Overview

In sixteenth-century Northern Europe, during a time of increasing religious and political conflict, Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel explored how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critical eye and peerless paintbrush to mankind's labors and pleasures, its foibles and rituals of daily life, portraying landscapes, peasant life, and biblical scenes in startling detail. Much like the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bruegel questioned how well we really know ourselves and also how we know, or visually read, others. His work often represented mankind's ignorance and insignificance, emphasizing the futility of ambition and the absurdity of pride. This superbly illustrated volume examines how Bruegel's art and ideas enabled people to ponder what it meant to be human. Published to coincide with the four-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Bruegel's death, it will appeal to all those interested in art and philosophy, the Renaissance, and Flemish painting.

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9781789140767

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Reviews

In his own time, Pieter Bruegel's art has been praised as the ultimate achievement in the representation of nature. . . . Honig's book is the first to make us realize that this appraisal pertains to the representation of human nature of the people surrounding him--workers in the field, citizens of Antwerp and Brussels, noblemen, children, mercenaries, lepers, religious dignitaries, art lovers, humanists, and the like--and of humanity in general, inward and outward woman and man included. Bruegel's own personality and convictions, she writes, largely remain opaque, but it is thanks to Honig's marvelous descriptions of some of Bruegel's most renowned pictures that our eyes are opened to both the 'idea of nature' as people conceived of it in his time, but also to Bruegel's personal, deeply perceptive ideas about human nature. --Reindert Falkenburg, NYU Abu Dhabi Eloquently and effectively, Honig fulfills the promise of her title with a fresh, close look at Bruegel, among contemporaries, within his tumultuous era. She clearly articulates how the artist examined themes concerning basic human nature across his career. But in the process, she reminds us that while this thoughtful, engaged man laughed at the vices and follies of all humankind, like Democritus, he also, self-consciously, ultimately left us mute images to interpret alone. --Larry Silver, University of Pennsylvania, author of Rembrandt's Holland

Eloquently and effectively, Honig fulfills the promise of her title with a fresh, close look at Bruegel, among contemporaries, within his tumultuous era. She clearly articulates how the artist examined themes concerning basic human nature across his career. But in the process, she reminds us that while this thoughtful, engaged man laughed at the vices and follies of all humankind, like Democritus, he also, self-consciously, ultimately left us mute images to interpret alone. --Larry Silver, University of Pennsylvania, author of Rembrandt's Holland In his own time, Pieter Bruegel's art has been praised as the ultimate achievement in the representation of nature. . . . Honig's book is the first to make us realize that this appraisal pertains to the representation of human nature of the people surrounding him--workers in the field, citizens of Antwerp and Brussels, noblemen, children, mercenaries, lepers, religious dignitaries, art lovers, humanists, and the like--and of humanity in general, inward and outward woman and man included. Bruegel's own personality and convictions, she writes, largely remain opaque, but it is thanks to Honig's marvelous descriptions of some of Bruegel's most renowned pictures that our eyes are opened to both the 'idea of nature' as people conceived of it in his time, but also to Bruegel's personal, deeply perceptive ideas about human nature. --Reindert Falkenburg, NYU Abu Dhabi

Author Information

Elizabeth Honig is professor of European art history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Jan Brueghel and the Senses of Scale and Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp.

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