In Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community Barbara Kaminska offers the first book-length study of Bruegel’s biblical paintings, and argues that they were inherently linked to Antwerp’s religious, socio-economic, and cultural transformation.
Author(s): Barbara A. Kamińska
Series: Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 15
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 254
City: Leiden
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
Chapter 1
Negotiating Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Antwerp: Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel
1 For “an Idel and Foolish Ostentation of Money”? The Tower of Babel and the Ambiguities of Progress
2 Framing the Tower of Babel: Space, Conversation, People
3 Monopolies, Self-Interest, and the Common Good
4 Antwerp as an International “Community of Commerce” in Philip’s 1549 Joyous Entry
Chapter 2
Conversion on Display: Imperial Politics, Religious Transformation, and Socioeconomic Stability in Antwerp
1 Images of the Conversion of Saint Paul in Probate Inventories and the Location of Works of Art
2 “Alzo tot onzer kennesse ghecommen es”: Habsburg Legislation and the Culture of External Display in Antwerp
3 Defining Conversion in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries
4 Between Light and Darkness: Bruegel’s Conversion of Saint Paul and Dutch Vernacular Theatre
5 Toward a New Model of Religiosity
Chapter 3
“In Their Houses”: Domestic Space and Religious Practices in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Antwerp
1 “Permissible even for sailors”? Lay Reading of the Bible and Spanish Legislation in Antwerp
2 Theological Approaches to Religious Imagery in Private Households
3 In “zyne huysen”: The Procession to Calvary, Ommegangen, and the Relocation of Religious Practices
Chapter 4
“Outside in the Woods”: The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist and Hedge-Preaching in Antwerp
1 Picturing Conversations in Bruegel’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist
Chapter 5
“If You Are without a Sin”: Religious and Artistic Discourse in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery
1 Truth and Penitence in Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery
2 Adultery, Idolatry, and Rhetorical Strategies of Bruegel’s Grisaille
Chapter 6
Choosing “the Best Part”: Christian Death and Life in Bruegel’s Death of the Virgin
1 “Sweet Sleep” and the Transition from Vita Activa to Vita Contemplativa in Bruegel’s Grisaille
2 Artistry and Theological Truth in the Images of the Death of the Virgin
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
