From Publishers Weekly
The earthy peasant scenes and nightmarish visions of the netherworld painted by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569) seem to cry out for a sociopolitical reading. But Parisian art historian Rocquet's biography, an "imaginative portrait," suffers from a central impediment: almost nothing is known about Brueghel's life. Hardcore fans of the Flemish artist may enjoy this highly speculative profile, which builds on the known facts with invented conversations, interior monologues and suppositions. We follow the painter as he wanders from town to town, attending fairs and banquets, observing windmills, hangings and the oppression of the Low Countries by King Philip II of Spain. We watch Brueghel move in 1563 from the bustling port of Antwerp to verdant Brussels, where he lives on a country lane and paints in a workshop attic. And, as Brueghel creates a surreal triptych, the reader imaginatively descends with him "into that Babylon of caverns and depths that we all are."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The spiritually wracked and violence-tormented world of the mid-16th-century Lowlands is the locus of this loosely structured and meditative historical novel. Organized around the artistic activities of Peter Bruegel (d.1569), the book devolves into an often predictably poetic gathering of descriptive evocations of the master's work; images of places and scenes that he may have experienced; art, historical, and cultural trivia; and several vivid re-creations of the contemporary political world. In the knowingly anachronistic formulation of the author, Bruegel's art becomes a device for articulating a notion of creativity as personal expression while largely omitting the social context of patronage. The overarching attempt to transmute this material into a more profound metaphorical scheme is both unconvincing and unmoving.
- Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
