Bruegel. The Complete Works

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's life was marked by cultural conflict, religious wars, the Duke of Albas brutal rule, and the Inquisition. He was a print designer for Hieronymus Cock, producing numerous print series that depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and landscape panoramas. He later turned to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels. This monograph is a testament to his evolution as an artist, who bravely confronted the issues of his day and proposed new inventions and solutions. It contains 40 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 engravings in pristine reproductions, each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegels time.

Format: Hardback
Length: 492 pages
Publication date: 06 October 2022
Publisher: Taschen GmbH

The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/30–1569) were marked by profound cultural conflict. He witnessed religious wars, the brutal rule of Duke of Alba as governor of the Netherlands, and the tangible effects of the Inquisition. To this day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to its humanistic content.

Starting out as a print designer for publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape panoramas. He would eventually increasingly turn to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels.

This monograph is a testament to Bruegel's evolution as an artist, one who bravely confronted the issues of his day, all the while proposing new inventions and solutions. Rather than idealizing reality, he addressed the horrors of religious warfare and took a critical stand against the institution of the Church. To this end, he developed his own pictorial language of dissent, lacing innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to escape repercussions.

This collection captures all the breadth and splendid detail of Bruegel's oeuvre like never before, and gathers all 40 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 engravings in pristine reproductions — each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel's time.

Weight: 3605g
Dimension: 340 x 250 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783836583619