Bruegel Pieter - Bruegel and the Creative Process, 1559-1563

To all Bruegel scholars past and present who have contributed to our understanding of his art, and to those museums and collectors entrusted with its care. I have benefited from the help of many individuals, but owe a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alexander Wied of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and to Elke Oberthaler, curator for that institution. As always, the Dartmouth College Library has proven invaluable, and for the present project I have received generous assistance from Jay Satterfeld, Special Collections Librarian, and Janice B. Smarsik, Curator of Visual Resources.

I am especially grateful to my sons, Kevin, Marc, and David Sullivan, for their interest and encouragement over the years, and to my husband, Denis G. Sullivan. Without his constant support and frequent company, as I traveled from San Diego to Prague and any number of places in between in pursuit of "Bruegels," this volume would not exist. It is dedicated to him.

Margaret A. Sullivan
Norwich, Vermont

The art that Bruegel produced between 1559 and 1563 presents a rare opportunity to investigate a concentrated period of creativity in one of the world's great artists. Within a brief period Bruegel produced some of his most original worksthe first pictorial collection of contemporary customs in Carnival and Lent, the first painting with children's activities as its subject, the first large-scale painting of a proverb collection, the enigmatic Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), and the Triumph of Death, Bruegel's disturbing vision of men and women in a desperate fight against the onslaught of death. Each of these paintings is unique, yet they share a similar size and format, a panorama filled with a multitude of individual figures and intriguing details.

Idiosyncratic, as original in conception as they are skillful in execution, the paintings Bruegel created during these years form a unique body of work that raises a number of important questions. What combination of circumstances made this burst of creativity possible? And why did it end as suddenly as it began? After 1563 the majority of Bruegel's subjects can be accommodated within a familiar category. The strange gave way to the traditional with subjects that his viewers could readily identifyseasons, peasant scenes, religious subjects such as the Carrying of the Cross, or, in the case of his Fall of Icarus, a familiar classical story. It was only at the end of his life with the Magpie on the Gallows and the Misanthrope, painted in 1568, the year before his death, that Bruegel again made such a radical break with tradition. What experience, interests, and abilities did Bruegel bring to the creative process, and what was the mediating role of external factors over which the artist had no control?

The aim in this study is to address these questions by constructing a coherent account of Bruegel's art and career during these crucial years, one that includes all the extant works, drawings as well as paintings. The factors to be considered include the technical problems associated with picture-making, Bruegel's personal situation at the time, his previous works, the demands of the marketplace, the influence of other artists and their art, the role of patrons and publishers, the experience and expectations of the potential audience, the literature published at the time, and the impact of the religious and political this is a comprehensive, chronologically organized enterprise. Aside from the copies of Bruegel's paintings made by his sonsincluded because they provide a unique insight into the father's creative processrelevance is determined by timing and specificity.

Because the works that Bruegel produced between 1559 and 1563 differ to such a marked degree from the more traditional subjects that followed, preconceived notions based on later circumstances can be misleading. In this study events and attitudes appropriate to this period under consideration are given precedence over anachronistic assumptions based on work that Bruegel produced after that time as well as his posthumous reputation. Although Karel Van Mander's biographical sketch in his Schilder-Boeck of 1604 is usually given an important role in studies of Bruegel's art it tends to reveal more about Van Mander's own proselytizing agenda and Bruegel's reputation as it developed after his death than it does about the art he created between 1559 and 1563. Van Mander's particular concerns, as well as the intervening years, compromise the reliability of the Schilder-Boeck when reconstructing the social and cultural conditions that prevailed in the middle of the sixteenth century.