Chapter II
The seasons à la Bruegel
Just picture it: Antwerp, 1566:
The merchant Nicolaes Jonghelinck is spending the spring in his villa outside the city of Antwerp.
He has invited some guests to dine in his newly decorated dining room. Between the windows, six huge landscapes by the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder are on display. The paintings are causing a sensation – the guests have never seen such large-scale landscapes before.
However, the subject of the pictures is not entirely unknown to them: the paintings show the seasons or months as they had been depicted in engravings or calendars up to that point. But in Bruegel's paintings, a few things are different.
Humans – a part of nature
Whereas it was previously customary to focus on the work and tasks of the peasants over the course of the year, Bruegel shifts the focus to nature itself.
Landscape and weather determine the scenes, while humans play a subordinate role, but continue to pursue their typical and recognizable activities.
On Jonghelinck's estate, the Seasons paintings probably hang on all four walls of the dining room. Statues of the planets may have stood between the pictures. In this way, the dining room becomes a model of the cosmos in which humanity finds its place.
However, Jonghelinck did not live to enjoy his paintings for long, dying in 1570. In 1594, the city of Antwerp bought the paintings and presented them to the new governor of the Netherlands: Archduke Ernest of Austria.
In the sixteeenth century, it became fashionable for wealthy citizens and aristocrats to build country houses outside the cities, where they could get away from the bustle of urban life. These country houses, often built in the style of ancient Roman villas, reflected the social status and education of their owners. They became places of recreation, art, and literature in the midst of nature.
1
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Gloomy Day (Early Spring), 1565. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
2
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Haymaking (Early Summer), 1565. Prague, Palais Lobkowicz, Prague Castle © The Lobkowicz Collections,
Palais Lobkowicz
3
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters (Late Summer), 1565. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919 © Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
4
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Return of the Herd (Autumn), 1565. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
5
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
Six seasons, not four!
What surprises us today was not so unusual back then.
Bruegel divided the year into six seasons, not four. This division roughly corresponded to the rhythm of farm work.
Unfortunately, only five of the original six paintings have been preserved. The cool seasons (Autumn, Winter, and Early Spring) are on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Early Summer is in Prague, and Late Summer is in New York. Late Spring was apparently lost in the seventeenth century.
According to nature?!
Although Bruegel's landscapes appear very natural and authentic, they are in fact invented landscapes. The best example is the huge mountain ranges in his pictures.
Bruegel did not see the rocky mountains in his native Netherlands, but rather brought them back as a souvenir from his journey across the Alps. Driving the cattle down from the Alpine pastures in Autumn is also a reminder of this journey. He successfully and impressively integrates both into his flat, Flemish village landscapes.
Bruegel's first biographer, Karel van Mander, had this to say about it:
‘On his journeys he did … many views from nature so that it was said of him, when he travelled through the Alps, that he had swallowed all the mountains and rocks and spat them out again … onto his canvases and panels, so closely was he able to follow nature here and in her other works.’
Gone to the dogs!
Bruegel also knew like no other artist of the time how to depict animals with great feeling. Emaciated, with bristled fur and drawn-in tails, it is clear how miserable the animals feel in the cold winter.
It is also the animals – dogs and cattle – that make eye contact with the viewer in front of the picture, not the people.
Work and leisure
6–8 h
during winter
12–16 h
hours during harvest time
Work–life balance in the sixteenth century
The life of the peasant population was shaped by both the rhythm of the seasons and religious festivals. Depending on the season, the daily working hours varied between 6–8 hours in winter and up to 12–16 hours during harvest time. There were about 200–220 working days in a year, and 120–150 days were Sundays or holidays, when work was not permitted (except for household chores). Today, Austrian employees still work 220 days a year.
Keep calm and carry on! Life vs. survival
In Bruegel's paintings, people go about their daily work no matter how threatening the weather, whether it be floods or freezing cold.
But it is not only nature that threatens human existence; there are also political and social conflicts – omnipresent in the picture in the form of gallows and wheels as places of execution.
Nevertheless, people do not give up and manage to enjoy life even in hard times. Bruegel sends them out ice-skating or ice-stick shooting or lets them return home disguised for the carnival season, eating waffles.
