120. Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568.

Oil on wood, 45.6 x 50.8 cm.

Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt.

 

 

In his Peasant Dance, he further simplifies the composition to a few characters drunk with pleasure, taken from the colourful masses of a village fair. With this painting he attains vigour, powerful realism and an extraordinary harmony and balance. Nothing is more beautiful and complete in itself than the group formed by its bagpiper, the man seated at his side with a mug on his knee, and the little girl who is teaching her younger sister a dance step. To the side, a peasant couple, viewed from behind, hold each other’s hands and are swept away in irresistible movement. This is Bruegel at his most expressive.

In 1569, Bruegel died suddenly at the height of his artistic maturity. In his will he left his widow, Mayke Coecke, The Magpie on the Gallows, “The magpie representing all of the harsh words he had directed at her”, according to Van Mander. He was buried in Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in Brussels. His epitaph reads:

PETRO BREUGELIO

EXACTISSIMAE INDUSTRIAE

ARTIS VENUSTISSIMAE

PICTORI

QUEM IPSA RERUM PARENS NATURA LAUDET

PERITISSIMI ARTIFICES SUSPICIUNT

ÆMULI FRUSTRA IMITANTUR.

Lampsonius dedicated this elegy to Bruegel:

A second Hieronymus Bosch,

Who retraced the vivid images of his master,

Whose masterful brush rendered his style with fidelity,

And in doing so, perhaps surpassed him?

You elevate yourself, Pieter, when through your fecund art,

In the style of your old master you draw pleasant things

Made to amuse; with him, you merit

The praise of the greatest artists.[31]

Although Lampsonius compares Bruegel to the greatest of artists, he also diminishes Bruegel’s genius as merely comical. It is only recently that Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s place between Jan Van Eyck and Petrus Paulus Rubens has been restored. Three summits of the Flemish school of painting, they fixed with equal power the essence of their culture and period. Bruegel was the most simple and sincere of the three.