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| Country Wedding, 1567 ( Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria) - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: More than any other, this painting contributed to Bruegels fame as a portrayer of Flemish peasant life, earning him the nickname of "Peasant Bruegel”. The painting is admirable and it is rightly celebrated as one of Bruegel’s best. The artist here dispenses with the elevated viewpoint which would have afforded an overall prospect and instead leads us straight into the middle of the wedding using the diagonal technique. This adds drama without crowding the picture or making it too heavy. The eye is immediately attracted, through the men serving the food, to the bride who sits forlorn with an empty content look on her face as if to thank god for her good fortunes. She sits in the middle of the table under a paper crown; near her in a high-backed chair sits the lawyer responsible for drawing up the marriage contract. At the end of the table we see the landowner, dressed in Spanish fashion. The bridegroom is not present; in those days he would not have been led to the bride until the evening of the wedding day. Two bagpipers, the men carrying the food, and the boy pouring the drink lend a true-to-life quality to the scene without descending to the mere comic or caricatural. Note the seriousness with which the guests participate in the party that is evidently run in a barn. No other painter depicted people actually eating; Bruegel broke with the long standing, church-driven tradition that man was beyond material things. Aside from the girl in the foreground at least three other people are bringing food to their mouth. Piled up high in the background is the harvest, safely gathered in. A great masterpiece. |
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| The Return of the Hunters, 1565 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria) - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: Rolling ‘n skates and playing balls on ice was a favourite pastime in the Low Countries in the 16th Century when the winter seasons were extremely rigid. The return of the hunters—with just a fox as their prey -, preparations for pig killing (left) and wood staking (right, bridge) suggest that this painting rather refers to the sixth season, the season that anticipates winter. Netherlanders divided the seasons into six periods, the traditional ones plus that which followed autumn and that which followed winter. With the “return of the hunters” Bruegel alludes to the cold weather to come, the preparations for the cold days and the building up of reserves (winter was traditionally dedicated to the artisan trades which could be carried out inside). The use of contrasting colours—with dark figures set against the snowy white landscape-, dramatically increase the contrast and the beauty of the painting. Note how the diagonal representation takes you from the hunters down to the lovely landscape with the frozen steep mountains and the village with church in the background. This is Bruegel’s reminder of the Dolomites, the mountains that separate Italy from the rest of Europe and through which he had to pass in his travel back to the Low Countries. |
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| Haymaking, 1567 (Narodni Gallery, Prague, Czechia) - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: This panel is one of a number commissioned to Bruegel by Jongelinck, an Antwerp merchant. The series originally included six works each of them depicting a season of the year (in Netherlandish times the year was divided into six seasons). Five of them - Gloomy Day, The Harvesters, Hunters in the Snow, the Return of the Herd and this one - have survived, the likely loss being a depiction of winter. Although the church is present in the background it is important to note that Bruegel definitively broke, with this series, the justification for religious landscape painting, an almost obligation in Christian Europe in those days. Each of the paintings in the series shows a new humanism interpreted by Bruegel with the depiction of nature and people going about their most natural daily activities. Haymaking tells the life of the ordinary peasant in summer in an imaginary landscape that brings back memories of Bruegel's trip to Italy. It is a painting that again shows the genius for narrative that Bruegel introduced in Netherlandish art. |
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| Bird's Trap, 1565 (Private Collection, Brussels) - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: This is typical Flemish and Dutch scenery taken up and re-elaborated in many paintings in the following Centuries. Much was made by artists, especially in the XIX Century, to paint nature and life in the open, completing the transmigration from portrait and “religion related” painting into “natural events” painting. Bruegel was clearly the forerunner of this new pictorial art. Winter life in the XVI Century was tough and difficult. Rigid winters succeeded rigid winters and peasant learnt to “let go” with what they had, playing popular games such as balls on ice and taking children for walks even in precarious conditions. The eye is not immediately led to the beautiful pictorial scenery but to the bird trap on the right. Birds, in the foreground, sit on the branches as in waiting whilst others peck their way under the trap. That Bruegel wanted to attract attention to the trap is also evident by the size of birds in the foreground compared to the size of people in the background. It is interesting to note that the trap is formed by a door or a window panel. In those days doors and window panels were made of oak to resist the elements. Oak is heavy material. Little was probably left of the bird once it received such weight on its head but, as in most of Bruegel paintings, he’d likely hid a still unsolved proverb into the scene. |
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| "Alzata"(Raised) dish, Deruta, XVI Century, Original - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: "Alzata" in maiolics, with decoration in turquoise monocrom set up in the "calligraphic" style with hares and flowered branches design. In the middle we note the coat of arms of the purchaser. The alzata is decorated with flower scrolls in the lower side. A very rare XVI Century Deruta original. The painting is fluent, the composition very well balanced. A museum piece. |
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| "Crespina" or Ondulated Dish - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: Ondulated dish in maiolics "compendiaria" with lovely figure of cupid in the middle and a ring of flowers and branches on the side. This is Deruta end XV, beginning XVI Century. |
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| Table Lamp - EXHAUSTED | |
| Description: A Robbia table lamp made in Deruta year 1920 circa. In perfect condition, this beatiful lamp has received the triple firing typical of gold decoration. It has a height of 68 cm lamp shade included |
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