Pieter Bruegel, the Elder

Pieter Bruegel I (ca. 1525-1569), commonly known as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, was the greatest member of a large and important southern Netherlandish family of artists active for four generations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A longtime resident of Antwerp, the center of publishing in the Netherlands and a vibrant commercial capital, Bruegel brought a humanizing spirit to traditional subjects and boldly created new ones. He was an astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, and, due to the continuity of the family trade and the industry that developed in prints after his works, Bruegel's impact was widespread and long lasting. Born in or near Breda sometime between 1525 and 1530, Bruegel settled fairly early in Antwerp, where he became a master in the painters' Guild of Saint Luke between 1551 and 1552.