History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 35

art, Hugo van der Goes went mad, and Hans Memling and Gerard David produced
melancholy, sometimes insipid pastiches of earlier works.

More in tune with the spiritual crisis that racked the continent at century’s end were the
bizarre allegories painted by Hieronymus Bosch. In his three-paneled “Garden of
Earthly Delights” (1505–10; Prado, Madrid), mankind moves in swarms from paradise
to perversion to punishment, acting out myriad fantasies of sensual gratification.
The turbulent 16th century in Flanders was not hospitable to art and produced only
one great master, Pieter Bruegel. It is in Bruegel’s powerful portrayals of peasant life
that one finds best reflected the brutality of the age. Bruegel, influenced by Bosch and
educated by a two-year sojourn in Italy, developed a robust style marked by structural
solidity, rhythmic sweep, and an ironic moralizing eye for the grotesque. Bruegel left
behind two sons, Pieter the Younger, also called Hell Brueghel because of his
paintings of damnation, and Jan Brueghel, called Velvet Brueghel, who devoted
himself to still-life painting.
In that capacity Jan Brueghel assisted in the flourishing workshop of the great master
of the Flemish Baroque, Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens showed an unrivaled mastery of
the oil medium, creating for the monarchs of France and Spain fluid, luminous works
of great energy and power. The works of his early maturity, such as “The Elevation of
the Cross” (1610; Antwerp Cathedral), show evidence of careful study of the Italian
masters Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio, but these works also have a
rippling, silky surface and an animal vitality wholly Flemish in character.

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