1st Edition
Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625)
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 trajectories that allow for the viewer to craft out of the raw material of the picture a moment of spiritual repose. Rooted in the art of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder these vistas are shown to meet the expectation of viewers to discover in their mazes a rhetorically conceived path to wisdom. The key issue is the ambition of pictorial images to bring into practice the humanist belief that philosophy and rhetoric are inseparable. This original study analyzes the patterns of thought and recurrent optical tropes that constitute a visual poetics for shifting genres - no longer devotional, yet sharing in the meditative goal of redirecting the soul toward an intuitive knowledge of what is good in life. This book reveals how everyday life is the preferred vehicle for delivering the results of philosophical pursuits. One chapter is dedicated to Brueghel's innovative attention to the experience of traveling in a variety of wheeled vehicles along the roads of his native Brabant. He is unique, and surprisingly modern, in giving contemporary viewers an accurate account of all the different types of conveyances that clutter the roads. It makes for lively versions of one of his favorite themes: The Traveled Road. By taking the pursuit of wisdom as its theme, the book succeeds in presenting a new model for the interpretation of a range of visual genres in the Antwerp picture trade.
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
