Book
Contemporization as polemical device in Pieter Bruegel's Biblical narratives
2005
Abstract
Scholars have long speculated that references to contemporary political and religious turmoil in the Netherlands can be found in the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. These assertions, however, have largely rested upon the interpretation of a few isolated details, and/or a perceived thematic relevance of the artist’s images to contemporary events and concerns. What the present study demonstrates is that Bruegel did indeed direct his critical attention to the contemporary world, and that he did so by using a form of biblical analogy that would have been familiar to him through his participation in the bibliocentric culture of his time, especially through his awareness of the popular dramas of the rederijkers which at times employed the same rhetorical trope. The study shows through an in-depth analysis of three of the artist’s major paintings, The Procession to Calvary, The Sermon of St. John the Baptist, and The Conversion of St. Paul, that he generated critical commentary upon the spiritual state of the contemporary world and its institutions by effectively mapping a biblical event against contemporary circumstances in order to generate comparative relations between them.
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Details
- Title
- Contemporization as polemical device in Pieter Bruegel's Biblical narratives
- Creators
- Joseph F Gregory - Drexel University, Art and Art History
- Series
- Studies in art and religious interpretation
- Publisher
- Edwin Mellen Press; Lewiston, N.Y
- Number of pages
- vi, 125 pages, 40 pages of plates
- Resource Type
- Book
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Art and Art History
- Other Identifier
- 9780773462533; 0773462538; 991022053437004721