29/11/2018
By 1500 the secular, rationalist outlook of Italian Humanism had spread beyond the Alps and found a welcome reception among the scholars and literati of those lands. Sometimes preceding it and sometimes in its wake came the "modern art" developed in Italy in conjunction with Humanism. Not every artist in Northern Europe was as enthusiastic about the new creed and art as Albrecht Dürer, though most were quick to adopt the technical innovations of Italian painting. In Germany, Matthias Grünewald and others persisted in a medieval sensibility. And in the Low Countries, Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516) and Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-69) initiated their own "Counter-Renaissance" with works that seemingly went against every tenet of humanism, and which, as a consequence, would destine them to a centuries-long obscurity. Almost all of Bosch's painting was religious in nature -- obsessed with temptation and sin, salvation and damnation -- and consummately non-rational in its details. (Bosch's visions of Heaven and Hell are so vividly and unconventionally rendered that one suspects he had, on some level, been there.) When Bruegel wasn't producing religious works laced with Boschean flourishes, he was depicting peasant life, a terra incognita for humanist art.
This gallery is devoted entirely to the work of these two "retrograde" artists, with a liberal dose of comments providing background and the occasional interpretation. Since both had the propensity to pack an inordinate amount of detail into works rich in action and crowded with figures, a fair number of "close-ups" accompany the pictures -- sixty for Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" alone.
All extant paintings of both artists are included in this gallery. 224 Bruegel images follow 209 of Bosch's. Their arrangement, per usual, is in rough chronological order for each artist.
Bruegel was also a prolific printmaker. For a generous sample, see the MWW Prints & Drawing Room.
See also these MWW companion galleries:
* The Flemish Masters of the 15th & 16th c.
* Going for Baroque: Rubens & 17th c. Flemish Art