Although Pieter Bruegel's pictures have been celebrated throughout the past four hundred years, the artist himself remains a shadowy and misunderstood figure. In a volume which will widen the understanding and enhance the enjoyment of Bruegel's many admirers, Walter Gibson illuminates the sixteenth-century world in which the artist lived. He analyzes the different strands of Bruegel's inspiration, examines his works, and considers his influence on later artists. Dispelling the notion of Bruegel the simpleton peasant, the author shows us Bruegel the cultivated artist, satisfying an urban society's pleasure in moralizing tales and proverbs, rooted in the rich, bourgeois, brilliant Antwerp of the Flemish Renaissance. 153 illus., 20 in color

Bruegel (The World of art)

Arts & Photography

Gibson, Walter S.

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Although Pieter Bruegel's pictures have been celebrated throughout the past four hundred years, the artist himself remains a shadowy and misunderstood figure. In a volume which will widen the understanding and enhance the enjoyment of Bruegel's many admirers, Walter Gibson illuminates the sixteenth-century world in which the artist lived. He analyzes the different strands of Bruegel's inspiration, examines his works, and considers his influence on later artists. Dispelling the notion of Bruegel the simpleton peasant, the author shows us Bruegel the cultivated artist, satisfying an urban society's pleasure in moralizing tales and proverbs, rooted in the rich, bourgeois, brilliant Antwerp of the Flemish Renaissance. 153 illus., 20 in color

Bruegel (World of Art)

Thames&Hudson

"An exceptional book, sensible, illuminating and readable...probably the best straightforward account of Bosch and his works which we shall have for some time."―Times Literary Supplement No one can look at the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch without amazement and bewilderment. Professor Gibson shows that what seems inexplicable to us today―the canvases full of torture, monsters, and leering devils―was perfectly intelligible to the fifteenth-century viewer. The subjects of Bosch's paintings were in fact the overwhelming concerns of late medieval Europe: the Last Judgment, original sin, death, temptations of the flesh. The author describes each picture in detail, placing each work within the context of medieval folklore and religion, and explains that many of the acts portrayed in the pictures were visual translations of verbal puns or metaphors.

Hieronymus Bosch (World of Art)

Literature & Fiction

The variations of pleasure and their expression in Dutch rustic landscapes of the seventeenth century are recurring themes in Walter S. Gibson's engaging new book. Gibson focuses on Haarlem between 1600 and 1635, in his interpretation of Dutch landscapes and emphasizes prints, the medium in which the rustic view was first made available to the general art-buying public. Gibson begins by looking at the origins of the rustic landscape in the sixteenth-century Flanders and its later reformation by Dutch artists, a legacy very much alive today. He next offers a critical review of "scriptural reading," a popular mode of interpreting the Dutch rustic landscape that incorporates Calvinist-influenced moral allegories. Gibson then explores traditional ideas concerning recreation and suggests that the pleasure of rural landscapes, not preaching, constituted their chief appeal for seventeenth-century urban viewers. Using Visscher's Plaisante Plaetsen ("Pleasant Places") as a point of departure, Gibson examines the ways that townspeople, both the day-trippers and owners of country houses, experienced the Dutch countryside. He also discusses the role of staffage and suggests how the representations of peasants might have conditioned the responses of contemporary viewers to rural images. Finally, Gibson considers how scenes of the dilapidated farm buildings, dead trees, and other evidence of material decay may reflect traditional ideas rustic life as imagined by a townsperson. Or how they may represent another way for the artist to engage his urban audience: far removed from the idealized landscapes of a Giorgione, the rustic landscape of a Ruisdael conveys a countryside that was beginning to disappear under the relentless pressures of urbanization.
 Gibson's multilayered exploration of the rustic landscape enhances our understanding of the Golden Age in Dutch art. His richly illustrated book recalls a countryside now largely gone; at the same time, his evocative language gracefully articulates the role of the Dutch rustic landscape in the history of landscape painting.

Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Breugel to Ruisdael

University of California Press

Pieter Bruegel (ca. 1525–1569), generally considered the greatest Flemish painter of the sixteenth century, was described in 1604 by his earliest biographer as a supremely comic artist, few of whose works failed to elicit laughter. Today, however, we approach Bruegel’s art as anything but a laughing matter. His paintings and drawings are thought to conceal profound allegories best illuminated with scholarly erudition. In this delightfully engaging book, Walter S. Gibson takes a new look at Bruegel, arguing that the artist was no erudite philosopher, but a man very much in the world, and that a significant part of his art is best appreciated in the context of humor. In his illuminating examination of the witty and amusing elements in Bruegel’s paintings, prints, and drawings in relation to the sixteenth century European culture of laughter, Gibson reminds us exactly why Bruegel was one of the most original artists of his time. In a series of engrossing chapters, Gibson explores the function and production of laughter in the sixteenth century, examines the ways in which Bruegel exploited the comic potential of Hieronymus Bosch, and traces how the artist developed his remarkable gift for physiognomy in his work, culminating in three paintings of festive peasants he produced during the 1560s: the Wedding Dance, the Kermis, and the Wedding Banquet. Gibson also takes a detailed look at the Dulle Griet, Bruegel’s most complex evocation of Bosch.

Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter

Figures of Speech addresses a key topic in Renaissance studies: the importance and pervasiveness of proverbs. For sixteenth-century Netherlanders, proverbs revealed the wisdom of the Ancients as well as the linguistic richness found in their own native language; for Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, and other Renaissance painters, proverbs were a frequent and appealing subject. In this book, Walter S. Gibson provides a comprehensive and engaging survey of these visual representations, capturing for twenty-first–century readers the moral sensibilities of a time and culture when such adages (and the images conveying their meaning) were invaluable guides to life.

Figures of Speech: Picturing Proverbs in Renaissance Netherlands

The Flemish world landscapes, which depict extensive panoramas seen in bird's-eye perspective and contain a wealth of map-like detail, were produced in large numbers, chiefly at Antwerp, during the sixteenth century. Although most major museums in the United States or Europe have at least one Flemish world landscape, relatively little has been written about this type of painting. As a corrective, Walter Gibson's copiously illustrated book presents a comprehensive study of the world landscape, establishing it as a distinct pictorial type and analyzing it within the artistic and intellectual milieu in which it flourished. We learn that far from being a medieval anachronism, as some scholars have insisted, the world landscape was very much a product of its time, associated with contemporary advances in cartography and reflecting a Renaissance view of the world and of man's relationship to it.
 The first chapters trace the development of the world landscape from its formulation by Joachim Patinir to its culmination in the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. They include a close examination of representative paintings together with discussions about the reasons for the popularity of the landscapes and about wider issues concerning art theory. The final chapter covers the gradual disappearance of the world landscape after its final efflorescence in the work of Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens.

"Mirror of the Earth": The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting

Painting

Princeton University Press

Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

G.K. Hall

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: 2 Studies (Franklin D. Murphy Lectures)

Spencer Museum Of Art/University of Kansas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gibson, Walter S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gibson, Walter S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gibson, Walter S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Bruegel (The World of art)

Bruegel (World of Art)

Hieronymus Bosch (World of Art)

Bruegel (World of Art)

Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Breugel to Ruisdael

Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter

Figures of Speech: Picturing Proverbs in Renaissance Netherlands

"Mirror of the Earth": The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting

Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: 2 Studies (Franklin D. Murphy Lectures)