How to recognize sins and virtues in the paintings of the master of allegory Bruegel the Elder

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

The world knows Pieter Bruegel the Elder as an excellent painter, whose works, even after five centuries, have not lost their significance and relevance. They are both cognitive in terms of history and talented in terms of painting. However, in the 16th century, the brilliant artist was known not at all for his paintings, but for his graphic works. He began his creative career as a draftsman creating sketches for future engravings. And today in our virtual gallery are two famous graphic series - "Seven Deadly Sins" and "Seven Virtues", where Bruegel first appeared as a magnificent master of allegory.

A few words about the artist

There are few personalities in the history of art as mysterious and ambiguous as Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Very little is known about his life, and only 45 picturesque paintings, as well as engravings created according to his drawings, have survived from the artistic heritage to our time.

Unfortunately, there is no specificity about the exact date of birth of Pieter Bruegel, so it is generally accepted that he was born around 1525 in the village of Bruegel, near Breda in the Dutch province of Limburg. Bruegel's childhood and adolescence is also covered with a darkness of obscurity. It is only known for certain that the future artist received his primary education in a village "preparatory" school.

Even in his youth, in the middle of the 1540s, fate brought Bruegel to Antwerp, where he entered the studio of the famous artist Peter Cook Van Aelst, court painter Charles V. and as a beginner master. After the death of the teacher in 1551, Bruegel was admitted to the professional association of artists - the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp. And then he went to work for Jerome Kok (1510-1570) - an experienced talented graphic engraver and successful entrepreneur who had a workshop that printed and sold engravings.

Bruegel's world in black and white

In the middle of the 16th century, the Netherlands became the European center for the production and sale of printed publications. Bruegel and his publisher Jerome Kok played a very significant role in this. The master of engraving, Hieronymus Kok, recruited talented artists and engravers, who also created drawings for printed publications. On this list was Pieter Bruegel, who began his career as a draftsman. Soon, Kok, seeing the hidden potential in his worker, sent the young artist on a creative trip to France and Italy to make a series of drawings of Italian landscapes intended for sketches for engravings. By the way, about 120 of Bruegel's drawings made during this trip have survived to this day.

It should be noted that Bruegel did not make his engravings himself. He came up with plots and drew only sketches, according to which other masters made them. Therefore, it is rather difficult to judge how the artistic images correspond to the original, since the preparatory drawings in most cases have not survived, and it is simply not possible to get acquainted with the artist's intentions other way.

In some of the master's drawings, we can see fragments of subjects repeating famous canvases or even citing the works of other masters, and some are completely special author's unique works.

Hieronymus Kok subsequently collected about 135 Bruegel's drawings, which were translated into engravings by various masters. Prints made from a series of drawings by Bruegel "Twelve large landscapes", "Small landscapes of Brabant and Kampen", as well as "Donkey at school", "Big fish eats small", "Artist and Connoisseur" were a huge success with buyers. However, among the most significant graphic works of Bruegel are the series "Seven Deadly Sins" (1556 - 1558) and "Seven Virtues" (1559-1560). And, curiously, all the drawings of these cycles have survived to this day and are in various collections in Western Europe.

It was in Coca's workshop that the young artist saw prints from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, which amazed him to the core. And he, inspired by what he saw, created his own variations on the themes of the paintings of the great painter. But the distinguishing feature of Bruegel's works from Bosch's plots is that the artist showed hell as a kind of "city of sins", where each of them corresponds to a certain "quarter" with its own landscape, architecture, its own absurd, but detailed "way of life." Under each engraving there is an inscription in Latin with the name of this or that sin.

The Seven Deadly Sins

"The Seven Deadly Sins" - the most famous graphic works of the master, vividly illustrating the vices of mankind, included in a cycle consisting of eight drawings: "Anger", "Laziness", "Vanity (Pride)", "Avarice", "Gluttony", " Envy "," Lust "and the final composition -" The Last Judgment ". These drawings are densely "populated" with characters - almost faceless representatives of different classes, each doing his own thing, according to the plot.

"Love of money". Avaritia.

The love of money in Catholicism is one of the seven deadly sins that pushes people to increase money, avarice and envy. On the engraving, you can fully see the greed and greed, money-grubbing and greed of her characters.

"Laziness" (Acedia)

The artist allegorically showed laziness through images of snails and slowly crawling animals, sleeping idlers and dice players killing time in a tavern (even the clock stopped and fell asleep). In the center of the composition is a sleeping female figure, symbolizing Laziness. The devil himself supports her pillow, which is a symbol of the Dutch proverb: "Laziness is the devil's pillow." Only the monk in vain calls everyone to wake up from hibernation.

"Envy" (Invidia)

Envy is quite difficult to convey in an image. However, Bruegel used a rather persistent symbol of envy in Dutch iconography: two dogs gnawing at one bone.

Curiously, even in these early works, Bruegel began to use his favorite technique - to depict folk Flemish proverbs as allegories.

"Gluttony". (Gula)

To maximize the essence of this drawing, the artist depicted a bagpipe - a symbol of the sinful "fun of the poor". She hangs on a tree, as if she too - overeat.

"Anger". (Ira)

Those who burned with malice and hatred literally burn….

"Vanity" (Pride) - Superbia

The mirror is a traditional symbol of pride, sometimes even serving as a tool of Satan. Therefore, mirrors were sometimes framed with images of the Passion of the Lord in order to reduce the harm from self-admiration and to protect themselves from the temptations of the devil. But it seems that the characters in this work by Bruegel are concerned only with themselves.

"Voluptuousness". (Luxuria)

There are clearly variations on the theme of the famous Bosch triptych "The Garden of Worldly Delights": huge fruits, "bubbles of lust".

"The Last Judgment"

And, finally, the retribution for sins … In the "Last Judgment" it is necessary to note the hellish gates in the form of the mouth of the biblical Leviathan, where the sinners who have sailed by boat are sent directly.

Seven Virtues

The situation was similar with the series of drawings "The Seven Virtues", which were executed in the same style, with the same semantic load and identifying inscriptions in Latin.

The Latin text under the engraving "Prudence" reads: "If you want to be prudent, be prudent for the future, think in your soul what might happen." The image of a woman standing on the thin rungs of a ladder symbolizes Prudence, the main feature of which is prudence. And the sieve that adorns her head helps to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Art critics note that this engraving interestingly shows hell in the form of a terrible creature endowed with a toothy mouth, eyes and hair. The jaws of teeth have become entrenched in European art as a symbol of failure into the hellish abyss and as a symbol of hell itself.

But the image of Christ, descending into the underworld in a halo resembling a bathysphere, does not produce the impression of power and strength, and the heavenly forces do not fight the forces of hell, since they simply are not in the picture. The righteous emerge from the open, toothy jaws of hell, not locked by the more fallen gates. Horrible hellish monsters writhing in convulsions and suffering. However, the impression that a great world event is taking place does not arise. Where is the divine triumph? Probably, Bruegel was unable to portray with symbols and conventions what could be expressed only in words by means of realism, which was emerging in the 16th century.

And in conclusion, I would like to emphasize that many of the symbols used by the artist had, even at that time, a far from generally recognized interpretation and that not all of Bruegel's characters can be deciphered. But in general terms, the essence of sin and retribution in such a form as it developed in the Protestant Netherlands is in many ways understandable to the viewer of both the Catholic and Orthodox faiths.

Continuing the theme of allegories in the works of the Dutch artist, read: "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.