Painting from Life Nature's Unpredictable Menagerie

“O his journeys Bruegel did many views from nature, so it was said of him when he traveled through the Alps that he had swallowed all the mountains and rocks and spat them out again, after his return, onto his canvases and panels, so closely was he able to follow nature here and in his other works” (1). This brilliant legacy, become familial burden, framed the life and work of Jan Brueghel the Elder, Pieter Bruegel’s1 son, and his sons after him. Always measured against the original, “Peasant” Bruegel, descendants in this legendary family held their own, each making a mark, all painstakingly distinguishing themselves through the choice of subject matter and niceties of style. Jan Brueghel hardly knew his father. Orphaned soon after his birth in Brussels, he studied with Pieter Goctkind and Gillis van Coninxloo in Antwerp, learned watercolor painting from his grandmother Mayken Verhulst, and flourished under the patronage of great collector Cardinal Federigo Borromeo in Rome and Milan. Although he grew up copying his father’s works, he was influenced little by them or those of his brother, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, called “Hell” Brueghel for his fiery depictions of afterlife (2). Art in the Low Countries during the 1600s was dominated by the Brueghel family, who worked in Antwerp amidst political and social change. The spread of humanism affected popular tastes, favoring mythological over religious themes in the visual arts. And with commissions by the church, court, and nobility on the decline, painting specialties (genre, still life, landscape) appealing to patrons of more modest means became popular. The Brueghels so excelled in the new specialties that they created a trend for their generation, a bridge between the technical refinement of Flemish primitive art and the expansive imagination seen later in the work of Peter Paul Rubens and his followers (3). Jan became known as “Flower” Brueghel, even though he started painting flowers late in his career. Tulips, hyacinths, marigolds, nasturtiums, and sunflowers were as new in Europe as the artistic genre they embellished. With a modern insistence on painting from nature, the artist traveled far to find flora for his lush scenes. Botanical