Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Fall of the Rebel Angels

Born in the village of Bruegel, near Breda, the Netherlands, in 1525, Pieter Brueghel was the founder and greatest figure of an extraordinary family of Flemish painters. Because of his realistic subject matter, he is often called the Peasant Brueghel. His son, Pieter II (c.1564-1638), who made numerous copies of his father's great paintings, is called the Hell Brueghel; another son, Jan (1568-1625), carries the name Velvet Brueghel.

Pieter Brueghel, himself no peasant, but a learned humanist who had traveled to France and-significantly-to Renaissance Italy, is famous for his stark peasant scenes. They include dramatic pictures of historical events, such as the terrible Massacre of the Innocents, which is believed to depict the Spanish atrocities in the Netherlands. He was also a major painter of landscapes, into which he put scenes of peasant life (Ice Skating) or of mythological events (The Fall of Icarus).

Brueghel died in 1569.

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