Twelve Proverbs by Peter Brueghel

Twelve Proverbs by Peter Brueghel

Folklore – one of the most important sources of creativity Brueghel. Many of his paintings and engravings are the elementary “painting” of popular proverbs, sayings, etc. Art of this kind was extremely common in the Netherlands and is available for almost anyone – in the form of the same replicated cheap wood engravings.

The attitude of the artist to similar subjects changed over time. The picture “Twelve Proverbs” made of panels can be considered as preparatory to the famous work “The Netherlands Proverbs”, in which individual episodes are combined into one large composition. In this case, Bruegel was guided by the engraving of Franz Hogenbergen “The Blue Cap”.

Imitating him, the artist created more than a hundred etchings illustrating the proverbs, but the whole work did not come out of it, it disintegrated into separate pieces – and those that had little in common with reality. Later, already in Brussels, Bruegel finally found a reception that helped him overcome these shortcomings. He realized that the picture would be more spectacular if you “blow up” purely folklore boundaries, make it multilayered, covertly linked with modernity. As a result, his later paintings of this series turned into monumental and deep in meaning canvases – such as “Soroka on the Gallows”, 1568.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)