Pieter Bruegel and the First Modern Landscape

fullsizeoutput_54b — Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, ca. 1525–1569), *The Harvesters*, 1565, On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 642

The First Modern Landscape

The Metropolitan Museum of Art calls this painting a “watershed in the history of Western art”^[1] and the “first modern landscape”.^[6].Because of the new humanist lens through which Pieter Bruegel the Elder viewed his world, landscape painting was no longer limited to backgrounds for mythological or religious illustrations.

Who Was Pieter Bruegel the Elder?

The most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525 – 1569) was a painter and printmaker from Brabant. He is known for making landscapes and peasant scenes the focus of large paintings, reflecting the new humanism of the 16th Century.

“Working in the aftermath of the Reformation, Bruegel was able to separate his landscapes from long-standing iconographic tradition, and achieve a contemporary and palpable vision of the natural world.”
J.Wisse 2002

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art calls this painting a “watershed in the history of Western art”^[1]and the “first modern landscape”.^[6] On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 642

Sources

Wisse, Jacob. “Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/brue/hd_brue.htm (October 2002) (Web. Ap. 29, 2018).
Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Harvesters, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435809 (Web. Ap 29, 2018).
MacDonald, Deanna, Great Works of Western Art, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters“, http://www.worldsbestpaintings.net/artistsandpaintings/painting/8/, (accessed October 16, 2018). (link broken)
The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: a family guide from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF) (accessed October 15, 2018).
Google Arts and Culture, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m0h6nl. (Web. Ap. 29, 2018).
Wikipedia contributors, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder&oldid=864003045 (accessed October 15, 2018).
Wikipedia contributors, “The Harvesters (painting),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Harvesters_(painting)&oldid=843924631 (accessed October 15, 2018).