From the artist's life
In Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the drowning hero is almost invisible — just two legs vanishing into the sea while a ploughman works on, unbothered.
Source: Wikipedia / WikimediaRenaissance
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) was the great Netherlandish master of peasant life and panoramic landscape. His teeming scenes of villages, proverbs and seasons brim with ordinary humanity.
Bruegel raised everyday peasant life to grand art and founded a dynasty of painters.
- Master of panoramic landscapes and crowded peasant scenes.
- Hid his subjects in plain sight, as in the Fall of Icarus.
- Founded a dynasty of Brueghel painters lasting generations.
Key works
Where to start
Complete list of key works
Works with a dedicated ArtAtlas page are highlighted in gold.
- The HarvestersOn ArtAtlas
- The Hunters in the SnowOn ArtAtlas
- Netherlandish ProverbsListed for reference
- The Tower of BabelListed for reference
- The Triumph of DeathListed for reference
- The Peasant WeddingListed for reference
- The Blind Leading the BlindListed for reference
- The Magpie on the GallowsListed for reference
- Children's GamesListed for reference
- The Massacre of the InnocentsListed for reference
- Dull GretListed for reference
- The Fight Between Carnival and LentListed for reference
1565
The Harvesters
The Harvesters is one panel from a series of six paintings Bruegel made in 1565 depicting the months of the year — only five of those panels survive today, and this one, showing late summer, ended up in New York while the others are scattered between the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague, with the sixth panel lost since at least the 17th century.
1565