Bruegel s Comic World: Everyday Life i

We are told, in one of the earliest accounts of the life and work of the Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569), that his prints and paintings elicited laughter. From his visualizations of carnival celebrations and children's games to peasant weddings to riotous hellscapes, the comic Bruegel makes his viewers, both in the late sixteenth century and today, question whether any of it should be taken seriously. This advanced undergraduate seminar examines Bruegel's innovative comic practice and the social context of laughter and humor in the era of the Dutch Revolt, a time fraught with social, political, and religious strife. We will explore the reception of Bruegel's work in his time, in particular the possibilities of both entertainment and didacticism for viewers. Our studies of pictorial humor in Bruegel's oeuvre will include broader investigations of the secularization of the image in the Reformation context, iconoclasm, the vernacular artistic mode, print culture in early modern Europe, humanism, global expansion and trade, the relationship between pictorial and literary humor, and the functions of satire in visual art. A field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art will allow us to encounter Bruegel's images in person.