The Brueghel Dynasty

From the mid-sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the Brueghel family dominated Flemish painting. The dynasty began with Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525–1569), who moved to Antwerp in the 1540s, initially becoming known as a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, before establishing his signature repertoire of folkloric scenes of snowy Northern European landscapes, peasant festivals, village fêtes and agricultural life. Pieter Brueghel the Elder also painted two of what must be the Renaissance’s most iconic works, “The Hunters in the Snow” (1565) and “The Tower of Babel” (1563). His sons, Pieter Breughel the Younger (1564–1638) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), pursued these folkloric themes further (although Jan worked in a variety of genres, from biblical allegories to still lifes), and their sons in turn consolidated the Brueghel atelier as a major nexus of the Netherlandish Renaissance and beyond: Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–1678), Ambrosius Brueghel (1617–1675), Jan Peeter Brueghel (1628–1680) and Abraham Bruegel (1631–c. 1680). Reproducing more than 100 color plates of paintings and drawings by this exceptional family (and several of its contemporaries), The Brueghel Dynasty provides the most complete overview of the Breughels currently in print.