The Fall of the Rebel Angels (Bruegel)

The Fall of the Rebel Angels
Artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Year 1562[1]
Type Oil on panel
Dimensions 117 cm × 162 cm (46 in × 64 in)
Location Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

The Fall of the Rebel Angels is an oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1562. It is currently held and exhibited at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.

Description

Painted in 1562, Bruegel's depiction of this subject is taken from a passage from the Book of Revelation (12, 2-9)[2] and reveals the artist's profound debt to Hieronymous Bosch, especially in the grotesque figures of the fallen angels, shown as half-human, half-animal monsters. Together with Dulle Griet and The Triumph of Death, which have similar dimensions, it was probably painted for the same collector and destined to become part of a series.[3]

The composition with a central figure placed among many smaller figures was favoured by Bruegel at this time, not only in other paintings such as Dulle Griet, but also in the series of engravings of the Vices and the Virtues which he had just completed for the Antwerp publisher Hieronymous Cock.[4] The archangel Michael and his angels are shown by Bruegel in the act of driving the rebel angels from Heaven. Pride was the sin which caused the fall of Lucifer and his companions, and the conflict of good and evil, vice and virtue, is a theme which recurs constantly in Bruegel's work.[5]

References

  1. ↑ dated and signed "M.D.LXI BRVEGEL"
  2. ↑ King James Version, 12, 2-9
  3. ↑ Cf. Pietro Allegretti. Brueghel. Milan:Skira, 2003. ISBN 0-00-001088-X (Italian)
  4. ↑ Compare Bruegel's engravings Pride and Gluttony.
  5. ↑ Max Seidel, Roger H. Marijnissen. Bruegel. Pt.2, Random House, 1985. ISBN 0-517-44772-X

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "article name needed". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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