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Exploring the World
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 Warship Seen Half from Left
The Netherlanders
possessed one of the largest merchant fleets, and mercantile
initiative led to the reconnaissance of distant lands. Bruegel took great pains with his technically exact
depictions of ships.
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Mediaeval paintings primarily depicted biblical figures,
the saints, Heaven and Hell. Such works, most of them in
churches and monasteries, were meant to show the faithful
what they could not see with their own eyes. They thus
served a devotional and didactic purpose.
In the Renaissance (which began in Italy some 100 years
before Bruegel's birth), the focus of attention turned to
man. The mediaeval concept of Earth, as a vale of tears
filled with wretched sinners, faded. The status of man was
enhanced; painters showed that he possessed a body, and
placed him - with the aid of perspective - in a
three-dimensional earthly environment. Reality was studied
not only by the artists but also - even more so - by
empirical scientists. The first circumnavigation of the
world, undertaken by Magellan, had proved in 1521 that the
Earth was round; in 1548, Pierre Coudenberg had laid out a
Botanical Gardens in Brussels for the purpose of studying
exotic plants, one of many such study gardens in this
century; in 1560, the Church lifted its ban on the
dissection of corpses, releasing the human body for
examination; and in 1570, Abraham Ortelius published the
first atlas of the world.
The Antwerp geographer Ortelius was a friend of Bruegel.
Thanks to this man and others, the painter was familiar with
the exploratory enthusiasm of his century. He too explored,
after his own manner, presenting in his works areas of life
previously neglected or even held in contempt. One rather
peculiar example of this is the picture Children's Games
(1560).
The subject of childhood had hitherto been virtually ignored
in western painting and thought. Childhood was not viewed as
a phase of life with any requirements of its own, but merely
as the preliminary stage to adulthood. Children were treated
as little adults, as the clothing portrayed in Bruegel's
picture indicates: the girls' aprons and bonnets resembled
those of their mothers, while the boys' trousers, jerkins
and jackets echoed those worn by their fathers. Moreover,
there were hardly any toys: only tops, hobby-horses, dolls,
and windmills on long sticks. Most of Bruegel's children are
managing without toys or making do with pigs' bladders,
knucklebones, caps, barrels, hoops - such things, in other
words, as could be found simply lying about.
Emotional affection was probably slight in comparison with
that exhibited by parents and relations in the nuclear
families of today. It was simply a matter of too many
children being born, and too many dying in early childhood.
Something of this lack of interest, this absence of any deep
feeling, is conveyed in Bruegel's picture. The childlike
element is stressed neither in the faces nor in the physique
of the children. Some of them seem dull and rather stupid,
all of them ageless. There is no trace of the idealizing
manner with which children would be portrayed in the
pictures of the centuries to come.
Bruegel has depicted more than 250 children here. Such a
catalogue of games, such an enumeration of children's
methods for exercising the body and preparing for the adult
world through imitation, is without parallel in the history
of art.
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The Ass in the School
1556
The population of the Netherlands provinces had a high level
of education - indeed, an Italian traveller even ventured
the opinion that everyone could read and write. Bruegel is
laughing at his countrymen's eagerness to learn: the caption
comments that "An ass will never become a horse, even if he
goes to school."
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This picture can, however, be seen differently: not
as a folkloristic inventory, but as a warning to adults not
to fritter their life away as if it were a childlike game.
One factor supporting this second interpretation is the
absence of childlike elements in the faces of most of the
children. The two interpretations are not mutually
exclusive, however. If this picture is of interest for us
today, then it is not because of its possible moral or
innovative technique, but Bruegel's skilled mastery of
colour and form. The work fascinates, yet it also disturbs,
for reasons both of content and of form. There is no ideal
vantage point from which the picture should be viewed, for
example. The observer is required simultaneously to come
close up to the work and to remain at a certain remove from
it: only at a distance can he maintain the necessary overall
view, yet only in close-up do the many little activities,
figures and faces really come to life. The perspective
causes additional problems; we customarily take up a
position in front of the centre of a picture, assuming that
the painter is showing us his world from this position.
Bruegel does not. To follow the perspective, one would have
to adopt a position in front of the right-hand half of the
painting. Here the walls of the building meet in an
equiangular manner in the long street, the painter drawing
the observer's gaze upwards. Although the perspective leads
the eye to the right, the picture does not "tip over". The
edge of the houses leads diagonally down towards the left
and forwards. The buildings at the left-hand edge of the
picture, their dark mass making them especially prominent,
create a balance, and also a relationship between foreground
and background that is charged with tension. Bruegel places
his children play in a complex space; he fascinates us through artistic means,
without our being immediately aware of what holds us for so
long in front of this picture.
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Children's Games
1560
Bruegel has portrayed over 250 children on this panel. They
are playing with pieces of wood, with bones, with hoops and
barrels -specially crafted toys were rare in the 16th
century. Their faces often appear ageless: perhaps the
painter wished to warn the observer against frittering away
his life as if it were a childlike game.
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Children's Games (detail)
1560
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Children's Games (detail)
1560
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