Pieter Bruegel

These strange creatures were painted nearly 500 years ago by a man called Pieter Bruegel.

And, if you can believe it, he is one of the most important artists in history.

Here's why...

Pieter Bruegel was born in the Netherlands in about 1525, possibly in a town called Bruegel — hence his name — or in Breda, but soon moved to Antwerp.

We know little of his origins, though people have speculated for centuries that he was from a peasant family... you'll see why.

Antwerp was a bustling commercial city and by 1552 Bruegel had become a master at the Guild of Painters there.

He then set out on a three year tour of Italy, where he made sketches of his travels, in particular the landscapes — a sign of things to come.

When he returned to Antwerp Bruegel worked at a major publishing house, run by a man called Hieronymus Cock, which produced art for the city's growing middle classes.

This was popular, commercial art — dozens of copies would be made and sold of Bruegel's fabulous drawings.

But this was Europe during the Reformation, when art came under scrutiny like never before.

In Protestant Northern Europe religious art had been almost banned in some places and was carefully regulated in others.

And so Bruegel innovated — he decided to focus on landscapes.

Landscapes had never been a respected genre in European art and it was only just before Bruegel's time that this started to change.

And they had been mainly religious — Bruegel's genius was to paint the landscapes around him.

These were snapshots of ordinary, contemporary life.

Portrayals of ordinary people were also incredibly uncommon, and it was Bruegel who made them normal by depicting their weddings, dances, and traditions.

He was clearly fond of the common people, but not sentimental about them — Bruegel's peasants are often yokels and buffoons.

He also drew on the old Medieval tradition of calendar art, where each of the seasons or months was portrayed in turn.

These are some of his most famous paintings, and rightly so — there is something about Bruegel's stylised realism that is deeply charming.

But there's another side to Bruegel.

Consider Netherlandish Proverbs, which visualises at least 120 proverbs from his home country.

Abundant in detail and storytelling, Bruegel's art became a chronicle of folk culture and a strangely invaluable record of 16th century life.

There are few painters who reward close attention like Bruegel, whether fantastical visions or rowdy peasant tomfoolery.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels has so much going on that it's hard to imagine how Bruegel even painted this.

Zoom in and enjoy the details...

Some of his work shows an influence from Hieronymus Bosch, whose paintings were always in demand in Antwerp — but Bruegel was his equal in producing kaleidoscopic dramas of bizarre but engrossing madness.

This was an artist with rare imaginative power and range.

The Renaissance had ushered in new artistic trends and a wave of revolutionary religious, political, and cultural ideals.

But Bruegel retained the spirit of Gothic art and of Medieval marginalia, those famous doodles of strange creatures in the margins of monks' manuscripts.

And while his paintings are now more famous, Bruegel's drawings — produced for a thriving commercial market, we must remember — are equally fascinating, filled with that same abundance of storytelling detail.

Go and explore his drawings; they won't disappoint.

Bruegel's large-scale paintings are almost like films, filled with dozens of scenes and hundreds of characters.

You can study them for hours, always finding new details to delight over (or have nightmares about!) and stories to enjoy.

He was an incredibly generous painter.

But Bruegel was not only an entertainer; he was clearly a man who had thought deeply about his faith.

He knew how to tone down his hellish fantasies or peasant festivities in order to produce more solemn, stirring works of art.

He wanted to bring the Bible to life.

Bruegel's religious art is very different to what was being produced in Italy at the same time, where you can see the dominance of Classical ideals.

In Italy art was simpler, lacking in detail, and thoroughly idealised.

Neither better nor worse — but evidently different.

Bruegel's religious scenes are entirely unidealised and without any of that Italian obsessing over grace or harmony.

He portrays Biblical scenes as if they were taking place in the present — Bethlehem is just another snowy Flemish village in winter.

Making scripture relatable?

And sometimes it seems Bruegel was simply curious to see how far his powerful imagination could go, as in his two paintings of the Tower of Babel — this is the "Little Babel".

It's easy to see why Bruegel's art was so popular with the people of Antwerp.

And that's Bruegel — a popular painter whose works didn't have to be intellectualised.

They reward any and every viewer with amusement, horror, delight, and shock.

But, even if he didn't embrace the high ideals of the Italian Renaissance, Bruegel was never superficial.

And his uncompromising interest in plain landscapes and in the lives of ordinary people was foundational for the Dutch Golden Age, which flowered shortly after his life.

He paved the way for everyone from Rembrandt to Vermeer, and deserves his reputation as one of the greats.

His legacy lived on through his sons, who became renowned artists in their own right — hence he is known as Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Pieter Bruegel the Younger followed his father's style, while Jan Bruegel, working with Rubens, took a somewhat different route:

This self-portrait is nothing less than we would expect: unsentimental, unidealised, but vivid and full of character.

Bruegel's art entertained and delighted the citizens of 16th century Antwerp — and now Bruegel is doing the same for people all around the 21st century world.