Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) was a 16th-century Flemish painter, most famous for his depictions of the life of the common people or peasants.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder provides examples of the following tropes:

• Anachronism Stew: Done intentionally for effect. While many of Brueghel's paintings depict events from The Bible or Classical Mythology, they take place in landscapes clearly defined by early modern reality, with characters dressed in clothing and carrying weapons from the 16th century. Brueghel thus represented his themes in a universal manner and made statements about the society he lived in. The fact that the central (biblical or classical) events are often easily overlooked in the huge landscapes only makes this effect stronger.
• Alone in a Crowd: Lots of crowd scenes, while the actual subject of the painting is often just a lonely, almost overlooked detail.
• The Bible: Like every painter in his time Bruegel painted a lot of biblical themes, though always taking place in his own lifetime: "The Massacre Of The Innocents", "The Tower of Babel", "The Fall of the Rebel Angels", "Saul", "Flight To Egypt",...
• Big Eater: In "Peasant's Wedding" many peasants are enjoying large quantities of food.
• Crapsack World:
  • The painting "The Misantrope" shows an old man being robbed by a child inside a globe, representing universal theft. He claims: "Because the world is so unfair, I mourn in despair."
• Disabled Means Helpless: "The Blind Leading the Blind" shows them all falling into a creek. It is based on a biblical saying, and is to be viewed symbolically.
• Grotesque Gallery: Bruegel was well known for his unflattering but realistic portayals of peasants and regular folks.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters
• Level Ate: "The Land of Cockaigne"
• Literal Metaphor: His painting of the "Netherlandish Proverbs" and "12 Proverbs", which are all depicted literally.
• The Movie: The Mill and the Cross is essentially one of his paintings, The Way to Calvary, committed to film.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Bruegel's work covers the entire Flemish-Dutch 16th century peasant society, including their seasonal activities, feasts, work, proverbs and sayings, children's games,...
  • The reason Bruegel as well as somewhat later Dutch artists painted a lot of winter scenes is because they lived during the Little Ice Age.
• Riddle for the Ages: Some scenes are still a mystery to art historians.
• Rule of Symbolism
• Seasonal Baggage: He made five paintings depicting people and landscapes during various seasons.
• Seven Deadly Sins: He made drawings about this theme.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues: Bruegel made drawings about this theme.
• Scenery Porn: The detailed backgrounds often have a more prominent and richly detailed presence than the people who walk through them. Yet even though most of them appear realistically, they were mostly thought up by Bruegel himself.
• Shown Their Work: Some of Bruegel's paintings of blind people are so accurate that doctors are able to point out the type of blindness from which these people were suffering.
• Spell My Name with an "S": He signed his name "Brueghel" or "Bruegel" at different times in his life. His son's name is subject to the same variation. Spelling was not particularly formalised at that point in history.
• Spiritual Successor: Bruegel's earlier works owe a lot in spirit or themes to the works of Hieronymus Bosch: "The Triumph of the Dead", "Mad Meg (Dulle Griet)", "The Seven Sins", "Fall of the Rebellious Angels", "The Big Fishes Eat the Smaller Fishes",...
• Status Quo Is God: "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" shows Icarus drowning as just a small detail of the painting, while the people around him just carry on with their lives as usual.
• Tower of Babel: He used the subject for two oil paintings.
• World of Symbolism: His work offers historians a unique glimpse in the living conditions of the ordinary people at that time about whom we don't know very much compared with the royals and aristocrats.