............
| Being
sons of a renowned father not always it is a warrant of success. This is
not the case of Pieter e Jan Brueghel, sons of the great Pieter Brueghel
senior, today honoured in Cremona with a splendid exposition.
Painter the father, artificer of a rural deeds now ironic 
now painful, painters the sons, who, not shies at all by the out of common
talent and the sublime painting of their parent, devote themselves to the
same craft between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, in the Fleming
area, and not only succeed in being up to their father fame, but to say
it his way, they extend and perfect the message.
It is just by this time that, in the Flanders and Holland, it develops and it was born the so called “genre painting “, one of the most meaningful manifestations of the European art. The artists' clients are not anymore princes, Maecenas or other ecclesiastic hierarchies that have featured the renaissance tradition, but they are  private
citizens who want to enrich their houses, beyond furniture, objects and
clothes, also with pictures, deemed like furnishings to adorn the bare
surface of walls, giving pleasure to eyes and decorum and dignity to the
masters of house.
So it expires the need of an aulic and celebrating painting language and dominates the reproduction of the real aspects of life: the every day life, the domestic privacy, the objects of common use, faces of men and facets of nature. In the seventeenth century, the Low Countries, due to their Calvinistic ethic, oriented at all toward the individual responsibility and the relationship between the divine grace and worldly works, will be the adoptive countries of the genre painting, that will have |
just
here its gold century. But also the catholic  Flanders,
parted in 1585 from the protestant neighbours, are all but indifferent
to this laic and civil toned painting, able too to turn the sacred themes
into bared e humble daily life scenes.
Here is it then arising from the pallet of Jan Brueghel, it is not a case he was named 'of velvets' for the magisterial lightness of his touch and the gaudy variety of his pallet, the most beautiful flowers of the European painting. Great bunch vibrating of colours and almost smelling thousands fragrances. And the elder brother Pieter devoting to keen and  witty
variations of that reportage of country life so dear to his father's inspiration.
Certainly not replicas of these masterpieces, but works rich of personality,
related to seasons, activities, happening and fetes of the Flemish
countries and the people the painter belonged to.
The fascination of the exposition is all in the out of common preparations of sacred and profane themes arranged with endless fantasia by the two genial brothers: allegories, proverbs, historical events, country festivals, battles, portraits, landscape, still life,  Paradise
and hell visions, precious and uncommon flowers. Well then, a joy for eyes,
thousand miles far from the penitential contrition of so much baroque painting.
And Cremona, with its fall hazes with an almost Flemish flavour, its well known solid and active Po valley concreteness not unlinked with a special inclination to the sensorial pleasures, is the ideal place for this event, and it candidates itself to replay the great success of the unforgettable exposition “Cinque sensi“.  |
Leadership
Medica®
Mensile di scienza medica e attualita`
Copyright 1997© All Rights Reserved |
 |
