Pieter Bruegel’s Symbolic Highlands in the Lowlands

10 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, while best known for his representations of the landscapes and rustic inhabitants of his native Lowlands, did not restrict himself to these topics—in fact, most of his paintings address religious subjects, even when placing them in carefully constructed landscapes. When Bruegel represented biblical events, such as the Tower of Babel or the Conversion of Saint Paul, he placed them in meaningful settings, whether flatlands or mountains. As this article will argue, the chosen environment for many of his religious images uses the landscape to underscore and frame the spiritual message of his images and to require his viewers to inspect his pictures more carefully, evoking a mode of “spiritual seeing.” DOI: 10.18277/makf.2015.01