Paraphrase the passage and be prepared to reproduce the paraphrase in class with good pronunciation, style and intonation. Look up and speak.
THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE
HIERONYMUS BOSCH
PETER BRUEGHEL THE ELDER
ART LESSON 8: The aim of the lesson is to teach you to compare the manners of painting of different artists belonging to the same school and to different schools.
1. Study the following texts and be prepared to answer any question on the content.
a ) As the artists of Northern Renaissance humanism, Bosch and Brueghel’s position is opposed to the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. This is especially apparent when we think of Michelangelo. Michelangelo pursues an ideal of inner beauty, which lends strength to the solitude of his spirit and to his urge to express the titanic struggle between the forces of good and evil in the human conscience: it is not the study of the individual that interests him, but the universal problem of man. In contrast, Bosch and Brueghel study the human condition as they see it reflected in the society of their time, and their observation of human nature rejects idealisation to depend only upon an objective analysis of individual human characters. The purpose of this analysis was not to build up a scientific method for the study of mankind and nature, as was the case with Leonardo, but like him they took actuality as their starting point.
b) Bosch rejected the human point of view of man as a reasonable creature, capable of noble aspirations, infinitely perfectable. What Bosch saw instead was a depraved animal without dignity, for whom evil was the natural and inescapable condition. He expressed this pessimistic sense of human frailty in fantastic, dreamlike images of enormous power. See “The Temptation of St. Anthony”. Here Bosch shows the saint seated among the fallen stones of a ruined building. In the background the smoke from a burning city darkens the sky. The foreground is filled with repulsive demons, who trick the saint into rejecting God. As in much of his work, the view is panoramic and filled with small figures. The effect is fascinating and disturbing, as our eyes fall on the complex assembly of mysterious images.
c) Peter Brueghel the Elder adapted Bosch’s strategy - the panoramic landscape filled with small busy figures seen from above - to his own sober view of human life. His allegorical “Triumph of Death” portrays a great variety of contemporary social types - young and old, rich and poor, - each being carried off by a skeleton. Death’s images are such as Bosch might have conceived. He also painted the harsh realities and rough pleasures of peasant life with a force and truthfulness that surpass every previous artist. He even brought the same realistic sense of peasant life to Biblical subjects.
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In style Bosch and Brueghel were both inheritors of the Flemish tradition of realism. It is their vision of man, unsoftened by idealism, and the intensity with which they expressed it, that set them apart from their more conventional contemporaries.
2. Describe a picture by Bosch taking the description above as a sample. Try to prove that Bosch’s conception of man is different from that of the Italian Renaissance.
Which of the qualities manifested in a picture by Breughel bring him close to Bosch, and which set him apart from Bosch? Describe side by side.
4. The current of Brueghel’s thought was complex. He observed the people of his time and their dramatic and peaceful moments. If he refused to portray humanity according to some ideal of formal beauty or in the light of a religious view of the universe, this is because he penetrated into the inner being of man and discovered its essential reality.
Use the above information as an introduction to a description of Brueghel’s picture “The Cripples.” Oral only.
5. As a landscape painter, Brueghel broke quite a new ground. Here we comprehend not only his feeling for nature but also his ability to express unity of man and his surroundings.
Describe a landscape by Brueghel (teacher supplied in class) using the information as an introduction to it.
Paraphrase the passage and be prepared to reproduce the paraphrase in class with good pronunciation, style and intonation. Look up and speak.
“The Peasant Dance”
It seems that Brueghel is present in person here, closely studying the dancing couples. Their appearance, costumes and facial expressions, in the lively rhythm of their movements, seem to be brought close to us as if by the lens of a cine-camera. The objectivity which the artist attains with such conspicuous realism does not lie in superficial appearance, but in the inner core of these human beings, the peasants and country folk who have become “characters” for him. They stand out against the low horizon, in a space that opens out like a circle in front of their houses and shops. A subtle vein of irony colours the artist’s view of this rustic gaiety.
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THE PEASANT DANCE
In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermes,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal, and the blare, and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess.
Williams)
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