Editing Pieter Bruegel the Elder (section)

==Life==
===Early life===
[[File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder- The Seven Deadly Sins or the Seven Vices - Anger.JPG|thumb|[[Engraving]] designed by Bruegel and published by [[Hieronymus Cock]],  ''The Seven Deadly Sins or the Seven Vices – Anger'', 1558]]

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 and twenty-five, giving a range for his birth between 1525 and 1530.<ref>Orenstein, 5; Grove</ref> His master, according to [[Karel van 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 van 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>
[[File:Притча о слепых.jpeg|thumb|''[[The Blind Leading the Blind]]'', 1568]]

In contrast, scholars of the last six decades have emphasised 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 van 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 its 1300 houses were destroyed in a fire in 1534.  This 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>  Before 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 artists, and lived in Mechelen.<ref>Orenstein, 5, 7</ref>

===Travel===
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 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>
[[File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Big Fish Eat Little Fish, 1556 - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish'', Bruegel's drawing for a print, 1556<ref name="auto6">Orenstein, 140–142</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 realised 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>  All 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>

===Antwerp and Brussels===
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 Latinise 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. Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce and 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 these areas.<ref name="auto4"/>