Pieter Bruegel, Painter

I noticed this painting in the Italian-restuarant-we-can-never-eat-in-again because the food was so bad the last 3 times we called in there, and was curious to know more ... I guessed it was the Tower of Babel but that was all I knew.

It was painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, otherwise known as ‘Peasant Bruegel’. He was probably the most significant, exciting painter in the Northern Europe during the middle part of the sixteenth century. His nickname “Peasant Bruegel” indicated to his subjects: peasant life, proverbs and genre scenes, the New Testament topics set among common folks of contemporary Flanders.

“Although Bruegel was famous in his own lifetime, the archaic tone of much of his imagery and his refusal to adopt the idealized figure style evolved by Italian Renaissance artists had, in sophisticated circles, an adverse effect on his reputation both during his life and after his death”.