Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap
Project
Pieter Brugel the Elder
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Artist: Pieter Brugel the Elder
Print Sculpture: Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap
Art Vocabulary:
I The Artist:  Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel (1525-69) usually known as Pieter Brugel the Elder to distinguish him from his elder son, was the first in a family of Flemish painters.  He is generally considered the greatest Flemish painter of the 16th century, and was the foremost member of a European movement that used the Tower of Babel regularly in their work.  He spelled his name Bruegel until 1559, and his sons retained the "h" in the spelling of their names (Brueghel).
He was probably born in Breda in the Duchy of Brabant, now in The Netherlands.  Accepted as a master in the Antwerp painters' guild in 1551, he was apprenticed to Coecke van Aelst, a leading Antwerp artist, sculptor, architect, and designer of tapestry and stained glass.  Bruegel traveled to Italy in 1551 or 1552, completing a number of paintings, mostly landscapes, there.
Returning home in 1553, he settled in Antwerp but ten years later moved permanently to Brussels.  He married van Aelst's daughter Mayken, in 1563, the same year that he painted two depictions of Babel:  The 'Little' Tower of Babel and the Tower of Babel.  Brugel had visited Rome and based his Tower of Babel on the Coliseum.  He painted the tower as an immense structure occupying almost the entire picture space, with tiny figures rendered in perfect detail, going about their daily business.  The top floors of the tower are bright red, whereas the rest of the brickwork has already started to weather.
Bruegel developed an original style that uniformly holds narrative meaning.  His subject matter ranged widely, from conventional Biblical scenes and parables of Christ to mythological portrayals such as Landscape with the Fall of Icarus; religious allegories in the style of Hieronymus Bosch; and social satires.  But it was in nature that he found his greatest inspiration.  His mountain landscapes have few parallels in European art, and have remained consistently popular.
André Parrot [The Tower of Babel, Delachaux et Niestlé, 1954] reports that more than seven thousand people are represented on the 30"x24" canvas of the second Tower of Babel painting.  On the same scale as those figures, he points out, "the tower must have risen to a height of some 300 yards!"
II The Painting:  Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap
III Artist's Materials or Techniques
Bruegel was a Landscape Painter.
IV Students' Self-Expression:  Guided Activity
No information available.