PIETER BRUEGEL was a lowbrow in art. In an age when the Italian Renaissance was sweeping all before it, Bruegel kept his Dutch feet firmly on lowland ground, stuck close to everyman's taste. His zestful love of practical jokes, wise saws, old proverbs and the daily life in field and village earned him the nickname of "Peasant" Bruegel. But history has proved that Bruegel was dealing with an eternal response of man that lies deeper than the shift and change of artistic fashion. Collected by princes and merchants alike, he has remained one of the most popular artists in history. With 15 of the 40 surviving paintings attributed to him collected in one room, Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum (see color pages) is today his finest monument.
Bruegel was early a Habsburg favorite. Emperor Rudolph II delighted in his works. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the greatest of the Habsburg collectors, added still more paintings during his rule as governor of The Netherlands. The Habsburg collection, hidden in salt mines during World War II and then sent traveling for seven years, is now back in place, a favorite tourist stop that draws from 3,000 to 4,000 visitors a day during the peak summer tourist season.
Through the Alps. For all of Bruegel's lusty tastes and robust nature, the evidence is that he was not peasant-born, but a townsman, perhaps from Brogel near the home town of his great predecessor Hieronymus Bosch. Made a free master of St. Luke's painters' guild in Antwerp in 1551, he set out on a painting journey to France and Italy. But, unlike most of his contemporaries, Bruegel did not return home with his head crammed with Venetian painting and classical models. What had impressed him most was the magnificent sweep of Naples' harbor and the awesome Alpine passes.
Endowed as he was with a keen eye for nature and a relish for country ways, Bruegel had the good fortune to come of age at a time when men were for the first time since the Middle Ages beginning to think of art apart from religious painting. The widespread taste for everyday scenes for home decoration was handled in tapestries for the rich; for the less well-to-do, it fell to the "stayned clothe" works on perishable fine linen turned out by the watercolorists. It was to this tradition, with its set format, sharply delineated forms and flat surfaces, that Bruegel himself turned, developing it in his oils to the level of great art.
Owl in the Woods. To his contemporaries, Bruegel's art spoke more directly than to the present day. The point of such parables as that of the fool who walks past the bird's nest (see color) needed no explaining in his time. To satisfy an age when connoisseurs would spend hours before a painting "trying to find the owl in the woods." Bruegel packed his canvases with scenes of birds on the wing, half-hidden bird snares, distant village-green ballplayers, to give his viewers all the delights and surprises of a country stroll. To get his rustic costumes, characters and gestures just right, Bruegel liked to dress in peasant's garb, attended the village festivals, probably danced and drank at the very weddings and country dances he later put down on canvas.