted to depict. With Brueghel, surely he stressed the natural but he depended often upon moral or religious lessons to provide a narrative structure for his art. However and whatever each of them painted most, if not all, of their work was done on commission, and reveal not only the artists’ inner thought but also the feeling of the time.
