The gloomy day
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| The gloomy day |
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| Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 1565 |
| Oil on oak |
| 118 × 163 cm |
| Art History Museum |
The Gloomy Day is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder . The 118 cm × 163 cm oil painting on oak was created in 1565 as one of six seasonal paintings, five of which have survived. It is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Hall 10 (Inv.No.GG 1837)
The paintings
Content and design
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The viewer looks at what is happening from an elevated point of view, as is usual with early paintings by Bruegel. The foreground is kept in warm brown tones, while the background appears in cold green, blue and gray tones, which increases the depth effect. In the windless foreground, people can be seen doing typical seasonal activities, such as cutting willow branches. Customs and festivals are also indicated: one of the children wears a paper crown, a reference to the festival of the Three Kings , another is eating a waffle, a carnival pastry. In the bay with the estuary, on the other hand, a violent sea storm rages and capsizes ships. On the left rises a mighty mountain range, in which there is a large castle complex. The trees rising in the foreground stabilize the restless composition.
Motive and interpretation
The view does not show a real area, but a so-called world landscape , in which features of different parts of the world are gathered: Here a northern bay, there an alpine high mountain range. Bruegel had repeatedly integrated mountains into his pictures, although this did not correspond to his Flemish homeland. People seem small and marginalized.
background
The picture was taken in the middle of the 16th century during the so-called " Little Ice Age ". The average temperature across Europe fell by around 1.5 degrees, causing series of cool summers and cold winters. There were often bad harvests due to fungal attack, but also due to storms such as storms or hail. Storm surges increased on the sea coasts .
History and classification
In Bruegel's time, there were not four but six seasons in the Netherlands : early spring, spring, early summer, midsummer, autumn and winter. Made in 1565 by order of the Dutch art collector Niclaes Jonghelinck , the series came into Habsburg possession as early as 1594 as a gift for Archduke Ernst . Two further pictures The Hunters in the Snow (winter) and The return of the herd (autumn) belong to the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. The hay harvest (early summer) is in the Lobkowitz Palace in Prague Castle and the grain harvest (midsummer) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The spring picture was lost → The seasons pictures
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kunsthistorisches Museum - interactive: visit Gemäldegalerie (DVD-Rom) audio commentary on The gloomy day, ISBN 978-3-902491-09-1
- ^ Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen: Pieter Bruegel the Elder Ä. around 1525–1569. Peasants fools and demons . Cologne: Taschen Verlag 1999, p. 67, ISBN 3-8228-6590-7
- ↑ God, the Devil and the Weather ( Memento from April 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (NZZ article) Accessed November 24, 2009
- ↑ residence.aec.at ( Memento from May 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Accessed April 6, 2018
- ↑ Highlights of The Lobkowicz Collections - Haymaking, 1565 . Accessed April 6, 2018
- ^ Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Harvesters . Accessed April 6, 2018
Web links
Old peasant woman | The Adoration of the Magi (Bruegel, 1564) | The Adoration of the Magi (Bruegel, around 1556) | The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow | The country wedding | The peasant dance | The conversion of Paul | The Bethlehemite Child Murder | The fall of the blind | Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Galilee | Christ and the adulteress | The three soldiers | The gloomy day | The magpie on the gallows | River landscape with a sower | The yawn (?) | Great Tower of Babel | The port of Naples | The return of the flock | The haymaking | The wedding dance | The hunters in the snow | The battle between carnival and fasting | The children's games | Little Tower of Babel | The grain harvest | Christ Carrying the Cross | The cripples | Landscape with the Flight into Egypt | Landscape with the fall of Icarus (?) | Seascape with a burning city (?) | The misanthrope | The nest ejector | The Dutch proverbs | The sermon of John the Baptist | The land of milk and honey | Saul's suicide | The fall of the rebelling angels | Death of the virgin | The great Grete | The triumph of death | The Bethlehem Census | The wine for the feast of St. Martin | Winter landscape with ice skaters and bird trap | Two monkeys | Twelve Proverbs (?)
(?) Attribution controversial | Formerly attributed to Bruegel