1st Edition
Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625)
By Leopoldine Prosperetti
Copyright 2009
306 Pages
by
Routledge
In this first comprehensive full length study in English on the art of Jan Brueghel the Elder, Leopoldine Prosperetti illuminates how the work of this painter relates to a philosophical culture prevailing in the Antwerp of his time. She shows that no matter what scenery, figures or objects stock the pictorial field, Brueghel's diverse pictures have something in common: they all embed visual... Read more
Contents: Preface; Jan Brueghel; painter of rural prospects; Art lovers in their cabinets; Burning cities, red-hot forges and time-pieces: commonplaces of experience; Pingere rura (depicting fields); The Tower of Scipio: neo-stoicism and its rewards; Anatomy of greenery; the vegetal lexicon; Spokes and felloes: updating the wayfaring topos; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.
Biography
Leopoldine Prosperetti is Adjunct Professor at Goucher College and Towson University in Maryland and a Kress Fellow at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown. She has published in Art History and contributed an essay to Image and Imagination of the Religious Self (2008).
’Prosperetti’s study of the links between Brueghel’s landscapes and Antwerp’s philosophical culture illuminate new aspects of this understudied artist’s work at the same time that it enriches our understanding of the experience of early modern viewing more generally. Her close visual analysis of the images - most notably in the chapters on ’’arboreal semantics’’ and wayfaring - alone makes Prosperetti’s text worth reading. This book is a welcome contribution to the literature on Jan Brueghel.’ Renaissance Quarterly ’... the well-written and inspiring text and the extensive index make Prosperetti’s book into a rewarding contribution to the literature on Jan Brueghel, without a doubt an unjustly underrated painter.’ Historians of Netherlandish Art
