THE PAINTING I COULD HARDLY LOOK AT

WORDS

HIGHBROW means high culture

GRUESOME means something terrible, something that makes you feel horrified

STUNNINGLY  . Something that is far from normal. For instance the woman is stuuningly beautiful or ugly .Villa Raverio is stunningly quiet

DISEMBODIED. Something taken away from something

GHOULS Something horrible and ghostly

MINGLE to be part of  a group of people. I went to the party and started to mingle with the other people

BLEND IN also a  cookery term that means to make something part of something .I did not know anyone at the party but I tried to blend in. 

ICONOCLASM Those who destroy art mainly out of religious reasons 

TO FOCUS concentrate deeply

WITTING in an image it is the thing you are meant to see . For instance in the Triumph of Death we are meant to see the dance of death and the end of mankind.

UNWITTING something the author of a work did not intend but it is there anyway. For instance in the Triumph Of Death something must have made the painter paint such horrible scenes and the unwitting testimony is that in his own country there was terrible war 

When I was a kid my dad used to take me round the famous London art galleries on a Sunday morning . That was the first time I came into contact with Pieter Bruegel the elder . His paintings were mostly destroyed when he died and now there are forty in existence but he more or less celebrated the life of the peasant in his homeland. He was called Peasant Brughel because he liked to dress up like one of them so he could mingle unnoticed.

He blended in with them and was able to do drawings of them that would later become paintings. But his most famous painting is the Triumph of Death which is a painting that isbout the end of mankind. It was probably painted because of the religious wars going on in the Netherlands between the Spanish and the Dutch. It is a frightening painting and when I first saw it I straight away thought of Hieronymous Bosch.Bosch was described like this by Van Mander

"Who will be able to tell of the wierd and strange ideas in his mind". If you believe in Hell then your vision of it is from a Bosch painting "When I saw them in London they terrified me .He must be the inspiration not just for Bruegel but also countless horror films of today.

Bruegel and Bosch were both painters of pastoral life and did mostkly that kind of painting .

Bruegel  was a formative influence on Dutch golden age painting he was one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting. Focusing instead on the visual world  and depicting everyday scenes of peseant life.

Bruegel was born at a time of extensive change in Western Europe. Humanist ideals from the previous century influenced artists and scholars. In Italy   artists such as Michaelangelo  and  Da Vinci  painted their masterpieces.

Reformation was accompanied by iconoclasm  and the widespread destruction of art  in the Low countries 

The Catholic Church viewed Protestantism and its iconoclasm as a threat to the Church.

 The Coubncil of Trent which concluded in 1563, said that  that religious art should be more focused on religious subject-matter and less on material things and decorative qualities.

At this time, the Low Countries  wanted separation from the Habsburg rule based in Spain. The Habsburg monarchs of Spain attempted a policy of strict religious uniformity for the Catholic Church within their domains and enforced it with the inqusition. Increasing religious 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.

In this historical atmosphere his  moral work, the triumph of Death  is symbolized by a large army of skeletons razing the Earth. The background is a barren landscape in which scenes of destruction are still taking place. In the foreground, Death leads his armies from his reddish horse, destroying the world of the living. The latter are led to an enormous coffin with no hope for salvation. All of the social institutions are included in this composition and neither power nor devotion can save them. Some attempt to struggle against their dark destiny while others are resigned to their fate. Only a pair of lovers, at the lower right, remains outside the future they too will have to suffer. This painting depicts a customary theme in medieval literature: the dance of Death, which was frequently used by Northern artists. 

Bruegel casts the entire work in a reddish-brown tone that gives the scene an infernal aspect appropriate for the subject at hand. This scene is influenced by both the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death and by depictions of the Triumph of Death in Italian painting. The profusion of scenes and moralizing sense applied by the artists are part of Hieronymous Bosch´s influence on this work. The pasinting is not about a pandemic but about his feelings towards the years of constant war in his country . The witting testyimony is as we have said above but the unwitting testimony is that the Renaissance the so called period was really about war and not discovery.

Whatever you may think of Bruegel it was Bosch who gave me nightmares . What kind of mind did he have?

QUESTIONS

1. What was the golden age of Dutch painting (research this )

2. Whats the difference between mingle and blend in 

3. Why was Bruegel called the elder?

4  When Bruegel died he told his wife to destroy all his paintings . Can you guess why from the above text ?

5.Give me an example of witting and unwitting

6. Do you think Bruegel and Bosch influenced horror films of today?

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