The Bethlehemite Child Murder (Bruegel)

The Bethlehemite child murder
Pieter Bruegel the Elder , around 1565
Oil on oak
109 × 158 cm
Windsor Castle

The Bethlehemite Child Murder is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from around 1565 . The 109 cm × 158 cm oil painting on oak is named after a scene from the Gospel of Matthew ( Mt 2,16  ELB ) and belongs to the Royal Collection in Windsor Castle .

The best known copy is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna , room 10.

Original in Windsor Castle

The picture may originally have actually shown a Bethlehemite child murder , but this title is no longer easily comprehensible today due to extensive overpainting: It appears that a wintry Flemish village is being plundered. The foot soldiers are dressed as local Flemings and the riders dressed in red jackets as Walloon mercenaries, the black armored riders in the center of the picture can be identified as Spanish troops by the vertical lances. On the right, villagers seeking help surround a herald who is overseeing the action; on the left in the foreground, a farmer kneels down in front of a mounted Walloon mercenary for the same reason. The village street leads in a curve to a bridge on which a rider is positioned. The village church is offset from the center. After the horizon is covered by the roofs of houses, the picture makes a closed, space-like impression.

It is apparently a Spanish punitive expedition against an insubordinate Dutch village (see also section: Historical context ). The looters rob and kill animals and stab bundles of cloth. On the lower right-hand edge, one enters the door of an inn, while others enter through a window. In the foreground on the right there is a water hole with barrels and tree trunks in it, on the right there are two willows. The main event takes place clearly visible in the center of the picture, so it is not hidden, as is the case with the carrying of the cross or the conversion of Paul .

Copy in Vienna

The Bethlehemite child murder
Pieter Brueghel the Younger , last quarter of the 16th century
Oil on oak
116 × 160 cm
Art History Museum

The oil painting on oak in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, room 10 (4th quarter of the 16th century, inv.no. GG 1024) has long been regarded as the original. It can be traced back to 1610–1619 in the Neue Burg, in 1748 it was moved from the treasury to the picture gallery.

Today it is believed to be a copy of Pieter Brueghel the Younger or his workshop, but it is also of the best quality. It provides information about the former appearance of the original, because here the mercenaries actually kill children. Some of the most noticeable differences (from left to right): A woman bends over her stabbed child, in the older version over bread and other objects. In the center of the picture, the foot soldiers stab nappy babies , in the "original" turkeys. On the right a soldier is threatening a child in the arms of a mother, in the older picture the woman is only holding a large jug. The sign on the tavern on the right bears the inscription “Dit is inde ster” (Zum Stern) and refers to the hostel where Maria and Joseph did not find a place. In the picture in Windsor the star has been painted over and the last three letters have been made illegible.

The Vienna copy is trimmed to 116 × 160 cm, the signature is half cut off: BRVEG lower right.

history

Bruegel's biographer Karel van Mander mentions the still intact original picture (or one of the copies) in his Schilderboek in 1604:

“From the knowledgeable Bruegel no blemishes / Still in a child murder can be seen / deathly pale a fainted mother / Yes, a sad clan / to whom the Herald [turns] / To [ask] a child's life / from whom well enough Compassion can be seen / But he shows the king's decree with painful sentences / That one must not be merciful to anyone. "

- Karel van Mander : Schilderboek

In a side note, van Mander also mentions that the piece is presumably with the “Kayser Rhodolphus” ( Emperor Rudolf ). That is why the copy in the Kunsthistorisches Museum was considered the original for a long time.

The picture can be traced back to the Prague Treasury and Art Chamber in 1621 as “A village blind ring from old Prügl”; it is mentioned again in 1647/48. After the Peace of Westphalia , which ended the Thirty Years War , the Swedish army probably brought it to Sweden with other paintings , at least it reappears in Queen Christina’s collection in 1652 . In 1654/55 the queen traveled to Rome and took part of her collection with her. She had already left ten paintings in Antwerp and Brussels , including the child murder. It was bought in Breda in 1660 by the English king Charles II, who was exiled during Cromwell's reign . As “ villadge with souldiery ” (German: “Dorf mit Militär”) it can be found in 1662 in the King's Privy Gallery in the palace at Whitehall, where it was until the beginning of the 18th century remained. At the time of Queen Anne 1702–1707 it was in Hampton Court, then in Somerset House and Kensington. The attribution to Pieter Bruegel the Elder comes from an inventory of Carlton House for the first time in 1819. A later stop was Windsor Castle and since 1901 it has belonged to the collection in Hampton Court. Today (as of 2017) it is in Windsor Castle (King's Dressing Room).

research

In modern research, the British art historian Kenneth Clark first suspected the authorship of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1941/42. In 1955, X-ray examinations were carried out on this version and the picture in Vienna. In the version in Windsor, the signature largely corresponds to what is painted, which speaks in favor of an original, and the brushstroke is a bit coarser and more expressive than on the Viennese picture, which also has some detail errors - such is the bridle of the horses, for example that of the herald, misrepresented.

Historical context

Philip II , the son of Emperor Charles V , had moved his seat from Brussels to Castile in the summer of 1559 after the war against France had been won, which in the Netherlands was perceived as a degradation. After all, he appointed his half-sister Margarethe von Parma , a native of Flemin, to be general governor of the seventeen provinces. The individual provinces, which had a relatively high degree of independence, received their own local aristocratic leaders as governors.

Soon, however, flared controversy over the reorganization of the dioceses and the coming still from the reign of Charles V heretic laws against Protestants . Favored by the aristocratic leaders for strategic reasons, radical Calvinism spread , whose followers demanded a state of God . At the height of the conflict there was a six-day iconoclasm in August 1566, during which more than four hundred churches were devastated. In response, Philip II deposed his half-sister and appointed Álvarez de Toledo ( Duke Alba ) as the new governor. Initially, the latter was able to successfully suppress the uprising , but (among other things) the introduction of high taxes rekindled the riot, which eventually led to the division of the country into a Catholic south ( Belgium ) and a Protestant north (today's Netherlands) in the course of the Eighty Years War .

See also

• List of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

literature

• Christian Gräf: The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2009, ISBN 978-3-639-12775-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Christian Gräf: The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2009, p. 100 ff
2. ↑ ^{a b} KHM property database , accessed on October 16, 2017
3. ↑ The Winter Pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . P. 94 ff. (Differences between original and copy)
4. ↑ Karel van Mander: Het Schilderboek . Part 1, Grondt…, Haarlem 1604; German translation by Hans Floerke (1906), which follows the second edition from 1618; quote here. After Roger H. Marijhaben - Bruegel. The complete work, Antwerp / Cologne 2003, p. 410, note 263; see. also p. 283.
5. ↑ The Winter Pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . P. 88
6. ↑ The Winter Pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . P. 87 ff.
7. ^ Royal Collection Trust: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569). Massacre of the Innocents c.1565-67 . accessed on October 16, 2017 (location)
8. ↑ The Winter Pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . P. 89 ff. (Differences between original and copy)
9. ↑ Netherlands in the struggle for freedom: For gold and freedom . Brockhaus multimedia premium, 2007.