PETER BRUEGEL AND THE IDEA OF HUMAN NATURE

In sixteenth-century Northern Europe, during a time of increasing religious and political conflict, Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel e xplored how people perceived human nature. Bruegel turned his critical eye and peerless paintbrush to mankind's labors and pleasures , its foibles and rituals of daily life, portraying landscapes, peasant life, and biblical scenes in startling detail. Much like the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bruegel questioned how well we really know ourselves and also how we know, or visually read, o...[Read more]