Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Difference between revisions

{{short description|Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter}}

| birth_place = probably [[Breda]] or [[Breugel, Netherlands|Breugel]] <small>(modern-daynow the [[Netherlands]])</small>

'''Pieter Bruegel''' (also '''Brueghel''' or '''Breughel''') '''the Elder''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|r|ɔɪ|ɡ|əl}} {{respell|BROY|gəl}},<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Bruegel|title=Bruegel|encyclopedia=Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/brueghel|title=Brueghel|work=[[Collins English Dictionary]]|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|access-date=10 August 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite dictionary |url=http://www.lexico.com/definition/Bruegel |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200322181453/https://www.lexico.com/definition/bruegel |url-status=dead |archive-date=2020-03-22 |title=Bruegel |dictionary=[[Lexico]] UK English Dictionary |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]}}</ref> {{IPAc-en|alsoususalso|ˈ|b|r|uː|ɡ|əl}} {{respell|BROO|gəl}};<ref>{{Cite American Heritage Dictionary|Brueghel|access-date=10 August 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite Merriam-Webster|Brueghel|access-date=10 August 2019}}</ref> {{IPA-|nl|ˈpitər ˈbrøːɣəl|lang|nl-Breugel.ogg}}; {{c.|1525–1530}} – 9 September 1569) was among the most significant artists of [[Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting]],<!-- Please see talk page discussion (Talk:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder#.22Netherlandish.22) before altering this description.--> a painter and [[printmaking|printmaker]], known for his [[landscape art|landscapes]] and [[peasant]] scenes (so-called [[Genre art|genre painting]]); he was a pioneer in presenting both types of subject as large paintings.

He was a formative influence on [[Dutch Golden Age painting]] and later painting in general in his innovative choices of subject matter, as one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting. He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in [[Antwerp]], where he worked mainly as a prolific designer of [[old master print|prints]] for the leading publisher of the day. Only towardsAt the end of the decade did1550s, he switch to makemade painting his main medium, and all his famous paintings come from the following period of little more than a decade before his early death in 1569, when he was probably in his early forties, and at the height of his powers.

Bruegel's birth date is not documented, but inferred from the fact that Bruegel entered the Antwerp painters' guild in 1551. This usually happened between the ages of twenty to twenty-five, giving a range for his birth between 1525 and 1530.<ref>Orenstein, 5; Grove</ref> His master, according to [[Karel Vanvan Mander]], was the Antwerp painter [[Pieter Coecke van Aelst]].<ref>Orenstein, 5</ref>

The two main early sources for Bruegel's biography are [[Lodovico Guicciardini]]'s account of the Low Countries (1567) and Karel van Mander's 1604 ''[[Schilder-boeck]]''.<ref>Grove; [http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/mand001schi01_01/mand001schi01_01_0221.php van Mander's Bruegel biography in Dutch]; Wied, 15–18 gives a full English translation. Guicciardini was an Italian who had lived in Antwerp since at least 1542, and probably knew Bruegel, which Van Mander, born in 1648 on the [[Meulebeke|other side of Flanders]], is most unlikely to have done.</ref> Guicciardini recorded that Bruegel was born in [[Breda]], but Vanvan Mander specified that Bruegel was born in a village (''dorp'') near Breda called "Brueghel",<ref>"den welcken is geboren niet wijt van Breda, op een Dorp geheeten Brueghel, welcks naem hy met hem ghedraghen heeft, en zijn naecomelinghen ghelaten."</ref> which does not fit any known place.<ref>Grove: "none of the three Flemish villages of that name is close to Breda".; Wied, 18, says two of the villages (Groot Bruegel and Cleyn Bruegel) are close to [[Bree, Belgium]], which is "Breda" in Latin, perhaps causing Van Mander confusion. [[Son en Breugel]] still has supporters but is 34 miles from Breda, though just outside [[Eindhoven]] – see [https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/13292 RKD].</ref> Nothing at all is known of his family background. Van Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant background, in keeping with the over-emphasis on Bruegel's peasant genre scenes given by van Mander and many early art historians and critics.<ref name="auto1">Orenstein, 57–58; Grove</ref>

In contrast, scholars of the last six decades have emphasizedemphasised the intellectual content of his work, and conclude: "There is, in fact, every reason to think that Pieter Bruegel was a townsman and a highly educated one, on friendly terms with the humanists of his time",<ref name="auto4">Grove</ref> ignoring Vanvan Mander's ''dorp'' and just placing his childhood in Breda itself.<ref name="auto1"/> Breda was already a significant centre as the base of the [[House of Orange-Nassau]], with a population of some 8,000,<ref>Wied, 19–20</ref> although 90% of theits 1300 houses were destroyed in a fire in 1534. However, thisThis reversal can be taken to excess; although Bruegel moved in highly educated [[Renaissance humanism|humanist]] circles, it seems "he had not mastered Latin", and had others add the Latin captions in some of his drawings.<ref>Orenstein, 64</ref>

Between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550.<ref>This is according to Van Mander; although there is no documentation and little evident stylistic influence from his future father-in-law, modern scholars generally accept this.</ref> However, beforeBefore this, Bruegel was already working in [[Mechelen]], where he is documented between September 1550 and October 1551 assisting [[Peeter Baltens]] on an altarpiece (now lost), painting the wings in ''[[grisaille]]''.<ref name="auto4"/> Bruegel possibly got this work via the connections of [[Mayken Verhulst]], the wife of Pieter Coecke. Mayken's father and eight siblings were all artists or married an artistartists, and lived in Mechelen.<ref>Orenstein, 5, 7</ref>

In 1551 Bruegel became a free master in the [[Guild of Saint Luke]] of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, probably by way of France. He visited [[Rome]] and, rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 he had reached [[Reggio Calabria]] at the southern tip of the mainland, where a drawing records the city in flames after a Turkish raid.<ref>Grove; Orenstein, 204 for the drawing</ref> He probably continued to [[Sicily]], but by 1553 was back in Rome. There he met the miniaturist [[Giulio Clovio]], whose will of 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel; in one case a joint work. These works, apparently landscapes, have not survived, but marginal miniatures in manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel.<ref>Orenstein, 5–6; Grove</ref>

He left Italy by 1554, and had reached Antwerp by 1555, when the set of prints to his designs known as the ''Large Landscapes'' were published by [[Hieronymus Cock]], the most important print publisher of northern Europe. Bruegel's return route is uncertain, but much of the debate over it was made irrelevant in the 1980s when it was realizedrealised that the celebrated series of large drawings of mountain landscapes thought to have been made on the trip were not by Bruegel at all.<ref>Orenstein, 266–267, and following catalogue pages; Grove</ref> However, allAll the drawings from the trip that are considered authentic are of landscapes; unlike most other 16th-century artists visiting Rome he seems to have ignored both classical ruins and contemporary buildings.<ref>Snyder, 502; Orenstein, 96–97 for one agreed exception; see [http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=712020&partId=1 this British Museum page] for another drawing of Roman ruins, perhaps the Colosseum, recently attributed to Bruegel</ref>

From 1555 until 1563, Bruegel lived in Antwerp, then the publishing centre of northern Europe, mainly working as a designer of over forty prints for Cock, though his dated paintings begin in 1557.<ref>Orenstein, 7</ref> With one exception, Bruegel did not work the plates himself, but produced a drawing which Cock's specialists worked from. From 1559, he dropped the 'h' from his name and signed his paintings as ''Bruegel''; his relatives continued to use "Brueghel" or "Breughel". He moved in the lively [[Renaissance humanism|humanist]] circles of the city, and his change of name (or at least its spelling) in 1559 can be seen as an attempt to LatinizeLatinise it; at the same time he changed the script he signed in from the Gothic [[blackletter]] to Roman capitals.<ref name="auto4"/>

In 1563, he married Pieter Coecke van Aelst's daughter [[Mayken Coecke]] in [[Brussels]], where he lived for the remainder of his short life. While Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce as well asand the art market,;<ref>Wied, 9–10</ref> Brussels was the centre of government. Van Mander tells a story that his mother-in-law pushed for the move to distance him from his established servant girl mistress.<ref>Van Mander, quoted in Wied, 16; Orenstein, 7; Hagens, 15</ref> By now painting had become his main activity, and his most famous works come from these years. His paintings were much sought after, with patrons including wealthy Flemish collectors and [[Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle|Cardinal Granvelle]], in effect the [[Habsburg]] chief minister, who was based in Mechelen. Bruegel had two sons, both well known as painters, and a daughter about whom nothing is known. These were [[Pieter Brueghel the Younger]] (1564–1638) and [[Jan Brueghel the Elder]] (1568–1625); he died too early to train either of them. He died in Brussels on 9 September 1569 and was buried in the [[Kapellekerk]].<ref>Grove; Orenstein, 8–9</ref>

Van Mander records that before he died he told his wife to burn some drawings, perhaps designs for prints, carrying inscriptions "which were too sharp or sarcastic ... either out of remorse or for fear that she might come to harm or in some way be held responsible for them", which has led to much speculation that they were politically or doctrinally provocative, in a climate of sharp tension in both these areas.<ref name="auto4"/> <!-- He received the nickname "Peasant Bruegel" or "Bruegel the Peasant" for his alleged practice of dressing up like a peasant in order to socialize at weddings and other celebrations, thereby gaining inspiration and authentic details for his genre paintings. - Really??? Boere Breugel -->

Bruegel was born at a time of extensive change in Western Europe. Humanist ideals from the previous century influenced artists and scholars. Italy was at the end of its High Renaissance of arts and culture, when artists such as [[Michelangelo]] and [[Leonardo da Vinci]] painted their masterpieces. In 1517, about eight years before Bruegel's birth, [[Martin Luther]] created his ''[[Ninety-five Theses]]'' and began the [[Protestant Reformation]] in neighboringneighbouring Germany. Reformation was accompanied by [[Iconoclasm#Protestant Reformation|iconoclasm]] and widespread [[Beeldenstorm|destruction of art]], including in the [[Low Countries]]. The Catholic Church viewed Protestantism and its destructive iconoclasm of art as a threat to the Church. The [[Council of Trent]], which concluded in 1563, [[The Reformation and art#Council of Trent|determined]] that religious art should be more focused on religious subject-matter and less on material things and decorative qualities.

Pieter Bruegel specializedspecialised in [[genre painting]]s populated by peasants, often with a landscape element, though he also painted religious works. Making the life and manners of peasants the main focus of a work was rare in painting in Bruegel's time, and he was a pioneer of the genre painting. Many of his peasant paintings fall into two groups in terms of scale and composition, both of which were original and influential on later painting. His earlier style shows dozens of small figures, seen from a high viewpoint, and spread fairly evenly across the central picture space. The setting is typically an urban space surrounded by buildings, within which the figures have a "fundamentally disconnected manner of portrayal", with individuals or small groups engaged in their own distinct activity, while ignoring all the others.<ref name="auto5">Franits, 203</ref>

His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture, though still characteristic of Belgian life and culture today, and a prime source of [[iconography|iconographic]] evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th-century life. For example, his famous painting ''[[Netherlandish Proverbs]]'', originally ''[[The Blue Cloak]]'', illustrates dozens of then-contemporary [[aphorism]]s, many of which still are in use in current Flemish, French, English and Dutch.<ref name="auto3">{{cite book|last=Stokstad, Cothren|first=Marilyn, Michael|title=Art History- Fourteenth to Seventeenth Century Art|year=2010}}</ref> The Flemish environment provided a large artistic audience for proverb-filled paintings because proverbs were well known and recognizablerecognisable as well as entertaining. ''[[Children's Games (Bruegel)|Children's Games]]'' shows the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people. His winter landscapes of 1565, like ''[[The Hunters in the Snow]]'', are taken as corroborative evidence of the severity of winters during the [[Little Ice Age]]. Bruegel often painted community events, as in ''[[The Peasant Wedding]]'' and ''[[The Fight Between Carnival and Lent]]''. In paintings like ''The Peasant Wedding'', Bruegel painted individual, identifiable people, while the people in ''The Fight Between Carnival and Lent'' are unidentifiable, muffin-faced [[allegory|allegories]] of greed or gluttony.

OverIn the 1560s, Bruegel moved to a style showing only a few large figures, typically in a landscape background without a distant view. His paintings dominated by their landscapes take a middle course as regards both the number and size of figures.

His famous set of landscapes with genre figures depicting the seasons are the culmination of his landscape style; the five surviving paintings use the basic elements of the world landscape (only one lacks craggy mountains) but transform them into his own style. They are larger than most previous works, with a [[genre scene]] with several figures in the foreground, and the panoramic view seen past or through trees.<ref>Silver, 39–52; Snyder, 502–510; Harbison, 140–142; Schama, 431–433</ref> Bruegel was also aware of the [[Danube School]]'s landscape style through [[old master print|prints]]s.<ref>Wood, Chapter 5, especially 275–278</ref> The surviving five paintings are ''[[The Gloomy Day]]'' (February-March), ''[[The Hunters in the Snow]]'' (December-January), and ''[[The Return of the Herd]]'' (October-November) which are on display in the [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]] in [[Vienna]]; ''[[The Hay Harvest]]'' (June-July) is on display in the [[Lobkowicz Palace]] in [[Prague]]; and ''[[The Harvesters (painting)|The Harvesters]]'' which is on display at the Metropolitan in New York,. with theThe painting associated with the April-May seasonal transition is assumed lost to historybe lost.

The series on the months of the year includes several of Bruegel's best-known works. In 1565, a wealthy patron in Antwerp, [[Niclaes Jonghelinck]], commissioned him to paint a series of paintings of each month of the year. There has been disagreementdispute among art historians as to whether the series originally included six or twelve works.<ref>Gibson, Walter S. (1977) :) . Bruegel. The World of Art Library. Thames and Hudson pp 147–148.</ref> Today[[Joseph Koerner]] in his 2018 book ''Bosch and Bruegel'' states that Archduke Ernst, who took possession of the paintings after Niclaes defaulted on taxes, had as early as 1569 inventoried only six paintings in this series during the year of Bruegel's death.<ref>Joseph Koerner. 2018. ''Bosch and Bruegel''. Princeton Univ. Press. Page 345.</ref> The collection is next inventoried to be in the possession of Archduke Leopold who in 1659 indicated that five of thesethem paintingswere surviveextant.<ref>Joseph Koerner. 2018. ''Bosch and someBruegel''. Princeton Univ. Press. Page 345.</ref> Only five of thethese monthspaintings are pairedknown to formhave asurvived into the general21st seasoncentury. Traditional Flemish luxury [[book of hours|books of hours]] (e.g., the {{lang|fr|[[Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry]]|italic=no}};<ref name="auto3"/> 1416) had calendar pages that included the [[Labours of the Months]], depictions set in landscapes of the agricultural tasks, weather, and social life typical for that month.

On his return from Italy to Antwerp, Bruegel earned his living producing drawings to be turned into prints for the leading print publisher of the city, and indeed northern Europe, [[Hieronymus Cock]]. At his "House of the Four Winds" Cock ran a well-oiled production and distribution operation efficiently turning out prints of many sorts that was more concerned with sales than the finest artistic achievement. Most of Bruegel's prints come from this period, but he continued to produce drawn designs for prints until the end of his life, leaving only two completed out of a series of the ''Four Seasons''.<ref>Orenstein, 236–238, and following pages</ref> The prints were popular and it is reasonable to assume that all those published have survived. In many cases we also have Bruegel's drawings. Although the subject matter of his graphic work was often continued in his paintings, there are considerable differences in emphases between the two ''oeuvres''. To his contemporaries and for long after, until public museums and good reproductions of the paintings made these better known, Bruegel was much better known through his prints than his paintings, which largely explains the critical assessment of him as merely the creator of comic peasant scenes.<ref>Wied, 36</ref>

Although Bruegel presumably made them, no drawings that are clearly preparatory studies for paintings survive. Most surviving drawings are finished designs for prints, or landscape drawings that are fairly finished. After a considerable purge of attributions in recent decades, led by [[Hans Mielke]],<ref name="auto4"/> sixty-one sheets of drawings are now generally agreed to be by Bruegel.<ref>Orenstein, vii gives the total; fifty-four were in the exhibition and are catalogued, and most others illustrated. These included all those from the largest collections, Berlin (10), London (8) and Vienna (6). Sellink in 2012 lists 70.</ref> A new "Master of the Mountain Landscapes" has emerged from the carnage. Mielke's key observation was that the lily watermark on the paper of several sheets was only found from around 1580 onwards, which led to the rapid acceptance of his proposal.<ref>Orenstein, 266–267, and following catalogue pages for individual works.</ref> Another group of about twenty-five pen drawings of landscapes, many signed and dated as by Bruegel, are now given to [[Jacob Savery]], probably from the decade of so before Savery'shis death in 1603. A giveaway was that two drawings including the walls of [[Amsterdam]] were dated 1563 but included elements only built in the 1590s. This group appears to have been made as deliberate forgeries.<ref>Orenstein, 276–277, and following catalogue pages for individual works.</ref>

Around 1563, Bruegel moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where he married Mayken Coecke, the daughter of the painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst and [[Mayken Verhulst]]. As registered in the archives of the [[Cathedral of Our Lady (Antwerp)|Cathedral of Antwerp]], their [[Ondertrouw|deposition for marriage]] was registered 25 July 1563. The marriage itself was concluded in the [[Chapel Church]], Brussels in 1563.<ref>Jean Bastiaensen, "De verloving van Pieter Bruegel de Oude. Nieuw licht op de Antwerpse verankering", Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen, 51 (2013), no. 1: 26–27.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pieter-Bruegel-the-Elder|title=Pieter Bruegel, the Elder &#124; Flemish artist|website=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=20 August 2020}}</ref>

Bruegel's art was long more highly valued by collectors than critics. His friend [[Abraham Ortelius]] described him in a friendship album in 1574 as "the most perfect painter of his century", but both [[Vasari]] and Van Mander see him as essentially a comic successor to Hieronymus Bosch.<ref>Snyder, 484; Orenstein, 9–11, 59</ref> As well as being forward-looking, his art reinvigorates medieval subjects such as marginal [[drollerie]]s of ordinary life in [[illuminated manuscript]]s, and the calendar scenes of agricultural labours set in landscape backgrounds, and puts these on a much larger scale than before, and in the expensive medium of [[oil painting]]. He does the same with the fantastic and anarchic world developed in Renaissance prints and book illustrations.<ref>Gombrich, 295; Clark, 41–43, 27, 33, 57, also covering Gothic aspects of Bruegel's style</ref>

But Bruegel's work was, as far as we know, always keenly collected. The banker Nicolaes Jonghelinck owned sixteen paintings; his brother [[Jacques Jonghelinck]] was a gentleman-sculptor and medallist, who also had significant business interests. He made medals and tombs in an international style for the Brussels elite, especially [[Cardinal Granvelle]], who was also a keen patron of Bruegel.<ref>Snyder, 484–485</ref> Granvelle owned at least two Bruegels, including the [[Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (Bruegel)|Courtauld ''Flight into Egypt'']], but we do not know if he bought them directly from the artist.<ref>Orenstein, 9–10; [http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/98029502.pdf p. 30]</ref> Granvelle's nephew and heir was strong-armed out of his Bruegels by [[Rudolf II]], the very acquisitive Austrian Habsburg Emperor. <!-- check --> The series of the ''Months'' entered the Habsburg collections in 1594, given to Rudolf's brother and later taken by the emperor himself. Rudolf eventually owned at least ten Bruegel paintings.<ref>[[Hugh Trevor-Roper|Trevor-Roper, Hugh]]; ''Princes and Artists, Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts 1517–1633'', 116, 1976, Thames & Hudson, {{ISBN|0500232326}}</ref> A generation later Rubens owned eleven or twelve, which mostly passed to the Antwerp senator Pieter Stevens, and were then sold in 1668.<ref>Braham, Helen, ''The Princes Gate Collection'', p. 7, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London 1981, {{ISBN|0904563049}}</ref>

The next century's artists of peasant genre scenes were heavily influenced by Brueghel.<ref name="auto"/> Outside the Brueghel family, early figures were [[Adriaen Brouwer]] ({{Circa|1605}}/6 – 1638) and [[David Vinckboons]] (1576 – c. 1632), both Flemish-born but spending much of their time in the northern Netherlands. As well as the general conception of such ''kermis'' subjects, Vinckboons and other artists took from Bruegel "such stylistic devices as the bird's-eye perspective, ornamentalizedornamentalised vegetation, bright palette, and stocky, odious figures."<ref>Franits, 35, 53–54</ref> Forty years after their deaths, and over a century after Bruegel's, [[Jan Steen]] (1626–79) continued to show a particular interest in Bruegelian treatments.<ref name="auto5"/>

The critical treatment of Bruegel as essentially an artist of comic peasant scenes persisted until the late 19th century, even after his best paintings became widely visible as royal and aristocratic collections were turned into museums. This had been partly explicable when his work was mainly known from copies, prints and reproductions.<ref name="auto4"/> Even Henri Hymans, whose work of 1890/911891 was the first important contribution to modern Bruegel scholarship, could describe him thus: "His field of enquiry is certainly not of the most extensive; his ambition, too, is modest. He confines himself to a knowledge of mankind and the most immediate objects", a line no modern scholar is likely to take.<ref name="auto4"/> As his landscape paintings, in good colour reproduction, have become his best-loved works, so his importance in the history of [[landscape art]] has become understood.<ref name="auto4"/>

There are about forty generally accepted surviving paintings, twelve of which are in the [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]] in [[Vienna]].<ref>Grove; Manfred Sellink in 2012 listed forty paintings, seventy drawings and seventy-five prints, the latter slightly higher numbers than other sources.</ref> A number of othersOthers are known to have been lost, including what, according to van Mander, Bruegel himself thought his best work, "a picture in which Truth triumphs".<ref>Wied, 17</ref>

Bruegel only etched one plate himself, ''The Rabbit Hunt,'' but designed some forty prints, both [[engraving]]s and [[etching]]s, mostly for the [[Hieronymus Cock|Cock publishing house]]. As discussed above, about sixty-one drawings are now recognizedrecognised as authentic, mostly designs for prints or landscapes.

[[File:Landschaft mit Sturz des Ikarus Pieter Breughel d Ä.jpg|thumb|''[[Landscape with the Fall of Icarus]]'', probably an early copy of Bruegel's lost original, c. 1558.]]

It also was the subject of a 1960 poem "[[Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (poem)|poemLandscape with the Fall of Icarus]]" by [[William Carlos Williams]], and was mentioned in [[Nicolas Roeg]]'s 1976 science fiction film ''[[The Man Who Fell to Earth (film)|The Man Who Fell to Earth]]''. Further, Williams' final collection of poetry alludes to a numberseveral of Bruegel's works.

[[Michael Frayn]], in his's novel ''[[Headlong (Frayn novel)|Headlong]]'', imagines a lost panel from the 1565 ''Months'' series resurfacing unrecognizedunrecognised, which triggers a mad conflict between an art (and money) lover and the boor who possesses it. Much thought is spent on Bruegel's secret motives for painting it.

In the foreword to his novel ''The Folly of the World'', author [[Jesse Bullington]] explains that Bruegel's painting ''[[Netherlandish Proverbs]] not only'' inspired the title butand also the plot to some extent. Various sections are introduced with a proverb depicted in the painting that alludes to a plot element.

His 1564 painting ''[[The Procession to Calvary (Bruegel)|The Procession to Calvary]]'' inspired the 2011 Polish-Swedish film co-production ''[[The Mill and the Cross]]'', in which Bruegel is played by [[Rutger Hauer]]. Bruegel's paintings in the [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]] are shown in the 2012 film, ''[[Museum Hours]]'', where his work is discussed in casual conversations between a security guard at lengththe bymuseum and a guidevisitor from Montreal visiting a hospitalised relative, and taking time off between hospital visits to go to the museum. Some attention is given to tour guides making presentations about some of the Bruegel paintings.