Wanderlust Collective

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

NOV 30/The Wanderlust Collective/

Art, Artist Spotlight, Inspiration, Pieter Bruegel

My trip to Brussels was extremely inspirational. I got to see an exhibition showing the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. These paintings were huge! As I walked around and marveled at each one and the stories they told, It wasn’t enough. Although I had read a bit about Bruegel’s work, it wasn’t until after that exhibition that I was extremely inspired and intrigued.

Has this happened to you during a museum trip?

“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.”

Audrey Hepburn

Once I got home I started to dig deeper into Pieter’s artwork, and found that he did three paintings pertaining to The Tower of Babel, from the bible. This intrigued me even more. To be able to envision this tower from the bible and depict it in three paintings, no less, was no small feat.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Netherlandish artist from the 1500’s. He was the most important artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. He was a painter and printmaker who was known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. Pieter worked mostly in Antwerp and Brussels and is known for his work in landscape.

Circling back. “The Tower of Babel." It’s the subject of three of his paintings. The first one is a miniature he did while in Rome on ivory, sadly it's been lost to history. The other two are told apart by the prefix “Great” and “Little”, and are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna, and the Museum Boijman Van Beuningen, in Rotterdam, respectively. They’re both oil on wood panels.

The paintings show the construction of the Tower, which in the Book of Genesis in the bible, was built by a group of people that wanted to create a tower that would reach the heavens. In essence, they wanted to be like God. When God saw this he confused their language so they couldn't communicate any more with one another to finish the tower. So from there they went their separate ways based on common language and continued to fill the earth, just as the Lord commanded. Genesis 1:28.

This makes me want to read a story and just go paint it. Imagine all the inspiration you have access to working this way!

Where do you find your inspiration? Can you write a story and then paint it?

This is so fascinating to me. I'd love to hear all about your experiences.