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Not only Peasants
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We may learn a great deal about an artist by identifying
the things he does not paint. As far as we are aware,
Bruegel painted no portraits on commission, nor - even more
significant - any nudes. The nude human body had been a
favourite subject since the Renaissance. Artists vied with
each other in their search for the perfect body, and young
painters in the 16th century were advised to construct an
ideal figure from the particularly beautiful limbs of
different persons, that they might thereby "achieve a
harmony such as Nature only seldom affords."16 People should
be more perfect than Nature, for - as one argument ran - man
is made in God's image, and it is the task of the artist to
bring out this similarity.
In Bruegel's art, by contrast, the only naked beings are
demons. His people are dressed and often so wrapped up that
their bodies are quite unrecognizable - a far cry from the
well-proportioned or elegantly stretched figures of the
Italians and their followers in Spain and the north.
Of the portraits ascribed to him, only one is indisputably
by Bruegel: the Head of a Peasant Woman (after 1564).
This work, like with many figures in his other paintings,
reveals his great talent for capturing faces. We may be sure
that Bruegel did not lack requests for portraits, the newly
wealthy citizens being all too eager to have themselves and
their families immortalized in this manner. However, he was
evidently unwilling to bother himself with that sort of
thing.
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Head of a Peasant Woman
after 1564
Bruegel painted no commissioned portraits, nor any of
prominent contemporaries. He was uninterested in any cult of
personality. However, this portrait of a peasant woman
reveals just how capable he was of portraying faces with
highly individual features.
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The emphasis upon the importance of the individual, which
emerged in the Renaissance did not fit in with his artistic
concept. Indeed, Bruegel often hid the faces of the figures
in his drawings and paintings, rendering them unrecognizable
as individuals. Of the six persons in the foreground of the
drawing Summer (1568), only one face is visible, and
that foreshortened; in The Beekeepers and the Birdnester
(c. 1568), the observer feels it was precisely this
display of anonymity which so attracted Bruegel.
A similar tendency may be observed in his biblical figures.
He pushes them to one side, or hides them between secular
figures of the same size. Thus we encounter Mary and Joseph
in the village square, St. John the Baptist with Christ in a
crowd of people, and the Adoration of the Kings behind a
curtain of falling snow. Over 30 of some 45 pictures by (or
attributed to) Bruegel are characterized by Nature, by the
village and its peasants; the anonymous representatives of
the rural lower stratum become the principal characters in
his oeuvre.
No painter before him had dared produce such works.
Contemporary art generally regarded peasants as figures of
mockery, considering them stupid, gluttonous, drunken, and
prone to violence. It is as such that they appear in
satirical poems, tales, and Shrovetide plays: as a
well-known negative type, an object of laughter. They were
used by authors to amuse the reader, and also to warn him to
beware of bad qualities and wrong behaviour.
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 Summer
1568
Here, too, Bruegel has avoided depicting people as individuals, hiding or
foreshortening the faces and concentrating upon the human body at work.
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The Beekeepers and the Birdnester
c. 1568
Bruegel will have found a special attraction in the
opportunity offered him by the beekeepers of portraying
them as anonymous, faceless people.
Honey was the most important sweetener in those days.
The colonies of bees were smoked out in autumn; the
peasants would then catch new colonies in spring.
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As has already been observed, a desire to warn and
instruct is still regarded by some as the primary aim of
Bruegel's work. Yet we must ask if The Peasant Wedding
Banquet (1568) in the barn - to take but one example -
was really painted with the intention of keeping the
observer from gluttony. Men and women are sitting solemnly
and thoughtfully at table; the helpers are carrying round a
simple porridge on a door which has been taken off its
hinges; the bride is sitting motionless under her bridal
crown. On the right, a monk is conversing with a gentleman
dressed in black. Though wine or beer is being poured into
jugs in the foreground, there is no trace of drunkenness or
gluttony among the wedding party. Indeed, they do not even
appear particularly cheerful. Eating is portrayed as a
serious activity. Moreover, the wall of straw or unthreshed
corn and the crossed sheaves with a rake serve to keep in
mind the labour by which the food is wrested from the soil.
In Bruegel's time, such a scene depicting people at table
will have reminded observers of the Wedding at Cana, as
described in the second chapter of St. John's Gospel. The
story of Christ turning water into wine was often referred
to in contemporary works. Traditional representations
required a large company at table and - as in Bruegel's
painting - a man filling jugs. Jesus and the wedding guests
were not portrayed in the act of eating, however - not even
in those instances where the artist had shifted the wedding
to his own time.
It was a fundamental given in Bruegel's century that saints,
nobles and burgher families were never depicted eating; they
might be shown sitting at table, but were not allowed to
touch the fare before them, nor even to open their mouths,
let alone put anything into them. This drawing a veil over
the act of eating must have been in accordance with an
unwritten rule. In all probability, people found it
disconcerting to be reminded of the fact that no-one, no
matter how rich, or how powerful, or how spiritual he may
be, can live without nourishment - for eating reminds us of
our dependence upon Nature, our dependence upon our
digestive organs. This was at odds with a concept of art in
which man was idealized, one seeking to make man in God's
image, to render him a superior individual.
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The Peasant Wedding Banquet
1568
The bride is sitting under her bridal crown; it is
unclear which of the others is the bridegroom. The feast
is taking place in the barn, the wall behind the guests
consisting of stacked-up straw or corn. Two ears of corn
with a rake call to mind the work that harvesting
involves. The plates are being carried around on a door
taken off its hinges. The principal form of nourishment
in those days consisted of bread, porridge and soup.
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Paolo Veronese
The Wedding at Cana (detail)
1562/63
Painters who idealized people as beautiful
or cerebral beings did not depict them eating -no spoon or bite to eat on its
way mouthwards was visible; instead, people sat chatting in front of their
plates. Quite the opposite was true in the case of Bruegel, who emphasized the
material existence of people, showing the body's need of nourishment.
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The Peasant Wedding Banquet
1568
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The Peasant Wedding Banquet
1568
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The Peasant Wedding Banquet
1568
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