The Hunting Landscape of Pieter Bruegel

I choose a painting The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel, partially out of sentimental memories I have after spending the year in Southern France. In wintertime, the fragrance of wood smoke wondering in a lazy manner over the village, nostalgic stone walls in the background of old chestnut gardens and stone houses, would recall in my memories paintings of Pieter Bruegel and the feelings of tender devotion to nature and its calm message. On my winter walks, looking the valleys, I would think about life style of people before this technological and industrial revolution, which change us and our environment in a comparatively very short period. During the cold winter days, the sound in these mountains was just extraordinary and the acoustic effects were stimulating my thoughts about space.

Art has ability to reflect not only the nuance of the climate, culture, given time and epoch, but as well the most intimate part of the human spirit that produced it. It supplements our understanding of the subjective artist's feelings and his way to cope with passing time, society and at the end himself. The life of the individual is printed like fingerprints in the work, which share also commonalities and standards of the period. Northern Renaissance in Europe was very different than Italian Renaissance, although both had a common interest in human and divine in a very different spirit than, for example, people of Medieval time. The point of attention was a man and his psychological conditioning and the nature in its mechanical aspects.

Northern Renaissance produced few really great masters. For sure, one of them was Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As in the cases of many great people from the past, who were not fully recognized by their contemporaries, so in this case is little known about the date of birth, birthplace and his life in general. Art historians try to recover some important facts of his life. Even genesis of his name is controversial guessing. Some historians, like Robert Delevoy, supposed that the root of his name derived from his birthplace. ¹ Probably, although today is quite difficult to know exactly, it was in the region of Grooto – Brögel, between Brée and the market town of Peer. ² Some others historians, like Wolfgang Stechow are more likely to believe that the name was the family name. In semantic deduction it seems to suggest more son of Brueghel than from Brueghel as a city. One of the first biographers of Bruegel, Lodovico Guiccardini, wrote in 1567 “Pietro Brueghel di Breda” suggesting, not only genesis of his name as a family heritage, but also his city roots. ³

In 1551 Bruegel become a master in the Antwerp guild of painters. He achieved this title pretty early and shortly after, he went through France to Italy. The journey left a mark on his art and in his development, not only by the fact of patronage of Giulio Clovio ⁴, but also in his deep interest in the landscape subject. On his return to Antwerp, around 1554 the painter tied his friendship with publisher and a painter, Hieronymus Cock. ⁵ The master was known to his contemporaries, more from his printed drawings, than paintings, which usually were commissioned by rich connoisseurs and not displayed publicly.

There is not much known about Bruegel's personal life, but as a summary of his character, it is worth while to quote the words of the Bruegel scholar, Fritz Grossemann:

The man has been thought to have been a peasant and a townsman, an orthodox catholic and a Libertine, a humanist, a laughing and a pessimist philosopher; the artist appeared as a follower of Bosh and a continuator of the Flemish tradition, the best of the Primitives, a Mannerist in contact with Italian art, an illustrator, a genre painter, a forming reality and adopting it to his formal ideal – to sum up just a few opinions expressed by various observers in the course of four hundred years. ⁶

Influence of Hieronimus Bosh is obvious. Bosh's interest in proverbs may be seen in his work, but not only Bosh's work had an impact on the subject matter of Bruegel's drawings and paintings. The general climate of sixteen-century Europe was very much oriented for adopting antique wisdom and philosophy in proverbial forms.

Erasmus's great collection, the “Adages”, was so widely red, that it is essential document for understanding the expectations of Bruegel's original audience regarding proverbs. The “Adages” is Erasmus's earliest and most ambitious effort to introduce a large lay audience to classical authors and to show how the writings of the ancients were relevant for the problems of the sixteenth century. The “Adages”, as Erasmus explained, was intended to help the “mediocriter literati”, the average reader, acquire a knowledge of the classics.⁷

Actually, Pieter Bruegel, with his high artistic skill, was able to give the picture of the vernacular peasants life and at the same time to show human condition and immediate connection with nature. Almost, no one before him, was so equipped with the wit, skill and sense of humor in order to expose in such a natural, if not fluent way, the work on farm and human dependence on nature. Even when he is using mythological metaphor, like for example in The Fall of Icarus, the scenario is shown in the context of the country life.

The pure subject of the landscape for its own sake has not as long history as painting itself. In western tradition, Janson remarked, Albrecht Aldorfer did the “earliest pure landscape”, if we can forget about unfinished watercolor done by Albrecht Dürer in Italy. From the Renaissance time, landscape became a background for human activity, emotions and other, mostly religiously significant subjects.⁸ The panel from 1565, The Hunters in the Snow was painted, as one among the twelve. It belongs to the series called “Months” and was done for the Antwerpian connoisseur Nicoleas Jonghelinck. ⁹ Today we know besides the one mention above, additional four of them: The Gloomy Day, Haymaking, The Harvesters and The Return of the Herd. The series is in connection with the Medieval tradition of book illustration, like very popular Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

In the The Hunters in the Snow, virtuosity of Bruegel's hand and skill as a landscape painter is unquestionable. The panel is emanating very adequately the feeling of cold winter in Northern Europe. The picture of the winter landscape is very natural and exact in its description. The narrative form is taken from everyday life, nevertheless, the poetic feeling of the moment and place is dominating. We are introduce into deep space by the raw of trees guiding eyes from the right side of the painting to the very left ending with the mountains range. The noble presence of the mountains in the icy air, is a reminiscence of Bruegel's journey to Italy. It was probably taken from his sketches made in the Rhone valley close to Geneva. ¹⁰

Dogs and hunters carrying sticks and the goal of hunting - dead foxes, occupy the first plane. They are slowly balancing their steps in the snow. Behind them, more into the right side, is the inn “Under the Stag” with the pictures of Saint Eustace on its sloppy hanged signboard. ¹¹ Beneath the inn the family is singeing the pig. This is traditionally December activity, although hunting - the main subject of the panel – was subscribed traditionally to January. The entire view is covering omnipresent snow - on the roofs of the houses, churches, branches and trunks of trees. Enormous elaboration of details in this case is underlying the naturalness of the landscape with the photographic memory, and still keeping in a very Bruegel's style. The climate in the picture is of a cozy communal life: people skating and playing hockey, the old cart with horses, the old mill with the bridge, sledding people over icy river and in the faraway plane someone climbing to the chimney. The proportion of human silhouettes to the landscape, reflects Bruegel's deeper thoughts about natural laws and overall, the significance of our real place in nature. Dominating beauty of a winter day with the greenish sky transports imagination into the winter scene. For a moment we may hear the screams of the magpie, barking dogs, faraway giggling and louder laughing, crunching steps of the hunters and noble sound of church bells.

Pieter Bruegel's art is very much in its own style, profound and humorous, silently prizing natural wisdom through juxtaposition to bottomless human ignorance. His art has strong visual impact and inner coherence, bordering with magical easiness of expression and maturity. In Bruegel's work the simplicity coexist with complexity, readable on every level, giving visual delight and intellectual depth. The wit and wisdom, sarcasm, lyrical beauty of life itself and commitment to humanity are hunting through his pictures till today.

written by Adam Rupniewski ©