Transcript Breugel - Mount Mansfield Union High School

About Suffering
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About Suffering they
were never wrong/
The Old Masters how
well they understood/
Its human position,
how it takes place/
While someone else
is eating…. -- W.H.
Auden “Musee de
Beaux Arts”
Breugel
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At the forefront of
intellectual thought in
the sixteenth century
The reality of human
existence
Humility and
Tolerance
Symbolically rich
paintings
Bruegel’s Period
In
the wake of Luther
Peasant
Uprisings
Against
the Countess of Stuhlingen
Petitioning
of the twelve articles: right to elect
pastors, end to serfdom, free collection of wood,
abolition of certain tithes, restoration of hunting and
fishing rights etc.
Easter,
1525 (primary source quotations)
“Peasant” Bruegel and his
Immediate Influences
“City
child,” certainly not a peasant; therefore,
Bruegel regularly interacted with the most important
Flemish thinkers.
Abraham
Ortelius: geographer and humanist
Dirk
Coornhert: theologian, philosopher, humanist,
statesman, writer, printmaker
The
Time of Copernicus and discovery
From
Coornhert, the humanism of the reformation
Spirit of an Age: Copernicus and
Erasmus, 16th Century Giants
The
Polish astronomer,Copernicus had revealed to
all the world that Universe was a fundamentally
different
SPANISH INVASION
In
the 1560s King Phillip II of Spain
ordered the Duke of Alba to raise
20,000 troops to invade the Low
Countries
During this time Breugel executed
his most somber themes
Many paintings were destroyed—
possibly from this time period
Christ
and the Adulteress:
humility and tolerance
Influenced
Die
The
We
by Raphael
sonder sonde is die…
two groups: the accused and the shamed
feel humble and tolerant and awed
The Wedding Dance
•William Carlos Williams’ poem—
”The dancers go round”
•Bruegel, the party crasher
•The quiet observer with writing
tools
•Have the revelers missed the
point?
•The sixteenth-century “YMCA”
•Nature in the vanishing point
About Suffering
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About suffering, they
were never wrong
The Fall of Icarus
Ovid’s interpretation
Tragedy but no one
notices
Landscape with Gallows and Magpie
Gossiping
on the
gallows: gossips hang in
Netherlandish proverbs
Dancing on the gallows
The defecating man is
BSing
The Spanish Inquisition
Haymaking: perfect harmony
Here
for one, Breugel felt
human beings to be in
perfect harmony with
nature; when they are idle
and sometimes while they
are doing their work
various degrees of
ugliness remain, but here
… they are happy and
radiant.
CONCLUSION
Knew
what the Italians never noticed “In Italy
during the sixteenth century, the unvarnished
reality that Breugel (sic) championed was ignored
Unprettified
visual reality
Humility
and tolerance
Modern
Breugels: Faulkner, Steinbeck, Budbill
John Prine: Just a big goofy world with a big
goofy man dancing with a big goofy girl
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Mystery
Slide One
Mystery
Slide Two
Mystery
Slide Three