bruegel

Pieter Bruegel ou Pieter Brueghel ou Pieter Breughel

dit Bruegel l'Ancien

Peintre flamand ( ? vers 1525-1530- Bruxelles 1569).

Pieter Bruegel, les Aveugles

Avec Jan Van Eyck, Jérôme Bosch – son père spirituel – et Petrus Paulus Rubens, qui possédait plusieurs de ses tableaux, Pieter Bruegel l'Ancien occupe un des quatre sommets de la peinture flamande. Si tout le monde est d'accord au sujet de ses qualités artistiques incomparables et de son influence sur l'évolution du paysage et de l'estampe, le message de son œuvre, par contre, donne toujours lieu à d'âpres controverses.

1. LES JALONS D'UNE VIE D'ARTISTE

1.1. D'ANVERS À BRUXELLES

L'orthographe correcte de son nom est « Brueghel » ou « Bruegel » et non « Breug(h)el ». La première est celle qu'il emploie jusqu'en 1559. À partir de cette année-là, il signe invariablement sans h.

Les données fournies par les chroniqueurs étant incomplètes, voire équivoques, on ignore le lieu exact de sa naissance, vraisemblablement en Brabant. On sait que Bruegel a travaillé avec Pieter Balten (vers 1525-1598 ?) au retable de la corporation des gantiers de Malines en 1550-1551. En cette dernière année, il devint franc-maître à Anvers, repère qui permet de situer sa date de naissance entre 1525-1530.

On le retrouve à Rome en 1553, où il semble avoir eu des rapports avec le miniaturiste croate Giulio Clovio. Dix ans après, il épouse à Bruxelles la fille de Pieter Coecke Van Aelst, Mayken, dont il aura deux fils : Pieter (1564 1638), dit Bruegel d'Enfer et Jan (→ Jan Bruegel). Une collection de tableaux- dont seize pièces de Bruegel mal spécifiées- est affectée comme gage à la ville d'Anvers par un négociant, Nicolas Jonghelinck. L'épitaphe de Bruegel dans l'église bruxelloise Notre-Dame-de-la-Chapelle- église où il s'était marié- nous apprend qu'il est mort en 1569.

1.2. DES DESSINS AU FEU

Bruegel l'Ancien, Rixe de paysans

Les dates qui figurent sur ses dessins et ses estampes fournissent quelques renseignements supplémentaires au sujet de l'itinéraire de son voyage en Italie, mais notre source principale est, jusqu'à nouvel ordre, le chapitre que Carel Van Mander lui consacre dans son Schilder-Boeck (Livre des peintres), ouvrage qui parut à Haarlem en 1604. C'est dire que la biographie en question fut rédigée à peu près trente ans après la mort de Bruegel. Celui-ci aurait appris son métier chez Pieter Coecke Van Aelst, dont il allait épouser la fille qu'il avait, toute petite, souvent portée dans ses bras.

Établi à Anvers, il travaillait beaucoup pour un certain Hans Franckert, ami avec lequel il aimait se mêler aux convives des noces champêtres afin d'observer les manières des paysans. Se délectant aux ragots comme tous les chroniqueurs, Van Mander prétend qu'à Anvers Bruegel faisait ménage avec une servante qu'il aurait pour sûr épousée si elle n'avait eu la mauvaise habitude de mentir. C'est sa future belle-mère qui aurait exigé que Bruegel s'installât à Bruxelles afin de se soustraire à sa liaison anversoise.

En outre, Van Mander décrit bon nombre d'œuvres, dont plusieurs ont pu être identifiées. Parlant des dessins que Bruegel avait encore dans ses cartons, il prétend que celui-ci « les fit brûler par son épouse lorsqu'il sentit que l'heure de sa mort approchait ». Les légendes qui s'y trouvaient étaient « ou trop outrageantes ou trop satiriques » ; aussi « craignait-il que sa femme n'en eût des ennuis ».

2. L'ŒUVRE, MIROIR DE L'HOMME ET DE LA NATURE

2.1. DESSINATEUR AVANT D'ÊTRE PEINTRE

Bruegel avait l'habitude de signer et de dater ses œuvres. Ainsi, les tableaux dont l'attribution est contestée ne sont pas très nombreux. Que son œuvre peint, comprenant une quarantaine de chefs-d'œuvre, ait été réalisé pendant les dix dernières années de sa vie tient du miracle. Rien que pour l'année 1565, la liste de sa production comprend le Trébuchet, le Christ et la femme adultère, le Massacre des Innocents ainsi que les Saisons ou les Mois, série qui comprenait à elle seule six panneaux (dont un semble avoir péri).

En réalité, Bruegel fut dessinateur avant d'être peintre. Ses feuilles les plus anciennes remontent à l'époque de son voyage en Italie : des paysages qui témoignent d'une vision que la critique a qualifiée à juste titre de « cosmique ». Ses dernières feuilles (les Apiculteurs et l'Été) portent la date de 1568.

Le catalogue de tous les dessins de Bruegel, tel qu'il a été dressé par Ludwig Münz, compte cent cinquante numéros, dont soixante-dix-sept esquisses ni datées ni signées (hormis les signatures apocryphes ou contrefaites), mais qui portent presque toujours l'inscription naar het leven, ce qui veut dire pris (ou dessiné) « sur le vif ». D'après des recherches publiées en 1970 (revue américaine Master Drawings), cette célèbre série d'esquisses ne serait pas de la main de Bruegel, mais probablement de celle de Roelant Savery.

2.2. L'ŒUVRE GRAVÉ

Tout porte à croire que Bruegel n'a manipulé le burin qu'une seule fois (la Chasse au lapin sauvage, 1566), mais, par les estampes qui ont été taillées d'après ses dessins, il occupe une place de choix dans l'histoire de la gravure au xvie s. Toutes ses planches ont été éditées par Hiëronymus Cock, dont l'officine à la fière enseigne cosmopolite « Aux Quatre Vents » était établie à Anvers près de la Bourse. Les sujets sont très variés : des paysages alpestres et fluviaux, des paraboles empruntées aux Évangiles, des thèmes littéraires, des scènes folkloriques et documentaires. Des séries telles que les Péchés capitaux (1556-1557) et les Sept Vertus (1559-1560) sont remarquables, ne serait-ce qu'au point de vue iconographique. Les dessins originaux de vingt-sept planches, sur un total de quatre-vingt-douze, ont été conservés.

3. LE STYLE DE BRUEGEL ET LE MANIÉRISME EUROPÉEN

3.1. DANS LA LIGNÉE DE BOSCH

Bruegel a-t-il vraiment appris son métier chez le peintre-graveur-architecte Pieter Coecke Van Aelst ? L'assertion de Van Mander est de nature à étonner les historiens de l'art, habitués à se mettre en quête d'influences stylistiques et à les utiliser comme moyen probatoire. Le style de Coecke, romaniste ou italianisant, n'a en effet rien de commun avec celui de Bruegel. Mais peut-être s'est-on trop aveuglé sur le contraste entre les deux styles. À l'encontre de tant de ses confrères, Bruegel fut à peine marqué par l'art italien. Les quelques éléments qu'il emprunta aux maîtres de la Renaissance italienne- tels le Tintoret, Titien, Raphaël et Michel-Ange -, il les a parfaitement assimilés et adaptés au style qui était le sien. Si tant d'œuvres imposantes n'ont pas réussi à l'ébranler, pourquoi aurait-il moulé son style dans les concepts romanisants de Coecke ?

Pieter Bruegel l'Ancien, la Chute des anges rebelles.

Van Mander écrit textuellement : « Bruegel s'était beaucoup exercé à imiter le faire de Jérôme Bosch. Comme celui-ci, il a composé de nombreuses scènes fantastiques et bon nombre de drôleries, ce qui l'a fait surnommer par beaucoup de gens Pierre le Drôle. » Cette assertion est amplement confirmée par l'œuvre. Ses panneaux du Combat de Carnaval et de Carême (1559, musée de Vienne), de la Chute des anges rebelles (1562, Bruxelles), de la Dulle Griet (Margot l'Enragée, 1562 ?, Anvers) et du Triomphe de la mort (1562 ?, Madrid) sont en effet boschiens, et il en est de même pour plusieurs de ses estampes. En passant en revue son œuvre dans l'ordre chronologique, on participe en quelque sorte à un long « travelling » cinématographique. Partant d'une vue d'ensemble de la foule grouillante, la caméra s'immobilise devant l'homme en gros plan.

3.2. LOIN DES CANONS CLASSIQUES

Ce fut Max Dvorak qui inséra l'art de Bruegel dans le cadre du mouvement maniériste européen. Certes, les paysans et les badauds, tels que Bruegel les a campés, gros et trapus, sont, stylistiquement parlant, tout aussi maniéristes que les ascètes et les apôtres allongés d'un Greco, mais on sait que le caractère du maniérisme est mal défini et que le contenu du terme varie selon l'auteur.

Autrefois, le style de Bruegel était fort peu goûté. Les érudits l'ont tour à tour qualifié en se servant de termes peu flatteurs : « vulgaire », « insupportablement cru », « grotesque ». Sans doute, ce peintre sublime a-t-il été trop souvent identifié avec ses modèles et avec ses sujets populaires. La beauté telle qu'il l'a conçue n'a certes rien des canons classiques que la Renaissance a enjolivés, mais, par le truchement de son style personnel, il a réussi une performance artistique qui n'a plus jamais été égalée, à savoir traduire la lourdeur, la stupidité, la balourdise avec élégance. Cette attitude s'explique sans doute par le fait que Bruegel n'adhéra point à l'euphorie de la vision humaniste italienne. Sa façon de considérer l'individu ne correspond-elle pas à l'esprit de ses paysages cosmiques ? Tout porte à croire que Bruegel a vu l'homme comme une créature impuissante, insignifiante, perdue dans l'espace, en bref « un si minime animalcule », comme l'a dit Érasme. Même campé à l'avant-plan d'un de ses dessins (par exemple l'Été, 1568, Hambourg), l'homme y est encore happé par le gouffre de la perspective.

Nous voilà bien loin de l'appréciation de celui qui a cependant redécouvert Bruegel- à savoir Henri Hymans (Gazette des beaux-arts, mai et novembre 1890, janvier 1891)- et qui affirmait tout de go :« Sans doute son champ d'investigation n'est point des plus vastes ; son ambition aussi a des bornes modestes. Elle se limite à la connaissance des hommes et des choses les plus proches. ».

4. DES LECTURES MULTIPLES

4.1. LE MONDE DES HUMBLES

Bruegel ne devint jamais le chef de file d'une école. Le Trébuchet, la série des Mois et la Pie sur le gibet annoncent l'art des paysagistes hollandais, mais déjà au xviie s. son œuvre tombe dans l'oubli. Même les scènes de taverne des Brouwer et Teniers respirent une atmosphère tout à fait différente. En somme, son message n'avait pas été entendu. Depuis, on s'est souvenu que le « Boerenbruegel »- Bruegel le paysan- fréquentait des humanistes, tel le géographe Abraham Ortelius. Aussitôt, l'érudition a mis l'œuvre de Bruegel dans une lumière différente.

En scrutant ses tableaux et ses gravures, on a cru y déceler des sous-entendus, des allusions, des coups de boutoir, voire des protestations violentes contre les pouvoirs. On lui trouve des sympathies pour les gueux et pour la Réforme. D'aucuns le soupçonnent d'une certaine irrévérence en matière de religion. D'autres auteurs estiment qu'il était très versé en alchimie et que certaines œuvres- par exemple la Dulle Griet- sont imprégnées de philosophie hermétique. D'autres encore soulignent la tendance sociale qui émane de certaines planches : Bruegel, prétendent-ils, a soutenu les pauvres contre les capitalistes.

Certes, Bruegel a vu que le peuple était opprimé et exploité. Il a vu que cette masse grouillante était tenue en bride par des soudards, des lansquenets recrutés parmi la fine fleur de la racaille. Certes, il a vu que ces mercenaires étaient, eux aussi, des pauvres diables qui ne savaient ni lire ni écrire, des béotiens qui devaient malgré tout gagner leur croûte, fût-ce à coups de pertuisane ou d'espadon. Cependant, rien ne prouve que le panneau du Massacre des Innocents ait été conçu pour stigmatiser la répression exercée par l'occupant espagnol. Le peintre aurait-il fait passer railleries et accusations sous le manteau de scènes orthodoxes, parce que bibliques ? L'esprit critique moderne tend évidemment à monter en épingle un Bruegel dont les comportements seraient ceux d'un homme extrêmement rusé. Mais, si l'on veut bien admettre que son œuvre était effectivement truffée d'allusions politiques, il faudrait bien en déduire que celles-ci n'étaient saisies que par un public très restreint. En outre, il serait absurde de supposer que les gens pétris d'esprit se rencontraient uniquement parmi les gueux et les libertins.

4.2. DES ÉNIGMES

Bruegel l'Ancien, les Mendiants

Que Bruegel lance de temps à autre des moqueries allusives, nul ne le conteste, mais nombre de thèmes qui, jadis, étaient parfaitement intelligibles nous sont devenus inaccessibles. Quelle est au juste la signification profonde de cet étrange conciliabule des Mendiants ou des Culs-de-jatte (1568, Louvre) ? La lecture des chroniques nous apprend que la queue de renard, par exemple, était un emblème à significations multiples.

Si l'art de Bosch est profondément enraciné dans son terroir, celui de Bruegel est, lui aussi, fortement déterminé par le même climat spirituel, à savoir le caractère brabançon. L'étude de la littérature et du folklore brabançons fournit la preuve que l'énigmatique Dulle Griet n'est pas forcément l'image de la guerre, ni celle de l'insurrection contre le régime espagnol ; « Dulle Griet » était une locution courante par laquelle le peuple désignait la mégère, la femme hommasse.

4.3. UN PEINTRE HUMANISTE

Reconnaissons que la signification de certaines œuvres, comme la Pie sur le gibet (1568, Darmstadt), tableau que Bruegel légua par testament à son épouse, demeure abstruse. Mais, dans la littérature et le théâtre de l'époque, nous trouvons des passages qui peuvent résoudre pas mal de problèmes d'iconologie. Ainsi, tout le décor du fameux Pays de Cocagne (1567, Munich) est déjà décrit dans un texte néerlandais imprimé en 1546. Les soties et le théâtre des « rhétoriciens » nous expliquent des scènes comme le Combat de Carnaval et de Carême et nous révèlent certains aspects de l'esprit bruegélien. Les rhétoriciens, moralistes invétérés, ridiculisent la goinfrerie dans une sotie de 1561 ; à son tour, Bruegel regarde la gloutonnerie d'un œil prévenu.

L'interprétation selon laquelle il se serait opposé au capitalisme- notamment par ses estampes Elck (Chacun, 1558), Les gros poissons mangent les petits (1556), le Combat des tirelires et des coffres-forts (1563)- se révèle fausse à la lumière de la critique historique. En réalité, Bruegel a raillé la cupidité de l'homme, et il s'agit là d'une attitude humaniste. Dans la première planche, il reprend un adage que l'on trouve déjà chez François Villon : « Je cognois tout, fors que moy mesmes. »

Quel peintre avant lui avait observé l'homme avec une telle perspicacité ? La ruse et la bêtise, la misère, la faim, les maladies chroniques, l'esprit de lucre, la couardise, l'hypocrisie, la haine, la mort, l'ardeur et la fainéantise, l'affliction, la résignation et, en dépit de tout, la force vitale indestructible de l'homme, Bruegel a pénétré, compris et rendu tout cela. Comme François Rabelais, il eût pu dire : « Je ne bâtis que pierres vives : ce sont hommes. »

En scrutant l'œuvre de Bruegel, nombre de problèmes se révèlent provisoirement insolubles. Mais peut-être connaissons-nous néanmoins le thème principal de ses préoccupations, à savoir le comportement déraisonnable de l'homme au milieu d'une nature grandiose et impassiblement belle.

Parmi ses fils, Pieter II (1564-1638), dit Bruegel d'Enfer, l'imita de façon anecdotique.

https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/personnage/Pieter_Bruegel/110393

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Pieter Brueghel l'Ancien: Liste d'œuvres - Toutes les œuvres par date

https://www.wikiart.org/fr/pieter-brueghel-lancien/all-works#!#filterName:all-paintings-chronologically,resultType:masonry

“ALL LIFE IS HERE”: BRUEGEL’S WAY TO CALVARY

By Philip McCouat

INTRODUCTION

In the early 1800s, as Napoleon’s armies swept through Europe, one of his trusted advisers was put in charge of “requisitioning” the artworks of conquered countries and transporting them to Paris. This man, Vivant Denon, became the first Director of the recently-opened Louvre Museum, which would become the repository for hundreds of these works [1].

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By 1815, however, following Napoleon’s fall, many of those works – but by no means all – started to be returned to their original owners. One of the most extraordinary of these restored works was a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, widely regarded as the 16th century’s greatest Netherlandish artist. It is this painting, The Way to Calvary [2], now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum [3], that we shall be exploring in this article. 

Fig 1: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Way to Calvary (1564), oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

SETTING THE SCENE

The overall view

The Way to Calvary (1564) is the second largest painting that Bruegel ever did [4]. It was probably commissioned by Bruegel’s patron Niclaes Jonghelinck, who also commissioned many others of his works, such as the Tower of Babel and Hunters in the Snow​.

The painting is about the size of a dining tabletop (124 x 170 cm) and features a mass of humanity, with literally hundreds of individual characters, in a setting more reminiscent of Northern Europe than of the Middle East. Such a treatment was not radically new – it had been customary since Jan van Eyck to depict the procession to Calvary with a multitude of figures in contemporary costumes in a familiar European landscape [5]. But Bruegel’s version here is truly exceptional because of his skill in convincingly portraying such a variety of closely-observed incident, with such a vividness of characterisation [6].

Because of the painting’s size and the multitude of characters, it is easy to get lost and lose track of what is really going on. To enable you to keep your bearings, and provide a context to aid location, we have here divided the painting into 12 sectors (Fig 2). These sectors are in three rows of four, so that sector 1 is at top left of the painting and sector 12 is at bottom right. We will be referring to these often throughout this article.

Fig 2: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (numbered sectors 1 -12)

Once we get over the initial impression of chaotic activity, we can see that the narrative in the painting unfolds from left to right. The gold-bathed walled town that we can just make out in the misty distance (Fig 3; sector 1) is a rather Netherlandish version of Jerusalem where, the previous day, Jesus’s trial had taken place. Above the city, the sun shines brightly, the sky is light, and the surrounding foliage is healthy and green.

Fig 3: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of walled city)

People are leaving the city, making their way up across the fields. Numerous puddles and mud on the ground tell us it has recently been raining. The long shadows of the individuals in the crowd tell us it is early morning [7] and people holding onto their hats show that there is a brisk breeze blowing (see group at right in Fig 15). As we continue to look right, we can follow the line of the red-coated horsemen, past the precipitous windmill crag (sector 2), and directly to the fallen Christ. He is almost hidden, right in the middle of the painting (sectors 6,7), fallen exhausted under the weight of the Cross, while the two thieves just ahead of him sit petrified in the horse-drawn tumbril. In the sky directly above them, ominous dark clouds have gathered (sector 3).

All around them are vignettes of life in the crowd. Some of them are eager to catch sight of or mock the main actors, but most are content to attend to their own devices, or on the lookout for other diversions until the main action of the execution begins. Here, in an era in which the life of ordinary people was hard and often short, the ritualised suffering and death of malefactors was a form of popular entertainment, akin to a festival or carnival. It was a tradition which would continue in various parts of Europe well into the 19th century.

Those eager to get a good view of the execution straggle up towards the hill of Calvary in the far distance at right, where an expectant crowd has already gathered (sector 4). In the right foreground, meanwhile, Mary and the holy group, with their backs to all that is going on, are grieving (sectors 11, 12). There is no green foliage in this part of the painting, just the ox skull on the rock, the barren tree-trunk holding the macabre torture wheel on the right edge (sectors 4,8), and the spindly trees that we can just make out on the hill of Calvary in the distance. The transition from life (on the left of the painting) to death (on the right of the painting) could hardly be made more explicit.

The crag with the windmill

Dominating the top left of the painting is the extraordinarily precipitous rocky crag (Fig 4; sector 2). Such crags were a common feature in Flemish depictions of the carrying of the Cross [8]. Bruegel’s version here is topped with a windmill perched on a platform that, oddly, reflects the shape the torture wheels that are scattered throughout the painting. 

Fig 4: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of crag with windmill and part of city)

Compositionally, Bruegel’s windmill crag plays an important role by acting like an axle, around which all the action slowly turns, mirroring the action of the windmill’s sails themselves. But there has been much speculation that it may have some deeper meaning here. Perhaps it is political -- maybe the mill is there because of its status as an iconic emblem of Flanders which continues despite the Spanish regime. Perhaps it is religious – Michael Gibson, for example, suggests that the crag resembles a cathedral tower, crowned with a Cross formed by the crossed sails of the windmill. On his interpretation, the mill is founded on a rock, like the institution of the Church itself.

Or perhaps the mill is intended to be interpreted in a cosmological sense, standing for the “rotation of the world with its attendant sequence of cataclysms and renewals”. It has even been argued that the mill could be a symbol of the all-seeing eye of God watching the world from on high [9]. 

 

The place of execution

At the hill of Calvary [10], the place of execution, we see a large open space dotted with corpse-strewn torture wheels (Fig 5; sector 4). 

Fig 5: Bruegel, Way to Calvary (detail of torture wheels on hillside)

People have already gathered in a large circle (Fig 6; sector 4). There are children, dogs and horses scattered throughout the crowd. The crosses for the two thieves are already in place, their uprights echoing the uprights of the torture wheels and the trunks of the trees in the background. A worker is busy digging a hole for the cross that Jesus will bring with him. A red-coated trooper keeps the crowd back. 

Fig 6: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of place of execution)

As with Christ himself, this place is inconspicuous, though in this case it is because of the distance from the viewer. But Bruegel ensures that we cannot miss it -- our eyes are led by the people straggling up the hill and by the torture wheel at the far right of the painting, mirroring the circle of spectators where a scavenging crow is perching, and a scrap from the remains of a corpse still flutters in the breeze.  

Fig 7: Bruegel The Way to Calvary (detail of crow on wheel)

JESUS, THE THIEVES AND THE SOLDIERS​

Jesus and the thieves

Although Jesus appears in the very centre of the painting, he can be remarkably difficult to find (Fig 6; sectors 6,7)[11]. Bruegel gives him few of the usual identifying signs – just the mocking crown of thorns, but no halo, no spiritual eminence, no hint that he is intended to be the son of God. Instead, he is clad in a simple blue cloak and has fallen dazed and exhausted to the ground, unable to carry the heavy cross [12]. Around him, there appears to be some confusion, with some of the executioners pulling the cross, some pushing, with one man even resting his foot on the upright. Remarkably, few are actually looking at Christ. This coupled with his small size, is apparently intended to highlight the general indifference to his suffering.

Fig 8: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of Christ and the Cross)

According to Biblical accounts, Jesus was crucified with two thieves [13]. They are not required to carry their crosses here, but sit in a cart, apparently frightened out of their wits, with two priests attending, one Dominican, the other Franciscan (Fig 9; sector 7). The ashen-faced thief in front looks to the sky with unseeing eyes, the other sits dejected and dazed. He is holding a crucifix in his tied hands, an extraordinary anachronism given that Jesus had not even been crucified yet [14], but a reminder that the Cross was not just a symbol of painful death and suffering, but also a powerful vehicle of consolation.

Fig 9: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of thieves in cart)

The cart carrying the thieves, mud dripping from its wheels [15], is crossing a stretch of water – possibly echoing the river Styx [16] – just before heading uphill towards its occupants’ fate. The way ahead of them is studded with the mounted torture wheels we have already seen in Fig 5, where the corpses of previous victims have been left to rot, or gibbets with hanging corpses.

The red-coated Spanish

Just as Bruegel presents a very Flemish version of Jerusalem, he has also presented a Spanish version of the Roman soldiers who, historically, would have been in charge of the execution.

In Bruegel’s time, the Netherlands were under the control of Spain, much to the fear and hatred of the mostly Protestant inhabitants. Spanish rule was harsh, and there was ruthless religious persecution. Bruegel has tellingly depicted the troopers supervising the day’s proceedings as the hated roode rocx (red-coats), the Walloon mercenary horsemen who were in the service of the Spanish king. (They also appear in Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents [17]).

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These red coats also play a compositional role. They stretch from the left all the way to the hill of Calvary, mirroring the left-to-right structure of the painting. To hammer home the Spanish reference, the horseman riding ahead of the cart with the thieves carries a pale pink flag (Fig 9; sector 7). We can just make out the faint outline of the Habsburg double eagle embroidered in gold thread. 

THE SPECTATORS

A multitude of characters and incident

In the painting, we are looking at hundreds of individuals. Aside from the main actors, there are peasants, tradesmen, agricultural and town workers, clerics, soldiers, artisans, beggars and gypsies – all in contemporary Flemish dress -- not to mention forty horses, numerous birds and at least eight dogs.

Such is the detail that some scenes can only be identified under magnifying glass. Everywhere one looks there is lively incident – from the far left of the painting, where a white-bonneted woman pushes a sled carrying a wicker basket with two calves, evidently intended for market (sector 5), to the slopes of the hill of Calvary, where a white horse being ridden by a merchant bucks in alarm as a peasant’s hat blows off in its path (sector 7).

​

A reluctant Simon

Within this bewildering array of activity, let us focus in more detail on just a few vivid vignettes. In the left foreground, for example, a fight has broken out (Fig 10: sectors 9,10) [18]. A soldier with red and white striped tights jabs his pike at a woman. She is trying to hold onto her husband (in grey and black), who is being dragged away by two other soldiers. She has dropped her jug of milk, just as her husband has dropped the bound sheep. Members of the crowd look on, with expressions ranging from interest to fear. Three workmen with full sacks, evidently intended for market, are running off, and a shepherd holding a crook is also making himself scarce. 

Fig 10: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of struggle with Simon of Cyrene)

A well-dressed noble, with a pink shirt, watches proceedings with a proprietorial air, while other notables wait for the matter to be calmed down. They have an interest in this -- the husband is probably the biblical Simon of Cyrene, who is being press-ganged into helping Christ carry the too-heavy cross. The wife’s resistance to his helping Christ can be seen as hypocritical, given that she has a rosary at her hip.

The wandering pedlar

Even closer in the foreground, seated with his back to us, is a pedlar with bag of wares on his back, holding a stave and wearing a cap with a jaunty feather (Fig 11: sector 10). He seems slightly abstracted, both physically and emotionally, from the rest of the spectators. It has been suggested that this man is one of the wandering pedlars, often selling bread, who disseminated forbidden Anabaptist writings that were kept in the bottom of their bags [19]. 

Fig 11: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of wandering pedlar)

It has also been suggested that the group at the foot of the torture wheel at far right (Fig 12; sector 12) includes a grim-faced Anabaptist preacher (in black), together with a self-portrait of a somewhat neutral-looking Bruegel (pale coat and brown cap). 

Fig 12: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of men at foot of torture wheel)

The holy group and the women

Tucked away in the right foreground of the painting is a discrete group which is quite different from, and larger than, the other far more rustic spectators (Fig 13; sectors 11, 12). This group are expensively dressed in idealised apparel from an earlier era, delicately drawn and drowned in sorrow. They have turned away from the spectacle. St John is standing, leaning forward to support an ashen-faced Mary, while two other holy women – including a magnificently-clad Mary Magdalene at left -- kneel in prayer or grief [20]. 

Fig 13: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of holy group)

It is almost as if this is a quite different painting, in a quite different style, underlying Bruegel’s desire to differentiate the group from the hoi polloi. Compositionally, however, he links the holy group to other aspects of the scene. The roughly triangular shape of the grouped figures is balanced by the similar shape of the rocky outcrop in the left foreground; and the shape formed by St John and Mary echoes the shape of the high rocky outcrop in the distance.

Emotionally, too, they are linked to four other women who form a line leading towards the torture wheel at the right -- a woman watching the spectacle with her arms outstretched in commiseration, another with burying her face in her apron (both of these appear in Fig 14), a third with her hands clasped watching the procession, and an older woman, her mouth open, with a look of shocked outrage [21]. 

Fig 14: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (further detail of grieving women)

Apart from these women and Simon’s wife, there are only a few women in the painting, and seemingly none on the actual hill of Calvary. Many of them appear to have been simply caught up in the procession while they were on their way to market. Those paying attention generally look compassionate, in contrast to most of the men -- for example the two women, quite close to Jesus, with their backs to us, with hands held up (sector 7).

Children at play

The children scattered throughout the painting are largely oblivious to the momentous events that are unfolding. Instead, like children everywhere, they are mainly absorbed in their own worlds of exploration, play and just general messing round.

​

Just to the left of the windmill crag, a group of boys are skylarking in the mud (sectors 5, 6). One tries to pole vault over the muddy puddles, another holds his baby sister as he manoeuvres to dry land, and two others check how much mud they’ve collected on their stockings (at left of Fig 15). 

Fig 15: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (boys in puddle, people holding hats)

Over on the other side of the painting, just behind the holy group, a barefoot girl lifts the folds of her blue shift as she cautiously paddles toward her more impetuous brother (Fig 16; sector 11). Further over to the right, a child rides on its father’s shoulders (sector 12).

Fig 16: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of girl in puddle)

Behind the fallen Christ, we see two children, accompanied by their load-bearing mother and a dog, who look back at the action (Fig 17; sector 6). But the “action” is not what you might expect. For them, as for many others in the crowd, the fracas that surrounds Simon of Cyrene (sectors 9,10) occupies their interest far more than does the fate of stricken Christ. 

Fig 17: Bruegel, Way to Calvary (detail of children and others looking back)

CONCLUSION

Unlike so many painters of traditional religious subjects, Bruegel has firmly rooted his biblical story in ordinary, contemporaneous life. His conception of the real setting in the Middle East would in any event have been sketchy at best, so he sets it in a recognisable Flanders landscape and peoples it with a teeming diversity of ordinary local people, depicting them with a discerning and sympathetic appreciation of normal human foibles and weaknesses, and eschewing many of the conventional motifs of holiness and divinity. It is the very ordinariness and humanity of his depiction, and the indifference or casual cruelty with which Christ is being treated, that brings home to the viewer the awfulness and significance of the tragedy that is slowly unfolding before them.

© Philip McCouat 2017

This article may be cited as Philip McCouat, “All life is here”: Bruegel’s Way to Calvary, Journal of Art in Society www.artinsociety.com

Other articles on Bruegel that you may enjoy are:

• Bruegel’s Icarus and the Perils of Flight
• The emergence of the winter landscape

END NOTES

[1] From 1809-15 it was renamed the Musée Napoleon.

[2] Also known as The Procession to Calvary (a painting under that title was also done by his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger) and Christ Carrying the Cross.

[3] Of the forty or so of Bruegel’s works that still exist today, twelve of them are in just one room, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. In 2019, a major retrospective exhibition featuring Pieter Bruegel the Elder is being held at that Museum to mark the 450th anniversary of the artist’s death https://www.khm.at/en/visit/exhibitions/bruegel/.

[4] The biggest is the recently-attributed Wine of St Martin’s Day, c 1565.

[5] Alexander Wied, Bruegel (transl Anthony Lloyd), Bay Books, Sydney 1980 at 126.

[6] The painting has inspired an extraordinary 2011 feature film, The Mill & the Cross. The film is based on the book of the same name by the art historian/critic Michael Francis Gibson, whose work I have drawn on heavily in this article. You can find my reviews of the film HERE and of the book HERE.

[7] Michael Francis Gibson, The Mill and the Cross, University of Levana Press, expanded edn 2012 at 17.

[8] See, for example, the Brunswick Monogrammist’s The Road to Calvary (mid 16C).

[9] Gibson, op cit at 49, 53.

[10] Also known as Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull” (see for example Matthew 27:33). The Latin for skull is calvaria.

[11] Bruegel uses this device of obscuring the whereabouts of the main actor in a number of paintings; see for example The Census at Bethlehem, and The Fall of Icarus (discussed further in our article on that painting).

[12] In fact, the normal Roman practice would have been to require the person to carry only the crossbar, with the upright being already erected at the place of execution. The weight of the entire cross would have been considerable, and it would be difficult for one man to carry it any distance, let alone someone like Jesus who had already been whipped shortly before. For a detailed examination of the role of the Cross in Christian thought, see Robin M Jensen, The Cross: History, Art and Controversy, Harvard University Press. 2017.

[13] Matt 27:44; Luke 23:39-43.

[14] Gibson, op cit at 84.

[15] Timothy Foote, The World of Bruegel: 1525-1569, Time- Life International (Nederland) NV, 1971 at 110.

[16] Gibson, op cit at 83.   

[17] Wied, op cit at 127.

[18] Gibson, op cit at 12, 77.

[19] Wied, op cit at 128 citing M Auner, Pieter Bruegel: Umrisse eines Lebensbildes, in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 52, XVI, 1956 at 51. Interestingly, a similar figure also appears in the far left of Pieter Aertsen’s earlier version of Christ Carrying the Cross (1552).

[20] See generally Gibson, op cit at 103ff.

[21] Gibson, op cit at 104.

© Philip McCouat 2017

======================================

Mode of citation: Philip McCouat, "Bruegel's Icarus and the perilsof flight", Journal of Art in Society, www.artinsociety.com

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy 
​The emergence of the winter landscape
All Life is Here: Bruegel's Way to Calvary

“ALL LIFE IS HERE”: BRUEGEL’S WAY TO CALVARY

By Philip McCouat

INTRODUCTION

In the early 1800s, as Napoleon’s armies swept through Europe, one of his trusted advisers was put in charge of “requisitioning” the artworks of conquered countries and transporting them to Paris. This man, Vivant Denon, became the first Director of the recently-opened Louvre Museum, which would become the repository for hundreds of these works [1].

​

By 1815, however, following Napoleon’s fall, many of those works – but by no means all – started to be returned to their original owners. One of the most extraordinary of these restored works was a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, widely regarded as the 16th century’s greatest Netherlandish artist. It is this painting, The Way to Calvary [2], now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum [3], that we shall be exploring in this article. 

Fig 1: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Way to Calvary (1564), oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

SETTING THE SCENE

The overall view

The Way to Calvary (1564) is the second largest painting that Bruegel ever did [4]. It was probably commissioned by Bruegel’s patron Niclaes Jonghelinck, who also commissioned many others of his works, such as the Tower of Babel and Hunters in the Snow​.

The painting is about the size of a dining tabletop (124 x 170 cm) and features a mass of humanity, with literally hundreds of individual characters, in a setting more reminiscent of Northern Europe than of the Middle East. Such a treatment was not radically new – it had been customary since Jan van Eyck to depict the procession to Calvary with a multitude of figures in contemporary costumes in a familiar European landscape [5]. But Bruegel’s version here is truly exceptional because of his skill in convincingly portraying such a variety of closely-observed incident, with such a vividness of characterisation [6].

Because of the painting’s size and the multitude of characters, it is easy to get lost and lose track of what is really going on. To enable you to keep your bearings, and provide a context to aid location, we have here divided the painting into 12 sectors (Fig 2). These sectors are in three rows of four, so that sector 1 is at top left of the painting and sector 12 is at bottom right. We will be referring to these often throughout this article.

Fig 2: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (numbered sectors 1 -12)

Once we get over the initial impression of chaotic activity, we can see that the narrative in the painting unfolds from left to right. The gold-bathed walled town that we can just make out in the misty distance (Fig 3; sector 1) is a rather Netherlandish version of Jerusalem where, the previous day, Jesus’s trial had taken place. Above the city, the sun shines brightly, the sky is light, and the surrounding foliage is healthy and green.

Fig 3: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of walled city)

People are leaving the city, making their way up across the fields. Numerous puddles and mud on the ground tell us it has recently been raining. The long shadows of the individuals in the crowd tell us it is early morning [7] and people holding onto their hats show that there is a brisk breeze blowing (see group at right in Fig 15). As we continue to look right, we can follow the line of the red-coated horsemen, past the precipitous windmill crag (sector 2), and directly to the fallen Christ. He is almost hidden, right in the middle of the painting (sectors 6,7), fallen exhausted under the weight of the Cross, while the two thieves just ahead of him sit petrified in the horse-drawn tumbril. In the sky directly above them, ominous dark clouds have gathered (sector 3).

All around them are vignettes of life in the crowd. Some of them are eager to catch sight of or mock the main actors, but most are content to attend to their own devices, or on the lookout for other diversions until the main action of the execution begins. Here, in an era in which the life of ordinary people was hard and often short, the ritualised suffering and death of malefactors was a form of popular entertainment, akin to a festival or carnival. It was a tradition which would continue in various parts of Europe well into the 19th century.

Those eager to get a good view of the execution straggle up towards the hill of Calvary in the far distance at right, where an expectant crowd has already gathered (sector 4). In the right foreground, meanwhile, Mary and the holy group, with their backs to all that is going on, are grieving (sectors 11, 12). There is no green foliage in this part of the painting, just the ox skull on the rock, the barren tree-trunk holding the macabre torture wheel on the right edge (sectors 4,8), and the spindly trees that we can just make out on the hill of Calvary in the distance. The transition from life (on the left of the painting) to death (on the right of the painting) could hardly be made more explicit.

The crag with the windmill

Dominating the top left of the painting is the extraordinarily precipitous rocky crag (Fig 4; sector 2). Such crags were a common feature in Flemish depictions of the carrying of the Cross [8]. Bruegel’s version here is topped with a windmill perched on a platform that, oddly, reflects the shape the torture wheels that are scattered throughout the painting. 

Fig 4: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of crag with windmill and part of city)

Compositionally, Bruegel’s windmill crag plays an important role by acting like an axle, around which all the action slowly turns, mirroring the action of the windmill’s sails themselves. But there has been much speculation that it may have some deeper meaning here. Perhaps it is political -- maybe the mill is there because of its status as an iconic emblem of Flanders which continues despite the Spanish regime. Perhaps it is religious – Michael Gibson, for example, suggests that the crag resembles a cathedral tower, crowned with a Cross formed by the crossed sails of the windmill. On his interpretation, the mill is founded on a rock, like the institution of the Church itself.

Or perhaps the mill is intended to be interpreted in a cosmological sense, standing for the “rotation of the world with its attendant sequence of cataclysms and renewals”. It has even been argued that the mill could be a symbol of the all-seeing eye of God watching the world from on high [9]. 

 

The place of execution

At the hill of Calvary [10], the place of execution, we see a large open space dotted with corpse-strewn torture wheels (Fig 5; sector 4). 

Fig 5: Bruegel, Way to Calvary (detail of torture wheels on hillside)

People have already gathered in a large circle (Fig 6; sector 4). There are children, dogs and horses scattered throughout the crowd. The crosses for the two thieves are already in place, their uprights echoing the uprights of the torture wheels and the trunks of the trees in the background. A worker is busy digging a hole for the cross that Jesus will bring with him. A red-coated trooper keeps the crowd back. 

Fig 6: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of place of execution)

As with Christ himself, this place is inconspicuous, though in this case it is because of the distance from the viewer. But Bruegel ensures that we cannot miss it -- our eyes are led by the people straggling up the hill and by the torture wheel at the far right of the painting, mirroring the circle of spectators where a scavenging crow is perching, and a scrap from the remains of a corpse still flutters in the breeze.  

Fig 7: Bruegel The Way to Calvary (detail of crow on wheel)

JESUS, THE THIEVES AND THE SOLDIERS​

Jesus and the thieves

Although Jesus appears in the very centre of the painting, he can be remarkably difficult to find (Fig 6; sectors 6,7)[11]. Bruegel gives him few of the usual identifying signs – just the mocking crown of thorns, but no halo, no spiritual eminence, no hint that he is intended to be the son of God. Instead, he is clad in a simple blue cloak and has fallen dazed and exhausted to the ground, unable to carry the heavy cross [12]. Around him, there appears to be some confusion, with some of the executioners pulling the cross, some pushing, with one man even resting his foot on the upright. Remarkably, few are actually looking at Christ. This coupled with his small size, is apparently intended to highlight the general indifference to his suffering.

Fig 8: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of Christ and the Cross)

According to Biblical accounts, Jesus was crucified with two thieves [13]. They are not required to carry their crosses here, but sit in a cart, apparently frightened out of their wits, with two priests attending, one Dominican, the other Franciscan (Fig 9; sector 7). The ashen-faced thief in front looks to the sky with unseeing eyes, the other sits dejected and dazed. He is holding a crucifix in his tied hands, an extraordinary anachronism given that Jesus had not even been crucified yet [14], but a reminder that the Cross was not just a symbol of painful death and suffering, but also a powerful vehicle of consolation.

Fig 9: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of thieves in cart)

The cart carrying the thieves, mud dripping from its wheels [15], is crossing a stretch of water – possibly echoing the river Styx [16] – just before heading uphill towards its occupants’ fate. The way ahead of them is studded with the mounted torture wheels we have already seen in Fig 5, where the corpses of previous victims have been left to rot, or gibbets with hanging corpses.

The red-coated Spanish

Just as Bruegel presents a very Flemish version of Jerusalem, he has also presented a Spanish version of the Roman soldiers who, historically, would have been in charge of the execution.

In Bruegel’s time, the Netherlands were under the control of Spain, much to the fear and hatred of the mostly Protestant inhabitants. Spanish rule was harsh, and there was ruthless religious persecution. Bruegel has tellingly depicted the troopers supervising the day’s proceedings as the hated roode rocx (red-coats), the Walloon mercenary horsemen who were in the service of the Spanish king. (They also appear in Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents [17]).

​

These red coats also play a compositional role. They stretch from the left all the way to the hill of Calvary, mirroring the left-to-right structure of the painting. To hammer home the Spanish reference, the horseman riding ahead of the cart with the thieves carries a pale pink flag (Fig 9; sector 7). We can just make out the faint outline of the Habsburg double eagle embroidered in gold thread. 

THE SPECTATORS

A multitude of characters and incident

In the painting, we are looking at hundreds of individuals. Aside from the main actors, there are peasants, tradesmen, agricultural and town workers, clerics, soldiers, artisans, beggars and gypsies – all in contemporary Flemish dress -- not to mention forty horses, numerous birds and at least eight dogs.

Such is the detail that some scenes can only be identified under magnifying glass. Everywhere one looks there is lively incident – from the far left of the painting, where a white-bonneted woman pushes a sled carrying a wicker basket with two calves, evidently intended for market (sector 5), to the slopes of the hill of Calvary, where a white horse being ridden by a merchant bucks in alarm as a peasant’s hat blows off in its path (sector 7).

​

A reluctant Simon

Within this bewildering array of activity, let us focus in more detail on just a few vivid vignettes. In the left foreground, for example, a fight has broken out (Fig 10: sectors 9,10) [18]. A soldier with red and white striped tights jabs his pike at a woman. She is trying to hold onto her husband (in grey and black), who is being dragged away by two other soldiers. She has dropped her jug of milk, just as her husband has dropped the bound sheep. Members of the crowd look on, with expressions ranging from interest to fear. Three workmen with full sacks, evidently intended for market, are running off, and a shepherd holding a crook is also making himself scarce. 

Fig 10: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of struggle with Simon of Cyrene)

A well-dressed noble, with a pink shirt, watches proceedings with a proprietorial air, while other notables wait for the matter to be calmed down. They have an interest in this -- the husband is probably the biblical Simon of Cyrene, who is being press-ganged into helping Christ carry the too-heavy cross. The wife’s resistance to his helping Christ can be seen as hypocritical, given that she has a rosary at her hip.

The wandering pedlar

Even closer in the foreground, seated with his back to us, is a pedlar with bag of wares on his back, holding a stave and wearing a cap with a jaunty feather (Fig 11: sector 10). He seems slightly abstracted, both physically and emotionally, from the rest of the spectators. It has been suggested that this man is one of the wandering pedlars, often selling bread, who disseminated forbidden Anabaptist writings that were kept in the bottom of their bags [19]. 

Fig 11: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of wandering pedlar)

It has also been suggested that the group at the foot of the torture wheel at far right (Fig 12; sector 12) includes a grim-faced Anabaptist preacher (in black), together with a self-portrait of a somewhat neutral-looking Bruegel (pale coat and brown cap). 

Fig 12: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of men at foot of torture wheel)

The holy group and the women

Tucked away in the right foreground of the painting is a discrete group which is quite different from, and larger than, the other far more rustic spectators (Fig 13; sectors 11, 12). This group are expensively dressed in idealised apparel from an earlier era, delicately drawn and drowned in sorrow. They have turned away from the spectacle. St John is standing, leaning forward to support an ashen-faced Mary, while two other holy women – including a magnificently-clad Mary Magdalene at left -- kneel in prayer or grief [20]. 

Fig 13: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of holy group)

It is almost as if this is a quite different painting, in a quite different style, underlying Bruegel’s desire to differentiate the group from the hoi polloi. Compositionally, however, he links the holy group to other aspects of the scene. The roughly triangular shape of the grouped figures is balanced by the similar shape of the rocky outcrop in the left foreground; and the shape formed by St John and Mary echoes the shape of the high rocky outcrop in the distance.

Emotionally, too, they are linked to four other women who form a line leading towards the torture wheel at the right -- a woman watching the spectacle with her arms outstretched in commiseration, another with burying her face in her apron (both of these appear in Fig 14), a third with her hands clasped watching the procession, and an older woman, her mouth open, with a look of shocked outrage [21]. 

Fig 14: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (further detail of grieving women)

Apart from these women and Simon’s wife, there are only a few women in the painting, and seemingly none on the actual hill of Calvary. Many of them appear to have been simply caught up in the procession while they were on their way to market. Those paying attention generally look compassionate, in contrast to most of the men -- for example the two women, quite close to Jesus, with their backs to us, with hands held up (sector 7).

Children at play

The children scattered throughout the painting are largely oblivious to the momentous events that are unfolding. Instead, like children everywhere, they are mainly absorbed in their own worlds of exploration, play and just general messing round.

​

Just to the left of the windmill crag, a group of boys are skylarking in the mud (sectors 5, 6). One tries to pole vault over the muddy puddles, another holds his baby sister as he manoeuvres to dry land, and two others check how much mud they’ve collected on their stockings (at left of Fig 15). 

Fig 15: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (boys in puddle, people holding hats)

Over on the other side of the painting, just behind the holy group, a barefoot girl lifts the folds of her blue shift as she cautiously paddles toward her more impetuous brother (Fig 16; sector 11). Further over to the right, a child rides on its father’s shoulders (sector 12).

Fig 16: Bruegel, The Way to Calvary (detail of girl in puddle)

Behind the fallen Christ, we see two children, accompanied by their load-bearing mother and a dog, who look back at the action (Fig 17; sector 6). But the “action” is not what you might expect. For them, as for many others in the crowd, the fracas that surrounds Simon of Cyrene (sectors 9,10) occupies their interest far more than does the fate of stricken Christ. 

Fig 17: Bruegel, Way to Calvary (detail of children and others looking back)

CONCLUSION

Unlike so many painters of traditional religious subjects, Bruegel has firmly rooted his biblical story in ordinary, contemporaneous life. His conception of the real setting in the Middle East would in any event have been sketchy at best, so he sets it in a recognisable Flanders landscape and peoples it with a teeming diversity of ordinary local people, depicting them with a discerning and sympathetic appreciation of normal human foibles and weaknesses, and eschewing many of the conventional motifs of holiness and divinity. It is the very ordinariness and humanity of his depiction, and the indifference or casual cruelty with which Christ is being treated, that brings home to the viewer the awfulness and significance of the tragedy that is slowly unfolding before them.

© Philip McCouat 2017

This article may be cited as Philip McCouat, “All life is here”: Bruegel’s Way to Calvary, Journal of Art in Society www.artinsociety.com

Other articles on Bruegel that you may enjoy are:

• Bruegel’s Icarus and the Perils of Flight
• The emergence of the winter landscape

Back to HOME

END NOTES

[1] From 1809-15 it was renamed the Musée Napoleon.

[2] Also known as The Procession to Calvary (a painting under that title was also done by his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger) and Christ Carrying the Cross.

[3] Of the forty or so of Bruegel’s works that still exist today, twelve of them are in just one room, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. In 2019, a major retrospective exhibition featuring Pieter Bruegel the Elder is being held at that Museum to mark the 450th anniversary of the artist’s death https://www.khm.at/en/visit/exhibitions/bruegel/.

[4] The biggest is the recently-attributed Wine of St Martin’s Day, c 1565.

[5] Alexander Wied, Bruegel (transl Anthony Lloyd), Bay Books, Sydney 1980 at 126.

[6] The painting has inspired an extraordinary 2011 feature film, The Mill & the Cross. The film is based on the book of the same name by the art historian/critic Michael Francis Gibson, whose work I have drawn on heavily in this article. You can find my reviews of the film HERE and of the book HERE.

[7] Michael Francis Gibson, The Mill and the Cross, University of Levana Press, expanded edn 2012 at 17.

[8] See, for example, the Brunswick Monogrammist’s The Road to Calvary (mid 16C).

[9] Gibson, op cit at 49, 53.

[10] Also known as Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull” (see for example Matthew 27:33). The Latin for skull is calvaria.

[11] Bruegel uses this device of obscuring the whereabouts of the main actor in a number of paintings; see for example The Census at Bethlehem, and The Fall of Icarus (discussed further in our article on that painting).

[12] In fact, the normal Roman practice would have been to require the person to carry only the crossbar, with the upright being already erected at the place of execution. The weight of the entire cross would have been considerable, and it would be difficult for one man to carry it any distance, let alone someone like Jesus who had already been whipped shortly before. For a detailed examination of the role of the Cross in Christian thought, see Robin M Jensen, The Cross: History, Art and Controversy, Harvard University Press. 2017.

[13] Matt 27:44; Luke 23:39-43.

[14] Gibson, op cit at 84.

[15] Timothy Foote, The World of Bruegel: 1525-1569, Time- Life International (Nederland) NV, 1971 at 110.

[16] Gibson, op cit at 83.   

[17] Wied, op cit at 127.

[18] Gibson, op cit at 12, 77.

[19] Wied, op cit at 128 citing M Auner, Pieter Bruegel: Umrisse eines Lebensbildes, in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 52, XVI, 1956 at 51. Interestingly, a similar figure also appears in the far left of Pieter Aertsen’s earlier version of Christ Carrying the Cross (1552).

[20] See generally Gibson, op cit at 103ff.

[21] Gibson, op cit at 104.

© Philip McCouat 2017

The Procession to Calvary (Bruegel)

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The Procession to Calvary
Artist	Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Year	1564[1]
Type	Oil on panel
Dimensions	124 cm × 170 cm (49 in × 67 in)
Location	Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Procession to Calvary is an oil-on-panel by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder of Christ carrying the Cross set in a large landscape, painted in 1564. It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Contents

• 1History and description
  • 1.1Details
• 2Film treatment
• 3Notes
• 4Gallery of Details
• 5External links

History and description[edit]

This is the second-largest known painting by Bruegel.^[2] It is one of sixteen paintings by him which are listed in the inventory of the wealthy Antwerp collector, Niclaes Jonghelinck, drawn up in 1566. It was Jonghelinck who commissioned the Months^[3] from Bruegel and he may also have commissioned this work. Jonghelinck's Bruegels passed into the possession of the city of Antwerp in the year in which the inventory was made. In 1604 it was recorded in the Prague collections of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, then transferred to Vienna, and in 1809 (until 1815) in Paris, requisitioned by Napoleon Bonaparte as part of his war booty.

For Bruegel the composition is unusually traditional. Perhaps because he was treating such a solemn religious event, he adopted a well-known scheme, used previously by the Brunswick Monogrammist^[4] and Bruegel's Antwerp contemporary, Pieter Aertsen. Christ's insignificance among the crowds is a familiar device of mannerist painting (it recurs in the Preaching of John the Baptist, as well as The Conversion of Paul), as is the artificial placing of Mary and her companions in a rocky foreground, which is deliberately distanced from the dramatic events taking place behind them.^[5]

Details[edit]

Detail 1 from top left

Bruegel's treatment of landscape evolves in the course of his career from the bird's-eye views and extensive landscapes of the Large landscape series to the remarkable naturalism of the Months. Impossibly sheer outcrops of rock like this one at left characterize the landscape tradition of the Antwerp school founded by Joachim Patinir. Patinir's followers – in particular Herri met de Bles, Matthys Cock (the brother of Bruegel's print publisher, Hieronymous Cock) and Cornelis Matsys – had turned his style into a popular but stale formula.^[6] The sequence of Bruegel's landscape drawings and of the landscape in his paintings shows the gradual abandonment of this formula. In this case, however, his desire to convey the rocky, unfamiliar terrain of the Holy Land causes him to fall back on the ready-made landscape features of the Antwerp school.^[7]

Detail 2 from centre right

In a detail such as this at right, Bruegel's painting possesses a vividness which would seem to come from his observation of contemporary life.^[8] Public executions were a familiar feature of 16th century life, especially in troubled Flanders. Here Bruegel shows the two thieves who were to hang on either side of Christ being trundled to the place of execution. Anachronistically, both clutch crucifixes and are making their final confessions to the cowled priests beside them. The thieves, their confessors and the ghoulish spectators who surround the cart are all in contemporary dress. In Bruegel's day public executions were well attended occasions which had the air of festivals or carnivals. Here Bruegel shows the absolute indifference of the gawping crowds to the fear and misery of the condemned men. (Elsewhere in the picture he shows the pickpockets and the pedlars who preyed upon the crowds at such events.) It is noteworthy that Bruegel makes no distinction between the two thieves, one of whom Christ was to bless.

Detail 3 from right margin

On the mount of Golgotha (literally, 'place of skulls') the two crosses which are to bear the bodies of the thieves have been erected and a hole is being dug for the cross which is to bear Christ's body, as may be seen in the detail at left. Onlookers on foot and on horseback flock towards this gruesome spot through a landscape dotted with gallows on which corpses still hang and wheels to which fragments of cloth and remnants of broken bodies not eaten by the ravens still cling.

Detail 4 from bottom right

With the exception of Christ himself, the figures in the procession wear contemporary dress, and there can be no doubts that Bruegel meant his representation of the scene to have a particular reference to his own day. The sacred figures – the fainting Virgin assisted by Saint John and the other two Marys (only one of whom is shown here in the detail) – are separated from the main events by being placed on a small, rocky plateau. They act out their own, apparently independent, drama, largely unnoticed by the figures behind them. Larger than the background figures and isolated from them, are the Virgin and her companions.^[9]

Film treatment[edit]

Michael Francis Gibson wrote an art-historical book entitled The Mill and the Cross, which served as the basis for the 2011 film The Mill and the Cross, directed by Lech Majewski. The film sets into their historical context in sixteenth-century Flanders the characters in the painting and the circumstances of the painting's creation. The films stars Rutger Hauer as Bruegel, Michael York as his patron Niclaes Jonghelinck and Charlotte Rampling as the Virgin Mary.

Notes[edit]

1. ^ dated and signed "BRVEGEL MD.LXIIII"
2. ^ Some sources describe the painting as the largest, but its status changed following the attribution of the (much larger) Wine of Saint Martin's Day in the twenty-first century.
3. ^ A cycle of 6 paintings, of which 5 remain: see individual Wiki entries, The Hunters in the Snow, The Gloomy Day, The Hay Harvest, The Harvesters, The Return of the Herd.
4. ^ This Monogrammist has been identified as Jan van Amstel, see Elise L. Smith, "Brunswick Monogrammist" Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, 12/4/07 [1]; and Collection: Dr. Herbert & Monika Schaefer: Selected Works, New Haven: Mountain View Press (1998), 32.
5. ^ Cf. Pietro Allegretti, Brueghel, Milan:Skira (2003) passim.(in Italian)
6. ^ Cf. Pietro Allegretti, ibid., Milan:Skira (2003).(in Italian)
7. ^ Cf. (in Dutch) Mathijs & Jeroon Kock, painters of Antwerp in Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck, 1604, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature; and Matthys Cock on Artnet
8. ^ Cf. Pieter Bruegel the Elder Archived 2012-04-06 at the Wayback Machine, Oxford Art Online.
9. ^ Pierra Francastel, Bruegel, Paris:Hazen (1995)

Gallery of Details[edit]

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  The three Marys and St John

 
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  Skull and people

 
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  Christ falls in carrying the cross

 
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  Cart with the two thieves

 
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  Golgotha

 
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  Simon of Cyrene

 
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  Pole and ravens

 
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  Two figures at the base of the pole

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  The landscape

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