Editing Pieter Bruegel the Elder (section)

===Landscape elements===
[[File:Pieter Bruegel der Ältere - Landschaft mit der Flucht nach Ägypten.jpg|thumb|''[[Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (Bruegel)|Landscape with the Flight into Egypt]]'', 1563, 37.1 × 55.6 cm (14.6 × 21.9 in), owned by [[Cardinal Granvelle]]]]

Bruegel adapted and made more natural the [[world landscape]] style, which shows small figures in an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings.  Back in Antwerp from Italy he was commissioned in the 1550s by the publisher [[Hieronymus Cock]] to make drawings for a series of [[engraving]]s, the ''Large Landscapes'', to meet what was now a growing demand for landscape images.

Some of his earlier paintings, such as his ''[[Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (Bruegel)|Landscape with the Flight into Egypt]]'' ([[Courtauld Institute of Art|Courtauld]], 1563), are fully within the Patinir conventions, but his ''[[Landscape with the Fall of Icarus]]'' (known from two copies) had a Patinir-style landscape, in which already the largest figure was a [[genre painting|genre figure]] who was only a bystander for the supposed narrative subject, and may not even be aware of it.  The date of Bruegel's lost original is unclear,<ref>about 1558 has been suggested</ref> but it is probably relatively early, and if so, foreshadows the trend of his later works.  During the 1560s the early scenes crowded with multitudes of very small figures, whether peasant genre figures or figures in religious narratives, give way to a small number of much larger figures.

====Months of the year====
[[File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Hunters in the Snow (Winter) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''[[The Hunters in the Snow]]'', 1565, oil on wood]]

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]]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. The painting associated with the April-May seasonal transition is assumed to be 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 dispute 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> [[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 them were extant.<ref>Joseph Koerner. 2018. ''Bosch and Bruegel''. Princeton Univ. Press. Page 345.</ref> Only five of these paintings are known to have survived into the 21st century. 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.

Bruegel's paintings were on a far larger scale than a typical calendar page painting, each one approximately three feet by five feet. For Bruegel, this was a large commission (the price of a commission was based on how large the painting was) and an important one. In 1565, the Calvinist riots began and it was only two years before the Eighty Years' War broke out. Bruegel may have felt safer with a secular commission so as to not offend Calvinist or Catholic.<ref name="auto2">{{cite book|last=Foote|first=Timothy|title=The World of Bruegel|year=1968|publisher=Time-Life Library|location=Library of Congress}}</ref> Some of the most famous paintings from this series included ''[[The Hunters in the Snow]]'' (December–January) and ''[[The Harvesters (painting)|The Harvesters]]'' (August-September).