Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Image List)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Flemish artist active in Antwerp and Brussels, famous for his paintings and drawings of landscapes and scenes of robust peasant life, and founder of a dynasty of artists that remained active well into the 17th century.

Bruegel is thought to have come from the town of Breda, located in present-day Holland. Born Pieter Brueghel, he later dropped the h”from his name. Before he became a member of the painters' guild in Antwerp in 1551, he seems to have studied with Pieter Coecke in Brussels and worked for a short time in Malines. After a trip to Italy between 1552 and 1555, Bruegel returned to Antwerp. In 1563 he married Coecke's daughter, Maria Coecke van Aelst, and moved to Brussels, where he resided until his death in September 1569. Their two children, Pieter the Younger and Jan, both became painters of some renown.

Bruegel's earliest works were landscapes. A number of panoramic landscape drawings made on his Italian trip show Bruegel's ability to depict the changing seasonal moods and the atmospheric qualities of nature. These same characteristics appear in his later landscape paintings.
After his return to Antwerp from Italy in 1555, Bruegel regularly made drawings for engravings. Some of Bruegel's drawings were landscapes, but others were clearly meant to capitalize on the popularity of Bruegel's famous Flemish predecessor Hieronymus Bosch. The Seven Deadly Vices (1557) are within this category. Late in the 1550s, Bruegel began a series of large painted panels depicting various aspects of Flemish folk life. All are marked by a perceptive observation of human nature, a pervasive wit, and the vitality of Bruegel's peasant figures.