Editing Pieter Bruegel the Elder (section)

==Reception history==
[[File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Massacre of the Innocents - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''[[Massacre of the Innocents (Bruegel)|Massacre of the Innocents]]'', (c.{{Nbsp}}1565–1567), British [[Royal Collection]]; a much-copied painting]]

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>

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>

[[File:Bruegel, Pieter (I) - Winterlandschap met schaatsers en vogelknip, 1565.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Winter Landscape with Ice skaters and Bird trap|Winter Landscape with (Skaters and) a Bird Trap]]'' (1565), Bruegel's most copied painting, smaller than many of his landscapes at 38 × 56 cm<ref>Wied, 144, 186</ref>]]

Bruegel's son Pieter could still keep himself and a large studio team busy producing replicas or adaptations of Bruegel's works, as well as his own compositions along similar lines, sixty years or more after they were first painted.  The most frequently copied works were generally not the ones that are most famous today, though this may reflect the availability of the full-scale detailed drawings that were evidently used.  The most-copied painting is the ''[[Winter Landscape with Ice skaters and Bird trap|Winter Landscape with (Skaters and) a Bird Trap]]'' (1565), of which the original is in Brussels; 127 copies are recorded.<ref>[http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/old-master-british-paintings-evening-l14033/lot.10.html Sotheby's: Catalogue note on a good copy], sold London, Lot 10 9 July 2014</ref> They include paintings after some of Bruegel's drawn print designs, especially ''Spring''.<ref name="auto">Orenstein, 67–84</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, ornamentalised 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 1890/1891 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"/>