The Triumph of Death. A Sense of Place Magazine. 5 December, 2018.

Death triumphs over the mundane. An army of skeletons raze the Earth. All life is extinguished.

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.

The Triumph of Death, once the property of the Queen of Spain, has been in the Museo Del Prado in Madrid since 1827.

It is now in Vienna, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, especially restored for the largest exhibition of Pieter Bruegel’s work ever held.

The exhibition is badged as Once in a Lifetime. For once the oft repeated phrase, heard thousands of times in far more ordinary circumstance, is correct.

The size of the exhibition, the substantial resources dedicated to it, and the high level of expertise involved all ensure that.

Museums and private collectors count Bruegel’s works among their most precious and fragile possessions. Most of the panels have never been loaned for an exhibition.

Dulle Griet, also restored especially for the exhibition, pictures an army of women being led to pillage hell. The restoration revealed that the work was painted in 1563, two years later than originally thought. Previously the signature and the date on the painting had been illegible.

Eighteen years. That’s all Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s remarkable burst of creativity lasted. And we’re still talking about him centuries later.

The Vienna exhibition commemorates the 450th anniversary of his death.

During his lifetime, Bruegel was among the period’s most sought-after artists, with his works achieving exceptionally high prices.

But like Shakespeare, despite his contemporary fame little is known about his personal life, including the exact date and location of his birth.

Only about forty paintings and sixty prints by him have survived.

By bringing together over 90 works by the master, the Vienna exhibition has assembled for the very first time a comprehensive overview of Bruegel’s oeuvre: comprising around 30 panel paintings, that is three quarters of extant paintings.

Also on display are almost half of his preserved drawings and prints.

This week a symposium at the Kunsthistorische Museum, The Hand of the Master, which will focus on material and technical aspects of the work, brings together some of the world’s most renowned Bruegel scholars, conservators, and scientists.

Bruegel revolutionized landscape and genre painting, and his compositions continue to elicit varied and controversial interpretations.

Sometimes referred to as Peasant Bruegel, the depth and breadth of his pictorial world, his the powers of observation and unique narrative abilities deployed in his depictions of everyday life continue to fascinate.

All papers presented at the symposium will be included in a 2019 essay volume published by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in collaboration with Hannibal Publishing.

The catalog has just been published as a standalone title, Bruegel The Master.

Inside The Battle between Carnival and Lent

The subversive — and, to this day, little-understood — qualities of Bruegel’s work often took the shape of panoramic landscapes dotted with bursts of everyday activity. Alternately interpreted as celebrations or critiques of peasant life, Bruegel’s paintings feature a pantheon of symbolic details that defy easy classification: A man playing a stringed instrument while wearing a pot on his head could, for example, represent a biting indictment of the Catholic Church — or he could simply be included in hopes of making the viewer laugh.

Meilan Solly. Science Journalist. The Smithsonian Magazine.

X-ray imaging of a 1559 work, “The Battle Between Carnival and Lent,” reveals macabre features masked in the final product, including a corpse being dragged in a cart and a second dead body lying on the ground. Infrared scans further highlight the small changes Bruegel made prior to completing the painting, with a cross adorning a baker’s peel transformed into a pair of fish. The cross blatantly refers to the church, while the fish — a traditional Lent delicacy — offers a subtler nod to Christ.

Meilan Solly. Science Journalist. The Smithsonian Magazine.

The Peasant Bruegel

Anyone interested in art knows the name Bruegel.

The most important Netherlandish painter and draughtsman of the 16th century had already achieved great fame during his own lifetime, but was largely forgotten in the 18th and 19th centuries and only rediscovered by art historians in the early 20th century.

His variety of subjects, which draw on the earlier pictorial traditions of Hieronymus Bosch and the latter part of the Middle Ages, and their originality of execution, still elicit great fascination from viewers today.

For their generosity and great faith in entrusting us with such fragile works — all among the most precious holdings of their respective collections — we extend our wholehearted thanks to the numerous institutions and lenders from around the world who have contributed, and who have collegially and constructively supported this project.

It will be the very first time ever that the full range of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder will be on view. More than half of his surviving paintings, drawings and prints will be reunited, works that only leave the walls of the museums that house them on the rarest of occasions.

An exhibition such as this therefore ranks among the most extraordinary museum events, and it will most likely not occur again within this century.

We repeatedly seek new paths of access into the work of this great master.

An acute observer, Bruegel often holds up a mirror to the viewer, something that makes his work highly immediate and sometimes unsettling, thus giving it a fascinating connection with the here and now.