Pieter Bruegel the Elder (born 1525 — died September 9, 1569) was a 17th-century Dutch artist, an outstanding master of genre painting, and the founder of a famous dynasty of Dutch painters. Pieter Bruegel the Elder is also famous for his paintings on religious themes, landscapes, and magnificent engravings. A distinctive feature of many of the master’s works is the huge number of tiny human figures in the composition. The true heroes of his paintings were the masses of people, not individuals.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder or “Peasant” is a very mysterious figure in world painting. Unlike his contemporary colleagues, he did not leave a single self-portrait, did not keep a diary, and did not write a single treatise on art. Many facts from the master’s biography still cause controversy among historians.

Biography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder Pieter Bruegel the Elder was most likely born in 1525 in the village of Breugel near Breda in a peasant family. The name of his native village later became the surname of the master and his descendants. Unfortunately, no authentic document officially confirming the specific date and place of birth of the artist has survived.

Nothing is known about the childhood of the painter. In the mid-1540s, Pieter, who was already about 20 years old at that time, became a student of the famous Brussels master Pieter Coecke van Aelst. And 18 years later, he married the daughter of his teacher Maria, who bore him two sons, who later became famous artists, and a daughter.

After the death of Van Aelst in 1550, Bruegel moved to the richest Dutch port of Antwerp, where he was accepted into the local guild of painters. Here the young artist was lucky enough to get a job in the workshop of the largest printer of engravings in Northern Europe at that time – Hieronymus Wellens de Cock.

De Cock’s publishing house “On the Four Winds” was a successful commercial enterprise. His printed works were in great demand in many European countries, and Bruegel received an excellent opportunity to create engravings to order.

In 1552-1553 Bruegel traveled to Italy to get to know the works of the great masters of the Renaissance and to make a series of drawings for new engravings. Upon returning from the Apennine Peninsula, the artist continued to collaborate with de Cock in Antwerp. During this period of his life, religious themes occupied a central place in the artist’s work, but the appearance of the cycle of paintings “The Inverted World” marks the master’s growing interest in the genre of everyday life.

In 1563, the already recognized master of painting in the world of art moved from Antwerp to Bruges. Here the last period of the artist’s work began. Over the next 6 years, Bruegel became a father three times and painted many masterpieces of the genre. The artist did not paint portraits to order, although he received many tempting offers.

The happy life of the family in 1567 was destroyed by the arrival of the Duke of Alba in the Netherlands. The ruthless viceroy of the Spanish monarch Philip II arranges a bloody terror in the artist’s homeland and sends thousands of Protestants to the gallows.

On September 9, 1569, in an environment of nightmarish events: denunciations, torture and executions – Pieter Bruegel the Elder, still in the prime of his creative powers, died of an unknown disease. Although the master did not have time to teach his young sons the basics of art, his artistic talent was genetically passed on to his children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.