Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1559

Year 1559 (MDLIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events[link]

January–June[link]

• January – King Philip II of Spain marries his third wife, 14-year-old Elisabeth of Valois.
• January 15 – Elizabeth I of England is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
• February 27 – Queen Elizabeth I of England establishes the Church of England, with the Act of Uniformity 1558 and the Act of Supremacy 1559. The Oath of Supremacy is reinstated.
• March 23 – Emperor Gelawdewos of Ethiopia, defending his lands against the invasion of Nur ibn Mujahid, Sultan of Harar, is killed in battle. His brother Menas succeeds him as king.
• April 2–April 3 – Peace of Cateau Cambrésis: France makes peace with England and Spain, ending the Italian War of 1551–1559. France gives up most of its gains in Italy (including Savoy), keeping only Saluzzo, but keeps the three Lorraine bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and the formerly English town of Calais.
• May 2 – John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the beginning Scottish Reformation.
• May 13 – At Basel, the body of Dutch Anabaptist leader David Joris is exhumed and burned, following his posthumous conviction of heresy.
• June 2 – A royal edict in France makes heresy punishable by death.

July–December[link]

• July 10 – Francis II becomes King of France following the death of his father, Henry II, in a jousting accident.
• August 15 – Led by Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano, a Spanish missionary colony of 1,500 men, on 13 ships, arrives from Vera Cruz at Pensacola Bay, founding the oldest European settlement in the mainland U.S. (St. Augustine is founded in 1565.)
• September 19 – Just weeks after arrival at Pensacola, the Spanish missionary colony is decimated by a hurricane that kills hundreds, sinks five ships, with a galleon, and grounds a caravel; the 1,000 survivors divide to relocate/resupply the settlement, but suffer famine & attacks, and abandon the effort in 1561.
• September 21 – The 15-year-old King Francis II of France is crowned at Reims. The crown is too heavy for him and has to be held in place by his nobles.^[1]
• December 25 – Pope Pius IV succeeds Pope Paul IV as the 224th pope.

Date unknown[link]

• Oda Nobunaga wins control of his native province of Owari.
• Margaret of Parma becomes Governor of the Netherlands in place of her brother, King Philip II of Spain.
• Jean Nicot, French ambassador to Portugal 1559–61, describes the medicinal properties of tobacco which he introduces in the form of snuff to the French court.^[2]
• Between 1559 and 1736 almost 1,000 people accused of being witches are executed in England.

Births[link]

• February 18 – Isaac Casaubon, French-born classical scholar (d. 1614)
• July 22 – Lawrence of Brindisi, Italian saint (d. 1619)
• October 12 – Jacques Sirmond, French scholar and Jesuit (d. 1651)
• November 15 – Archduke Albert of Austria, Governor of the Low Countries (d. 1621)
• date unknown
  • Francesco Bassano the Younger, Italian painter (d. 1592)
  • Catherine de Bourbon, sister of Henry IV of France (d. 1604)
  • George Chapman, English dramatist (d. 1634)
  • Ikeda Motosuke, Japanese military commander (d. 1584)
  • Nurhaci, Chinese founder of the Qing Dynasty (d. 1626)
  • John Penry, Welsh Protestant martyr (d. 1593)
  • Honinbo Sansa, Japanese player of Go (d. 1623)
  • John Spenser, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (d. 1614)

Deaths[link]

• January – Christina Gyllenstierna, leading opponent of King Christian II of Denmark and Norway
• January 1 – King Christian III of Denmark and Norway (b. 1503)
• January 25 – King Christian II of Denmark Norway, and Sweden (born 1481)
• March 8 – Thomas Tresham I, English Catholic politician
• March 16 – Anthony St. Leger, Lord Deputy of Ireland (b. 1496)
• March 23 – Emperor Gelawdewos of Ethiopia (in battle) (b. 1522)
• March 30 – Adam Ries, German mathematician (b. 1492)
• July 10 – King Henry II of France (jousting accident) (b. 1519)
• August 18 – Pope Paul IV (b. 1476)
• September 7 – Robert Estienne, French printer (b. 1503)
• September 10 – Anthony Denny, confidant of Henry VIII of England (b. 1501)
• October 2 – Jacquet of Mantua, French composer (b. 1483)
• October 6 – William I, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg (b. 1487)
• November 5 – Kano Motonobu, Japanese painter (b. 1476)
• November 18 – Cuthbert Tunstall, English church leader (b. 1474)
• November 20 – Lady Frances Brandon, claimant to the throne of England (b. 1517)
• date unknown
  • Realdo Colombo, Italian surgeon and anatomist (b. 1516)
  • Leonard Digges, English mathematician and surveyor (b. c. 1515)
  • Owen Oglethorpe, English priest
  • Conn O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, Irish rebel (b. 1480)
  • Wen Zhengming, Chinese painter (b. 1470)

References[link]

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
The Painter and The Connoisseur, c. 1565 is thought to be Bruegel's self-portrait.
Birth name	Pieter Bruegel
Born	c. 1525 Bree, Duchy of Brabant, Habsburg Netherlands (now Belgium)
Died	9 September 1569(1569-09-09) (age 44) Brussels, Duchy of Brabant, Habsburg Netherlands (now Belgium)
Field	Painting, printmaking
Movement	Dutch and Flemish Renaissance
Works	Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, The Hunters in the Snow, The Peasant Wedding

Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpitəɾ ˈbɾøːɣəl]; c. 1525 – 9 September 1569) was a Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so called genre painting). He is sometimes referred to as the "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but he is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which Brueghel is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and signed his paintings as Bruegel.

Life[link]

According to some sources he was born in Breugel near the (now Dutch) town of Breda. There are however also records that he was born in Breda, and there is some uncertainty whether the (now Belgian) town of Bree, called Breda in Latin, is meant.^[1] He was an apprentice of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose daughter Mayken he later married. He spent some time in France and Italy, and then went to Antwerp, where in 1551 he was accepted as a master in the painter's guild. He traveled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later.

He received the nickname 'Peasant Bruegel' or 'Bruegel the Peasant' for his alleged practice of dressing up like a peasant in order to mingle at weddings and other celebrations, thereby gaining inspiration and authentic details for his genre paintings. He died in Brussels on 9 September 1569 and was buried in the Kapellekerk. He was the father of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Both became painters, but as they were very young children when their father died, it is believed neither received any training from him. According to Carel van Mander, it is likely that they were instructed by their grandmother Mayken Verhulst van Aelst, who was also an artist.

Style[link]

In Bruegel's later years he painted in a simpler style than the Italianate art that prevailed in his time. The most obvious influence on his art is the older Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, particularly in Bruegel's early "demonological" paintings such as The Triumph of Death and Dulle Griet (Mad Meg). It was in nature, however, that he found his greatest inspiration as he is identified as being a master of landscapes. It was in these landscapes that Bruegel created a story, seeming to combine several scenes in one painting. Such works can be seen in The Fall of the Rebel Angels and the previously mentioned The Triumph of Death.

Themes[link]

Bruegel specialized in genre paintings populated by peasants, often with a large landscape element, but also painted religious works. Making the life and manners of peasants the main focus of a work was rare in painting in Brueghel's time, and he was a pioneer of the Netherlandish genre painting. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life. For example, the painting Netherlandish Proverbs illustrates dozens of then-contemporary aphorisms (many of them still in use in current Dutch or Flemish), and Children's Games shows the variety of amusements enjoyed by young people. His winter landscapes of 1565 (e.g. Hunters in the Snow) are taken as corroborative evidence of the severity of winters during the Little Ice Age.

Using abundant spirit and comic power, he created some of the early images of acute social protest in art history. Examples include paintings such as The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (a satire of the conflicts of the Reformation) and engravings like The Ass in the School and Strongboxes Battling Piggybanks. On his deathbed he reportedly ordered his wife to burn the most subversive of his drawings to protect his family from political persecution.^[2]

Influence[link]

His painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is the subject of the 1938 poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden, and also of a 1960 poem by William Carlos Williams that also uses Bruegel's title.

Russian film director Andrei Tarkovksy referenced Bruegel's paintings in his films several times, notably in Solaris (1972) and The Mirror (1975).

His 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary inspired the 2011 Polish-Swedish film co-production The Mill and the Cross, in which Bruegel is played by Rutger Hauer.

It is believed that his painting Hunters in the Snow influenced the classic short story with the same title written by Tobias Wolff and featured in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs.

Works[link]

There are about 45 authenticated surviving paintings, one third of which are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A number of others are known to have been lost. There are a large number of drawings. Brueghel only etched one plate himself, The Rabbit Hunt, but designed many engravings and etchings, mostly for the Cock publishing house.

• 

  Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1558), Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

• 

  Netherlandish Proverbs (1559), Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, with peasant scenes illustrating over 100 proverbs

• 

  Children's Games (1560), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  A detail of Children's Games (1560)

• 

  The Triumph of Death (c. 1562), Museo del Prado, Madrid

• 

  The Fall of the Rebel Angels, (1562), Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

• 

  Dull Gret {1562}.Museum Mayer van den Bergh, oil on panel

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  The Tower of Babel (1563), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, oil on board

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  Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap (1565), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  The Hunters in the Snow (1565) Dec-Jan, oil on oak panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  The Gloomy Day {1565}, Feb-Mar, oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  The Hay Harvest (1565), June-July, Oil on wood, National Museum (Prague), Lobkowicz family collection in Lobkowicz Palace in Prague Castle ^[3]

• 

  The Harvesters (1565), Aug-Sept, oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• 

  The Return of the Herd {1565} OCt-Nov, oil on oak panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  The Wedding Dance (c.1566), oil on oak panel, The Detroit Institute of Arts [1]

• 

  The Census at Bethlehem (1566), oil on wood panel, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

• 

  Massacre of the Innocents, (c. 1565-1567), Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu

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  The Land of Cockaigne (1567), Alte Pinakothek, an illustration of the medieval mythical land of plenty called Cockaigne

• 

  The Peasant Wedding (1568), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  The Peasant Dance (1568), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, oil on oak panel

• 

  The Peasant and the Nest Robber (1568), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

• 

  The Beggars (The Cripples) (1568), Louvre, Paris, oil on panel

• 

  The Blind Leading the Blind (1568), National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples

• 

  The Misanthrope (1568), National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples

• Naval Battle in the Gulf of Naples, 1560, Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome
• The Fall of the Rebel Angels 1562, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
• The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
• The Procession to Calvary, 1564, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Adoration of the Kings, 1564, The National Gallery, London
• Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1567, versions at Royal Collection, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, at Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu,^[4] and at Upton House, Banbury
• Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, inv. 8724
• Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias, 1553, probably with Maarten de Vos, private collection
• Ass at School, 1556, drawing, Print room, Berlin State Museums
• Parable of the Sower, 1557, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego
• Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1554–55, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels – Note: Now seen as a copy of a lost authentic Bruegel painting^[5]
• Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Portrait of an Old Woman, 1560, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
• Children's Games, 1560, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Temperance, 1560
• The Suicide of Saul (Battle Against The Philistines On The Gilboa), 1562, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Two Small Monkeys, 1562, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• The Triumph of Death, c. 1562, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), c. 1562, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp
• The Tower of Babel, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Flight To Egypt, 1563, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
• The Death of the Virgin, 1564, (grisaille), Upton House, Banbury
• The Months. A cycle of probably 6 paintings of the months or seasons, of which five remain:
  • The Hunters in the Snow (Dec.–Jan.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • The Gloomy Day (Feb.–Mar.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • The Hay Harvest (June–July), 1565, Lobkowicz Palace at the Prague Castle Complex, Czech Republic
  • The Harvesters (Aug.-Sept.), 1565, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • The Return of the Herd (Oct.–Nov.), 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (1565), Courtauld Institute of Art, London
• The Calumny of Apelles, 1565, drawing, British Museum, London
• The Painter and the Connoisseur, drawing, c. 1565, Albertina, Vienna
• Preaching of John the Baptist, 1566, Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)
• The Census at Bethlehem, 1566, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
• The Wedding Dance, c. 1566, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
• Conversion of Paul, 1567, Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna
• The Land of Cockaigne, 1567, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
• The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt
• The Misanthrope, 1568, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
• The Blind Leading the Blind, 1568, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
• The Peasant Wedding, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Peasant Dance, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Beggars (The Cripples), 1568, Louvre, Paris
• The Peasant and the Nest Robber, 1568, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• The Three Soldiers, 1568, The Frick Collection, New York City
• The Storm at Sea, an unfinished work, probably Bruegel's last painting.
• The Wine of Saint Martin’s Day, Museo del Prado, Madrid (discovered in 2010)

Prints

• Large Fish Eat Small Fish, 1556, a print after a Bruegel design

Family tree[link]

Other members of the family include Pieter van Aelst and Mayken Verhulst (father-in-law and mother-in-law to Pieter Bruegel the Elder), Jan van Kessel, senior (grandson of Jan Bruegel the Elder) and Jan van Kessel, junior. Through David Teniers, the family is also related to the whole Teniers family of painters and the Quellinus family of painters and sculptors, since Jan-Erasmus Quellinus married Cornelia, daughter of David Teniers the Younger.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Breughel, Pieter.

• Bosch Bruegel Society
• www.Pieter-Bruegel-The-Elder.org 99 works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Complete list of paintings which includes all of the 100 proverbs from the painting, with explanation (in French).
• Timken Museum of Art's "Parable of the Sower" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Creativity Brueghel laid the foundation of the Netherlands School
•  "Bruegel". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.