Pieter Bruegel: le Massacre des Innocents : art et histoire au XVIe siècle

Abstract

The work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder is part of his era, the Renaissance, the "Rinascimento", imagined in 1568 by the Italian Giogrio Vasari, we rediscover throughout Western Europe, the arts, sciences and especially literature. Some emblematic sovereigns: Charles V, François Ier, Henri VIII, Philippe II, or Suleiman the magnificent; and condottieres like Andrea Doria, Don Juan of Austria, the Duke of Alba, Hernán Cortez, or Fransisco Pizarro, are the actors of the main political and military upheavals of the time. In terms of ideas, Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543), calls into question the Aristotelian theory of a Universe centered on the Earth. The printing press, developed thanks to movable copper or lead type designed by the typographer Johannes Gutenberg, popularized the distribution of books. Martin Luther published in 1517 the so-called Wittenberg theses contesting the power of the papacy. It is the advent of a vast reflection on otherness, the conception of a true humanism whose trace can be found in the work of a Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), in the writings of philosophers like Antonio de Guevara (1480-1545), or Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Other authors, like the Brabant Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), or the Florentine Nicolas Machiavelli (1469-1527), will theorize without concessions for the dogmas of Christian morality, politics and the art of government. However, a large majority of the inhabitants of Europe were still illiterate and could not really take advantage of these new opportunities. It is in this world, and in the midst of these contradictions, that Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born. This book recounts its history in a masterful way.