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91-687: In 1631, John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen , a cousin of Stadtholder Frederick Henry , bought a plot bordering the Binnenhof and the adjacent Hofvijver pond in The Hague , at that time the political centre of the Dutch Republic . Between 1636 and 1641, the Mauritshuis was built on this piece of land, during John Maurice's governorship of Dutch Brazil . It was built in the Dutch Classicist style by

182-626: A historic novel about John Maurice and the Dutch settlement in Brazil, O Príncipe de Nassau (" The Prince of Nassau ", translated into Dutch by R. Schreuder and J. Slauerhoff in 1933 as Johan Maurits van Nassau ). Two ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy have been named after him. Attribution: Pieter Brueghel the Elder Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel )

273-455: A century after Bruegel's, Jan Steen (1626–79) continued to show a particular interest in Bruegelian treatments. The critical treatment of Bruegel as essentially an artist of comic peasant scenes persisted until the late 19th century, even after his best paintings became widely visible as royal and aristocratic collections were turned into museums. This had been partly explicable when his work

364-558: A climate of sharp tension in these areas. Bruegel was born at a time of extensive change in Western Europe. Humanist ideals from the previous century influenced artists and scholars. Italy was at the end of its High Renaissance of arts and culture, when artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci painted their masterpieces. In 1517, about eight years before Bruegel's birth, Martin Luther created his Ninety-five Theses and began

455-691: A commission was based on how large the painting was) and an important one. In 1565, the Calvinist riots began and it was only two years before the Eighty Years' War broke out. Bruegel may have felt safer with a secular commission so as to not offend Calvinist or Catholic. Some of the most famous paintings from this series included The Hunters in the Snow (December–January) and The Harvesters (August-September). On his return from Italy to Antwerp, Bruegel earned his living producing drawings to be turned into prints for

546-460: A copy made of plastic and the museum was unable to offer the necessary historical context for it in the foyer of the Mauritshuis where it was exhibited. The museum has since created a webpage dedicated to explaining the role of the Prince in the creation of the museum's building and collection and the museum's current view of the Prince. The statements on the page highlight the key role the Prince played in

637-399: A copy of the statue made in plastic was placed inside the Mauritshuis. The bust was removed from the Mauritshuis in 2017 amidst controversy over Holland's colonial history and Prince John Maurice's role in the slave trade. The Mauritshuis museum has denied that the removal had anything to do with the controversy and has stated that the decision was taken on the grounds that the object was solely

728-486: A drawing records the city in flames after a Turkish raid. He probably continued to Sicily , but by 1553 was back in Rome. There he met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio , whose will of 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel; in one case a joint work. These works, apparently landscapes, have not survived, but marginal miniatures in manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel. He left Italy by 1554, and had reached Antwerp by 1555, when

819-415: A friendship album in 1574 as "the most perfect painter of his century", but both Vasari and Van Mander see him as essentially a comic successor to Hieronymus Bosch. As well as being forward-looking, his art reinvigorates medieval subjects such as marginal drolleries of ordinary life in illuminated manuscripts , and the calendar scenes of agricultural labours set in landscape backgrounds, and puts these on

910-495: A high viewpoint, and spread fairly evenly across the central picture space. The setting is typically an urban space surrounded by buildings, within which the figures have a "fundamentally disconnected manner of portrayal", with individuals or small groups engaged in their own distinct activity, while ignoring all the others. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on

1001-691: A large artistic audience for proverb-filled paintings because proverbs were well known and recognisable as well as entertaining. Children's Games shows the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people. His winter landscapes of 1565, like The Hunters in the Snow , are taken as corroborative evidence of the severity of winters during the Little Ice Age . Bruegel often painted community events, as in The Peasant Wedding and The Fight Between Carnival and Lent . In paintings like The Peasant Wedding , Bruegel painted individual, identifiable people, while

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1092-554: A most able and wise ruler. Also, he created large baroque gardens in and around Kleve, as well as a new residence, the Prinzenhof palace. At the end of 1652, John Maurice was appointed head of the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg) and made a prince of the Empire with the style of Serene Highness . In 1664, he came back to Holland ; when war broke out with an England supported by

1183-544: A much larger scale than before, and in the expensive medium of oil painting . He does the same with the fantastic and anarchic world developed in Renaissance prints and book illustrations. Bruegel's work was, as far as we know, always keenly collected. The banker Nicolaes Jonghelinck owned sixteen paintings; his brother Jacques Jonghelinck was a gentleman-sculptor and medallist, who also had significant business interests. He made medals and tombs in an international style for

1274-435: A prolific designer of prints for the leading publisher of the day. At the end of the 1550s, he made painting his main medium, and all his famous paintings come from the following period of little more than a decade before his early death in 1569, when he was probably in his early forties. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Bruegel's works have inspired artists in both the literary arts and in cinema. His painting Landscape with

1365-454: A series of allegories, among several designs adopting many of the very individual mannerisms of his compatriot Hieronymus Bosch : The Seven Deadly Sins and The Virtues . The sinners are grotesque and unidentifiable while the allegories of virtue often wear odd headgear. That imitations of Bosch sold well is demonstrated by his drawing Big Fish Eat Little Fish (now Albertina ), which Bruegel signed but Cock shamelessly attributed to Bosch in

1456-481: A series of the Four Seasons . The prints were popular and it is reasonable to assume that all those published have survived. In many cases we also have Bruegel's drawings. Although the subject matter of his graphic work was often continued in his paintings, there are considerable differences in emphases between the two oeuvres . To his contemporaries and for long after, until public museums and good reproductions of

1547-410: A state museum until 1995, when it became an independent foundation. It still continues to receive funding from the Dutch central government. For its estimated budget for 2024, the government provided just under a third (5m Euros) of its total budget of 16m Euros. The Prince William V Gallery is also managed by the organisation. The museum has a staff of around 91 people. Emilie Elise Saskia Gordenker

1638-451: A vanished folk culture, though still characteristic of Belgian life and culture today, and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th-century life. For example, his famous painting Netherlandish Proverbs , originally The Blue Cloak , illustrates dozens of then-contemporary aphorisms , many of which still are in use in current Flemish, French, English and Dutch. The Flemish environment provided

1729-415: Is a most unusual survival (now Metropolitan Museum of Art ) of a drawing on the wooden block intended for printing. For some reason, the specialist block-cutter who carved away the block, following the drawing while also destroying it, had only done one corner of the design before stopping work. The design then appears as an engraving, perhaps soon after Bruegel's death. Among his greatest successes were

1820-466: Is currently called the Royal Picture Gallery. The current collection consists of almost 800 paintings and focusses on Dutch and Flemish artists, such as Pieter Brueghel , Paulus Potter , Peter Paul Rubens , Rembrandt van Rijn , Jacob van Ruisdael , Johannes Vermeer , and Rogier van der Weyden . There are also works of Hans Holbein in the collection in the Mauritshuis. The Mauritshuis was

1911-406: Is known of his family background. Van Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant background, in keeping with the over-emphasis on Bruegel's peasant genre scenes given by van Mander and many early art historians and critics. In contrast, scholars of the last six decades have emphasised the intellectual content of his work, and conclude: "There is, in fact, every reason to think that Pieter Bruegel

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2002-636: Is now called the Mauritshuis , and houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings. It is now a major museum of old Dutch paintings. In the National Library of Paris are two folio volumes containing a fine collection of colored prints of Brazilian animals and plants, which were executed by order of the prince, and accompanied with a short explanation by him. He is said to have had an affair with Anna Gonsalves Paes de Azevedo . Brazilian author Paulo Setúbal wrote

2093-613: Is spent on Bruegel's secret motives for painting it. Author Don Delillo uses Bruegel's painting The Triumph of Death in his novel Underworld and his short story " Pafko at the Wall ". It is believed that the painting The Hunters in the Snow influenced the classic short story with the same title written by Tobias Wolff and featured in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs . In

2184-566: The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry ; 1416) had calendar pages that included the Labours of the Months , depictions set in landscapes of the agricultural tasks, weather, and social life typical for that month. Bruegel's paintings were on a far larger scale than a typical calendar page painting, each one approximately three feet by five feet. For Bruegel, this was a large commission (the price of

2275-515: The Cock publishing house . As discussed above, about sixty-one drawings are now recognised as authentic, mostly designs for prints or landscapes. His painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus , now thought only to survive in copies, is the subject of the final lines of the 1938 poem " Musée des Beaux Arts " by W. H. Auden : In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from

2366-649: The Dutch Republic , while the other ten remained under Habsburg control at the end of the war. Pieter Bruegel specialised in genre paintings populated by peasants, often with a landscape element, though he also painted religious works. Making the life and manners of peasants the main focus of a work was rare in painting in Bruegel's time, and he was a pioneer of the genre painting. Many of his peasant paintings fall into two groups in terms of scale and composition, both of which were original and influential on later painting. His earlier style shows dozens of small figures, seen from

2457-1041: The Habsburg chief minister, who was based in Mechelen. Bruegel had two sons, both well known as painters, and a daughter about whom nothing is known. These were Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1638) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625); he died too early to train either of them. He died in Brussels on 9 September 1569 and was buried in the Kapellekerk . Van Mander records that before he died he told his wife to burn some drawings, perhaps designs for prints, carrying inscriptions "which were too sharp or sarcastic ... either out of remorse or for fear that she might come to harm or in some way be held responsible for them", which has led to much speculation that they were politically or doctrinally provocative, in

2548-644: The Protestant Reformation in neighbouring Germany. Reformation was accompanied by iconoclasm and widespread destruction of art , including in the Low Countries . The Catholic Church viewed Protestantism and its destructive iconoclasm of art as a threat to the Church. The Council of Trent , which concluded in 1563, determined that religious art should be more focused on religious subject-matter and less on material things and decorative qualities. At this time,

2639-579: The world landscape style, which shows small figures in an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings. Back in Antwerp from Italy he was commissioned in the 1550s by the publisher Hieronymus Cock to make drawings for a series of engravings , the Large Landscapes , to meet what was now a growing demand for landscape images. Some of his earlier paintings, such as his Landscape with

2730-528: The Antwerp painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst . The two main early sources for Bruegel's biography are Lodovico Guicciardini 's account of the Low Countries (1567) and Karel van Mander's 1604 Schilder-boeck . Guicciardini recorded that Bruegel was born in Breda , but van Mander specified that Bruegel was born in a village ( dorp ) near Breda called "Brueghel", which does not fit any known place. Nothing at all

2821-660: The Blind , which depicted a quote from the Bible: "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14). Using the Bible to interpret this painting, the six blind men are symbols of the blindness of mankind in pursuing earthly goals instead of focusing on Christ's teachings. Using abundant spirit and comic power, Bruegel created some of the very early images of acute social protest in art history. Examples include paintings such as The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (a satire of

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2912-538: The Brueghel family, early figures were Adriaen Brouwer ( c.  1605 /6 – 1638) and David Vinckboons (1576 – c. 1632), both Flemish-born but spending much of their time in the northern Netherlands. As well as the general conception of such kermis subjects, Vinckboons and other artists took from Bruegel "such stylistic devices as the bird's-eye perspective, ornamentalised vegetation, bright palette, and stocky, odious figures." Forty years after their deaths, and over

3003-516: The Brussels elite, especially Cardinal Granvelle , who was also a keen patron of Bruegel. Granvelle owned at least two Bruegels, including the Courtauld Flight into Egypt , but we do not know if he bought them directly from the artist. Granvelle's nephew and heir was strong-armed out of his Bruegels by Rudolf II , the very acquisitive Austrian Habsburg Emperor. The series of the Months entered

3094-710: The Catholic Church within their domains and enforced it with the Inquisition . Increasing religious antagonisms and riots, political manoeuvrings, and executions eventually resulted in the outbreak of the Eighty Years' War . In this atmosphere Bruegel reached the height of his career as a painter. Two years before his death, the Eighty Years' War began between the United Provinces and Spain. Although Bruegel did not live to see it, seven provinces became independent and formed

3185-405: The Dutch architects Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post . The two-storey building is strictly symmetrical; originally the interior contained four apartments and a great hall. Each apartment was designed with an antechamber, a chamber, a cabinet, and a cloakroom. The building had a cupola , which was destroyed in a fire in 1704. After the death of Prince John Maurice in 1679, the house was owned by

3276-409: The Elder ( / ˈ b r ɔɪ ɡ əl / BROY -gəl , US also / ˈ b r uː ɡ əl / BROO -gəl ; Dutch: [ˈpitər ˈbrøːɣəl] ; c.  1525–1530 – 9 September 1569) was among the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting , a painter and printmaker , known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genre painting ); he

3367-562: The Elder) and Jan van Kessel the Younger . Through David Teniers the Younger , son-in-law of Jan Brueghel the Elder, the family is also related to the whole Teniers family of painters and the Quellinus family of painters and sculptors, through the marriage of Jan-Erasmus Quellinus to Cornelia, daughter of David Teniers the Younger. Bruegel's art was long more highly valued by collectors than critics. His friend Abraham Ortelius described him in

3458-410: The Fall of Icarus , now thought only to survive in copies, is the subject of the final lines of the 1938 poem " Musée des Beaux Arts " by W. H. Auden . Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky refers to Bruegel's paintings in his films several times, including Solaris (1972) and The Mirror (1975). Director Lars von Trier also uses Bruegel's paintings in his film Melancholia (2011). In 2011,

3549-488: The Fall of Icarus " by William Carlos Williams , and was mentioned in Nicolas Roeg 's 1976 science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth . Williams' final collection of poetry alludes to several of Bruegel's works. Bruegel's painting Two Monkeys was the subject of Wisława Szymborska 's 1957 poem, "Brueghel's Two Monkeys". Seamus Heaney refers to Brueghel in his poem " The Seed Cutters ". David Jones alludes to

3640-547: The Flight into Egypt ( Courtauld , 1563), are fully within the Patinir conventions, but his Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (known from two copies) had a Patinir-style landscape, in which already the largest figure was a genre figure who was only a bystander for the supposed narrative subject, and may not even be aware of it. The date of Bruegel's lost original is unclear, but it is probably relatively early, and if so, foreshadows

3731-635: The Habsburg collections in 1594, given to Rudolf's brother and later taken by the emperor himself. Rudolf eventually owned at least ten Bruegel paintings. A generation later Rubens owned eleven or twelve, which mostly passed to the Antwerp senator Pieter Stevens, and were then sold in 1668. Bruegel's son Pieter could still keep himself and a large studio team busy producing replicas or adaptations of Bruegel's works, as well as his own compositions along similar lines, sixty years or more after they were first painted. The most frequently copied works were generally not

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3822-751: The Korte Vijverberg. The renovation started in 2012 and finished in 2014. The design was by Hans van Heeswijk. During the renovation, about 100 of the museum's paintings were displayed in The Hague's Kunstmuseum in the Highlights Mauritshuis exhibition. About 50 other paintings, including the Girl With the Pearl Earring , went on loan to exhibitions in the United States and Japan. The expanded museum

3913-516: The Latin captions in some of his drawings. Between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550. Before this, Bruegel was already working in Mechelen , where he is documented between September 1550 and October 1551 assisting Peeter Baltens on an altarpiece (now lost), painting the wings in grisaille . Bruegel possibly got this work via the connections of Mayken Verhulst ,

4004-549: The Low Countries were divided into Seventeen Provinces , some of which wanted separation from the Habsburg rule based in Spain. The Reformation meanwhile produced a number of Protestant denominations that gained followers in the Seventeen Provinces, influenced by the newly Lutheran German states to the east and the newly Anglican England to the west. The Habsburg monarchs of Spain attempted a policy of strict religious uniformity for

4095-600: The Maes family, who leased the house to the Dutch government. In 1704, most of the interior of the Mauritshuis was destroyed by fire. The building was restored between 1708 and 1718. In 1774, an art gallery open to the public was formed in what is now the Prince William V Gallery . That collection was seized by the French in 1795 and only partially recovered in 1808. The small gallery space soon proved to be too small, however, and in 1820,

4186-416: The Mauritshuis was bought by the Dutch state for the purpose of housing the Royal Cabinet of Paintings. In 1822, the Mauritshuis was opened to the public and housed the Royal Cabinet of Paintings and the Royal Cabinet of Rarities. In 1875, the entire museum became available for paintings. In 1995, the Mauritshuis was established as a non-profit foundation. The foundation set up at that time took charge of both

4277-496: The Mountain Landscapes" has emerged from the carnage. Mielke's key observation was that the lily watermark on the paper of several sheets was only found from around 1580 onwards, which led to the rapid acceptance of his proposal. Another group of about twenty-five pen drawings of landscapes, many signed and dated as by Bruegel, are now given to Jacob Savery , probably from the decade of so before his death in 1603. A giveaway

4368-836: The Snow (December-January), and The Return of the Herd (October-November) which are on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ; The Hay Harvest (June-July) is on display in the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague ; and The Harvesters which is on display at the Metropolitan in New York. The painting associated with the April-May seasonal transition is assumed to be lost. The series on

4459-520: The Spanish-Portuguese forces, which he defeated in repeated encounters. Believing himself strong enough to hold his own, he dispatched part of his forces to attack the Portuguese possessions on the coast of Africa , and continued to extend his conquests with the aid of the natives who were opposed to Spanish rule, but he received a serious check in the attack on São Salvador , being obliged to raise

4550-411: The building and the collection, which it was given on long-term loan. This building, which is the property of the state, continues to be rented by the museum. In 2007, the museum announced its desire to expand. Within three years the definitive design was presented. The museum would occupy a part of the nearby Sociëteit de Witte building. The two buildings would be connected via a tunnel, running underneath

4641-589: The cavalry in the Dutch army, and he took part in the campaigns of 1645 and 1646. When the war was ended by the Peace of Münster in January 1648, he accepted from Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg (who had just married John Maurice's niece Louise ) the post of governor of Cleves , Mark and Ravensberg , and later also of Minden . His success in the Rhineland was as great as it had been in Brazil, and he proved himself

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4732-597: The colony for local government, and developed Recife's transportation infrastructure. His large schemes and lavish expenditures alarmed the parsimonious directors of the West India Company, and John Maurice, refusing to retain his post unless he were given a free hand, returned to Europe in July 1644. As governor-general of a Brazilian colony setup by the Dutch West India Company from 1636 until 1644, Johan Maurice

4823-467: The conflicts of the Protestant Reformation ) and engravings like The Ass in the School and Strongboxes Battling Piggybanks . In the 1560s, Bruegel moved to a style showing only a few large figures, typically in a landscape background without a distant view. His paintings dominated by their landscapes take a middle course as regards both the number and size of figures. Bruegel adapted and made more natural

4914-433: The conquered provinces and arranged their administration. By this series of successful expeditions, he gradually extended the Dutch possessions from Sergipe in the south to São Luís de Maranhão in the north. With the assistance of the famous architect, Pieter Post of Haarlem , he transformed Recife by building a new town adorned with public buildings, bridges, channels, and gardens in the then Dutch style, later naming

5005-410: The disaster; the ploughman Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. It also was the subject of a 1960 poem " Landscape with

5096-445: The drawings from the trip that are considered authentic are of landscapes; unlike most other 16th-century artists visiting Rome he seems to have ignored both classical ruins and contemporary buildings. From 1555 until 1563, Bruegel lived in Antwerp, then the publishing centre of northern Europe, mainly working as a designer of over forty prints for Cock, though his dated paintings begin in 1557. With one exception, Bruegel did not work

5187-449: The film The Mill and the Cross was released featuring Bruegel's The Procession to Calvary (Bruegel) . Bruegel's birth date is not documented, but inferred from the fact that Bruegel entered the Antwerp painters' guild in 1551. This usually happened between the ages of twenty to twenty-five, giving a range for his birth between 1525 and 1530. His master, according to Karel van Mander , was

5278-545: The history of landscape art has become understood. There are about forty generally accepted surviving paintings, twelve of which are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna . Others are known to have been lost, including what, according to van Mander, Bruegel himself thought his best work, "a picture in which Truth triumphs". Bruegel only etched one plate himself, The Rabbit Hunt, but designed some forty prints, both engravings and etchings , mostly for

5369-427: The invading bishop of Münster , he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Dutch States Army . Though hampered in his command by the restrictions of the states-general, he repelled the invasion, and the bishop, Christoph Bernhard von Galen , nicknamed "Bommen Berend", was forced to conclude peace. His campaigning was not yet at an end, for in 1668, he was appointed first field-marshal of the States Army, and in 1673, he

5460-464: The latter, and believing that a treaty of peace with Portugal would leave Holland in possession of the conquered territory, hastened his operations; to give occupation to the host of adventurers that had assembled under his colors, he dispatched an expedition against the Spanish possessions on Plate River , while in 1643, Johan Maurits equipped the expedition of Hendrik Brouwer that attempted to establish an outpost in southern Chile. Later, he visited

5551-451: The leading print publisher of the city, and indeed northern Europe, Hieronymus Cock . At his "House of the Four Winds" Cock ran a production and distribution operation efficiently turning out prints of many sorts that was more concerned with sales than the finest artistic achievement. Most of Bruegel's prints come from this period, but he continued to produce drawn designs for prints until the end of his life, leaving only two completed out of

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5642-422: The months of the year includes several of Bruegel's best-known works. In 1565, a wealthy patron in Antwerp, Niclaes Jonghelinck , commissioned him to paint a series of paintings of each month of the year. There has been dispute among art historians as to whether the series originally included six or twelve works. Joseph Koerner in his 2018 book Bosch and Bruegel states that Archduke Ernst, who took possession of

5733-631: The newly reformed town Mauritsstad, after himself. He was able to pay the high construction costs from the loot of his expeditions, and from the proceeds of his estates in Germany. By his statesmanlike policy, he brought the colony into a most flourishing condition. His leadership in Brazil inspired two Latin epics from 1647: Caspar Barlaeus ' Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum sub praefectura and Franciscus Plante 's Mauritias . The painters Albert Eckhout , Frans Post , and Abraham Willaerts served as members of John Maurice's entourage. He also established representative councils in

5824-486: The ones that are most famous today, though this may reflect the availability of the full-scale detailed drawings that were evidently used. The most-copied painting is the Winter Landscape with (Skaters and) a Bird Trap (1565), of which the original is in Brussels; 127 copies are recorded. They include paintings after some of Bruegel's drawn print designs, especially Spring . The next century's artists of peasant genre scenes were heavily influenced by Brueghel. Outside

5915-399: The painting The Blind Leading the Blind in his World War One prose-poem In Parenthesis : "the stumbling dark of the blind, that Breughel knew about – ditch circumscribed". Michael Frayn 's novel Headlong , imagines a lost panel from the 1565 Months series resurfacing unrecognised, which triggers a conflict between an art (and money) lover and the boor who possesses it. Much thought

6006-414: The paintings after Niclaes defaulted on taxes, had as early as 1569 inventoried only six paintings in this series during the year of Bruegel's death. The collection is next inventoried to be in the possession of Archduke Leopold who in 1659 indicated that five of them were extant. Only five of these paintings are known to have survived into the 21st century. Traditional Flemish luxury books of hours (e.g.,

6097-445: The paintings made these better known, Bruegel was much better known through his prints than his paintings, which largely explains the critical assessment of him as merely the creator of comic peasant scenes. The prints are mostly engravings, though from about 1559 onwards some are etchings or mixtures of both techniques. Only one complete woodcut was made from a Bruegel design, with another left incomplete. This, The Dirty Wife ,

6188-502: The people in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent are unidentifiable, muffin-faced allegories of greed or gluttony. Bruegel also painted religious scenes in a wide Flemish landscape setting, as in the Conversion of Paul and The Sermon of St. John the Baptist . Even if Bruegel's subject matter was unconventional, the religious ideals and proverbs driving his paintings were typical of the Northern Renaissance. He accurately depicted people with disabilities, such as in The Blind Leading

6279-403: The plates himself, but produced a drawing which Cock's specialists worked from. From 1559, he dropped the 'h' from his name and signed his paintings as Bruegel ; his relatives continued to use "Brueghel" or "Breughel". He moved in the lively humanist circles of the city, and his change of name (or at least its spelling) in 1559 can be seen as an attempt to Latinise it; at the same time he changed

6370-415: The print version. Although Bruegel presumably made them, no drawings that are clearly preparatory studies for paintings survive. Most surviving drawings are finished designs for prints, or landscape drawings that are fairly finished. After a considerable purge of attributions in recent decades, led by Hans Mielke , sixty-one sheets of drawings are now generally agreed to be by Bruegel. A new "Master of

6461-672: The script he signed in from the Gothic blackletter to Roman capitals. In 1563, he married Pieter Coecke van Aelst's daughter Mayken Coecke in Brussels , where he lived for the remainder of his short life. Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce and the art market; Brussels was the centre of government. Van Mander tells a story that his mother-in-law pushed for the move to distance him from his established servant girl mistress. By now painting had become his main activity, and his most famous works come from these years. His paintings were much sought after, with patrons including wealthy Flemish collectors and Cardinal Granvelle , in effect

6552-419: The set of prints to his designs known as the Large Landscapes were published by Hieronymus Cock , the most important print publisher of northern Europe. Bruegel's return route is uncertain, but much of the debate over it was made irrelevant in the 1980s when it was realised that the celebrated series of large drawings of mountain landscapes thought to have been made on the trip were not by Bruegel at all. All

6643-405: The siege with the loss of many of his best officers. On receiving reinforcements in 1638, and with the co-operation of the Dutch fleet, which defeated the Spanish-Portuguese squadrons in sight of Bay of All Saints , he captured the latter city. When in 1640, Portugal recovered its independence from Spain under John II, 8th Duke of Bragança , the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, anticipating an alliance with

6734-413: The slave trade in Brazil and how his immense wealth was likely sourced (in certain cases even in breach of then existing rules) from his involvement in the slave trade. The collection of paintings of stadholder William V, Prince of Orange was presented to the Dutch state by his son, King William I . This collection formed the basis of the Royal Cabinet of Paintings of around 200 paintings. The collection

6825-399: The trend of his later works. During the 1560s the early scenes crowded with multitudes of very small figures, whether peasant genre figures or figures in religious narratives, give way to a small number of much larger figures. His famous set of landscapes with genre figures depicting the seasons are the culmination of his landscape style; the five surviving paintings use the basic elements of

6916-452: The wife of Pieter Coecke. Mayken's father and eight siblings were all artists or married artists, and lived in Mechelen. In 1551 Bruegel became a free master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, probably by way of France. He visited Rome and, rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 had reached Reggio Calabria at the southern tip of the mainland, where

7007-485: The world landscape (only one lacks craggy mountains) but transform them into his own style. They are larger than most previous works, with a genre scene with several figures in the foreground, and the panoramic view seen past or through trees. Bruegel was also aware of the Danube School 's landscape style through old master prints . The surviving five paintings are The Gloomy Day (February-March), The Hunters in

7098-453: Was Count and (from 1664) Prince of Nassau-Siegen . He served as Herrenmeister (equivalent to Grand Master ) of the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg) from 1652 until his death in 1679. The former residence of John Maurice in The Hague , Netherlands, is now an art museum named Mauritshuis , which means "Maurice House" in Dutch. He was born in Dillenburg , and his father

7189-457: Was John VII of Nassau-Siegen . His grandfather John VI of Nassau was the younger brother of Dutch stadtholder William the Silent of Orange , making him a grandnephew of William the Silent. He joined the Dutch army in 1621, at a very early age. He distinguished himself in the campaigns of his cousin, the stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange . In 1626, he became a captain. In 1629, he

7280-588: Was museum director from 2008 until 2020. Martine Gosselink assumed the directorship in February 2020. Victor Moussault served as deputy director from 2007 until 2016, succeeded by Sander Uitdenbogaard in 2017. In the period 2005 to 2011, the Mauritshuis saw between 205,000 and 262,000 visitors per year. In 2011, the museum was the 13th most visited museum in the Netherlands. In 2012, when the museum closed for renovation on 1 April, it received 45,981 visitors. The museum

7371-571: Was a pioneer in presenting both types of subject as large paintings. He was a formative influence on Dutch Golden Age painting and later painting in general in his innovative choices of subject matter, as one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting. He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp , where he worked mainly as

7462-609: Was a townsman and a highly educated one, on friendly terms with the humanists of his time", ignoring van Mander's dorp and just placing his childhood in Breda itself. Breda was already a significant centre as the base of the House of Orange-Nassau , with a population of some 8,000, although 90% of its 1300 houses were destroyed in a fire in 1534. This reversal can be taken to excess; although Bruegel moved in highly educated humanist circles, it seems "he had not mastered Latin", and had others add

7553-560: Was both personally involved in keeping Africans slaves, and personally profited from the trade and transport of Africans to Brazil. In 1643, Nassau received a embassy from the Manikongo to strengthen the economic relations between the Kingdom of the Kongo and Dutch Brazil through the sale of slaves. Shortly after returning to Europe, John Maurice was appointed by Frederick Henry to the command of

7644-695: Was charged by stadtholder William III to command the forces in Friesland and Groningen , and to defend the eastern frontier of the provinces, again against Van Galen. This he did with success and the troops of Von Galen were forced to withdraw. The next year John Maurice commanded troops against the French during the Battle of Seneffe . In 1675, his health compelled him to give up active military service, and he spent his last years in his beloved Cleves , where he died in December 1679. The residence he built in The Hague

7735-620: Was closed all of 2013 and was reopened on 27 June 2014. It closed for three months in the spring of 2020 in response to the Covid epidemic. John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen John Maurice of Nassau ( Dutch : Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen [ˈjoːɦɑ ˈmʌurɪts fɑ ˈnɑsʌu ˈsiɣə(n)] ; German : Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen ; Portuguese : João Maurício de Nassau-Siegen ; 17 June 1604 – 20 December 1679), called "the Brazilian" for his fruitful period as governor of Dutch Brazil ,

7826-526: Was involved in the capture of Den Bosch . In 1636, he conquered a fortress at Schenkenschans . He was appointed as the governor of the Dutch possessions in Brazil in 1636 by the Dutch West India Company on recommendation of Frederick Henry. He landed at Recife , the port of Pernambuco and the chief stronghold of the Dutch, in January 1637. Immediately after his arrival, he began a campaign against

7917-522: Was mainly known from copies, prints and reproductions. Even Henri Hymans, whose work of 1890/1891 was the first important contribution to modern Bruegel scholarship, could describe him thus: "His field of enquiry is certainly not of the most extensive; his ambition, too, is modest. He confines himself to a knowledge of mankind and the most immediate objects", a line no modern scholar is likely to take. As his landscape paintings, in good colour reproduction, have become his best-loved works, so his importance in

8008-588: Was much more original, and very versatile. He was an important figure in the transition to the Baroque style in Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting in a number of its genres. He was often a collaborator with other leading artists, including with Peter Paul Rubens on many works including the Allegory of Sight . Other members of the family include Jan van Kessel the Elder (grandson of Jan Brueghel

8099-527: Was registered 25 July 1563. The marriage was concluded in the Chapel Church , Brussels in 1563. Pieter the Elder had two sons: Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder (both kept their name as Brueghel). Their grandmother, Mayken Verhulst, trained the sons because "the Elder" died when both were very small children. The older brother, Pieter Brueghel copied his father's style and compositions with competence and considerable commercial success. Jan

8190-550: Was reopened on 27 June 2014 by King Willem-Alexander . In 1664 Prince John Maurice ordered a marble bust portrait of himself for the garden of the Mauritshuis, the Prince's residence in the Hague. The statue was sculpted by the Flemish sculptor Bartholomeus Eggers . Prince Maurice had the bust moved to the burial chamber (Fürstengruft) in Siegen which he had built for himself in 1670. In 1986

8281-488: Was that two drawings including the walls of Amsterdam were dated 1563 but included elements only built in the 1590s. This group appears to have been made as deliberate forgeries. Around 1563, Bruegel moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where he married Mayken Coecke, the daughter of the painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Mayken Verhulst . As registered in the archives of the Cathedral of Antwerp , their deposition for marriage

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