Pieter Bruegel The Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a leading Dutch and Flemish Renaissance artist from Brabant, celebrated for elevating landscapes and peasant “genre” scenes into major subjects for large paintings.

His inventive focus on everyday life (rather than primarily religious themes or portraits) strongly shaped later European art, including Dutch Golden Age painting. After training and traveling in Italy, he settled in Antwerp in 1555 and first built his career designing prints for a top publisher.

Only later did he shift to painting as his main medium, producing nearly all of his most famous works in a remarkably short final decade before dying young, likely in his early forties.