Renaissance Studies: The Strange and Wonderful World of Pieter Bruegel, Painter

Pieter Bruegel, the sixteenth-century Flemish/Dutch artist, drew and painted a set of remarkable pictures that create an unforgettable world as rich and detailed as a Shakespearean play. Bruegel was, all at once, a surveyor of popular culture, humanist, religious, historical, and landscape painter, and sharp-eyed observer of human nature. And it is on those many levels and others that we shall seek to enter his world and his art in this course. Each class will concentrate on several of his paintings and drawings, and we shall approach his art through a series of different techniques and modes, trying to understand him and his time. Among these approaches, we shall dip into modern takes on Bruegel by movie-makers, novelists, and poets. These approaches will help ground the class in ways to approach all art, questions to put to it, and different strategies for understanding art in its time. We shall be looking for ways to maximize the meaning of Bruegel’s frozen moments.