Pieter Bruegel and Popular Culture

The old nickname of `Peasant Bruegel' is misleading; although he painted peasant life, Pieter Bruegel was a highly educated townsman. He had also traveled to France and Italy, although the art of Italy seems to have left little impression on him. His scenes of village life in sixteenth-century Flanders, pictures like The Return of the Herd, The Hunters in the Snow, and The Battle between Carnival and Lent, are not merely realistic, but show the influence of humanist ideas about rural life, which were themselves derived from classical writers. These works also form part of the tradition of rural paintings derived from medieval books of hours - and they express a satirical approach to drunkeness, gluttony and other sins.

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