"The Triumph of Death": What is the secret of Bruegel's painting, which has been shaking the minds and imaginations of people for almost 500 years

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There are paintings in the history of painting that leave a deep mark in the memory of a person for a lifetime - it is worth seeing them at least once. Impressions from what he saw seem to penetrate the subconscious and excite the soul for a long time and make you think. Such a work, undoubtedly, is "The Triumph of Death" Pieter Bruegel, eradicating the line between the kingdom of the dead and the world of the living, clearly showing the omnipotence of Death and the helplessness of man.

The painter of the late Renaissance of the Netherlands, went down in art history as a magnificent master who managed to bring together the trends of the new Renaissance and traditional Dutch art, creating his own unforgettable world in his works.

Prehistory of the creation of "Death Triumph"

Bruegel witnessed how fiercely the Inquisition raged in the middle of the 16th century in the Netherlands. Then the armed detachments of the Spanish army, carrying out a punitive mission, led by the Catholic fanatic Alba "with fire and sword" marched through the territory of their northern colony, trying to suppress the popular uprising. In this way, Spain made an attempt to exterminate the Protestantism that was nascent there. In those provinces where the Spaniards had passed, there remained burnt earth and heaps of corpses, estimated in tens of thousands.

King Philip II of Spain, being an ardent Catholic, declared: The country was mired in terrible fear and despair. Under such an incredibly eerie impression of the events taking place, Pieter Bruegel created in about 1562 one of his most sinister and at the same time most amazing of his creations - "The Triumph of Death". For almost five centuries, this painting by the master makes an indelible impression on the public and makes one think once again about the inevitability of the deathbed.

Triumph of Death

In his painting, the artist created an eerie "eulogy" of Death. For the first time, when you see this canvas, grandiose in its content, you get a considerable shock. Something incomprehensible and ominous opens up to the eye: many skeletons and skulls, already dead and beating in agony of people torn to pieces and preparing for execution, as well as feasting and trying to resist.

And only, looking at this unimaginable creation of human hands, centimeter by centimeter, one can penetrate and understand what the author intended and what he wanted to convey to the consciousness of contemporaries and descendants.

A huge panoramic view of a monstrous landscape resembling a scorched desert opens before the viewer, where barren land, in the glow of fires, is strewn with pillars with wheels of torture and gallows. And on the very line of the horizon you can see a shallow sea with sinking ships. The high line of the horizon made it possible for the artist to expand on a grand scale an ominous picture of what is happening below - on the ground.

The burnt-out desert is filled with an abundance of torture and execution facilities everywhere. They are actively used by the warriors of death to exterminate their victims.

Death itself carries a huge symbolic and compositional meaning, uniting everything that happens around it. As you can see, in the painting Death is an image of a skeleton with a scythe, dashingly galloping on a bony horse right in the thick of events. The horseman of the apocalypse leads the hordes of his army. He triumphs as he sees the "dance of death" unfold.

Hordes of skeletons, hiding behind coffin lids, like shields, created a barrier for the crowd, which Death drives into a huge open coffin, something like a mousetrap. No one can get away from her, she will distort everyone with her scythe - kings and cardinals, card sharpers and merchants, peasants and knights, women and children. She will stop at nothing or anyone.

Death overtakes the heroes of the picture everywhere: in a mass slaughter and a duel, at work, at a meal and even on a date of love. You cannot hide from it anywhere, there is no salvation from it. She is omnipresent. Literally everyone appears in the face of Death as a powerless grain of sand in the vortex of the tornado, where sooner or later it will be drawn. Everyone begins to understand that death awaits everyone, regardless of status and position.

In the lower left part of the canvas, the artist painted a reclining figure in a royal robe. The monarch is clearly in agony - his time is numbered. Death has already looked into his eyes and now it only cares about the gold lying next to the king. She knows exactly at what cost it was obtained.

On the canvas, you can also see several daredevils trying to resist the warriors of Death, but all in vain - their minutes are numbered. Although life is still glimmering in the lower right corner: there is a laid table surrounded by feasting and a couple of lovers playing music, playing nice. But the jester, having already seen something amiss, tries to hide under the table, and one daredevil grabbed the sword. However, it is quite clear that in a moment - and everyone is doomed to perish.

The eerie sight is enhanced by a wagon with skulls, which is dragged by a bony nag, controlled by a skeleton.

In "The Triumph of Death", the viewer's attention is attracted by another important moment: in the center of the left side of the canvas, the dead, dressed in white togas, have gathered their judgment seat. Standing on a high podium next to the cross, they blow the trumpets and are going to proclaim something. History connoisseurs find in this a direct allusion to the tribunal of the Most Holy Inquisition. Although during the creation of the picture, the Spanish censors were never able to find fault with the artist's creation: the motif of the canvas was allowed in the Christian world, and, moreover, it was quite common. Fortunately, Bruegel often managed to create very candid works with a very relevant meaning hidden under traditional plot motives.

A closer look at the details reveals one amazing circumstance: it would seem that tens of hundreds of skeletons and the same number of skulls are exactly the same, but the author managed to write these images in such a way that you can see their clear facial expressions. They wink, then grin, then devilishly mock, and then, viciously, with a threat, look with the failures of their eye sockets. The artist conveyed these details amazingly, and this speaks of his greatest skill.

By the way, Bruegel took a lot in his work from his compatriot and predecessor Hieronymus Bosch, a Dutch painter of the Northern Renaissance.

So, through allegories and metamorphoses, the master expressed his protest against what was happening in his homeland, and in this way he tried to convey to the descendants the terrible truth about what he saw and experienced.

Continuing the theme of famous Dutch painters, I would like to reveal a few fascinating little-known facts about the life and work of Hieronymus Bosch, who is considered the predecessor of surrealism.