Maler und Käufer

Der rätselhafte und unkonventionelle Charakter dieser Zeichnung hat zu vielen Deutungsversuchen geführt. Zum Teil geht der Sinn der Darstellung aus den Figuren selbst hervor. Die große Distanz zwischen der Welt des Künstlers und der des Käufers tritt durch die Gegensätze in der Physiognomie, der Bekleidung und der Tätigkeit der beiden Figuren prägnant in Erscheinung. Der ernste Künstler mit dem struppigen Bart- und Haarwuchs ist ganz vertieft in seine Arbeit; seine Augen, die auf einen außerhalb des Bildes gelegenen Punkt fixiert sind, werden von buschigen Augenbrauen überwuchert. Die Vermutung, es handle sich hier um ein Selbstbildnis, scheint durch das einzige bekannte Porträt des Künstlers, das mit dem gezeichneten Maler nicht die geringste Ähnlichkeit aufweist, widerlegt zu werden. Dieses in Kupfer gestochene Profilporträt Pieter Bruegels erschien allerdings posthum (1572). Eher scheint Bruegel hier eine überhöhte Charakteristik des weltabgewandten, vergeistigten Malers zu bieten, dem der Käufer als Kontrastfigur gegenübersteht. Der bartlose, schmallippige Mann, der bereitwillig nach seinem Geldbeutel greift, repräsentiert die äußere Welt des Geldes. Die Brille verweist - wie so oft bei Bruegel - auf das mangelhafte Sehvermögen des "Kenners", dessen stupider Ausdruck durch den halb geöffneten Mund noch verstärkt wird.
Welchem Zweck diese ungewöhnliche Zeichnung gedient hat, ist nicht bekannt. Es ist gut denkbar, dass das Blatt als autonome Arbeit entstand, sei es für den eigenen Gebrauch oder als Schenkung an eine Privatperson. Nicht weniger als vier Wiederholungen des Werkes sind heute bekannt.
Charakteristisch für Bruegel ist die unklare räumliche Konstellation der Figuren. Der Künstler steht vor dem Käufer, dessen Kopf dem Betrachter jedoch näher zu sein scheint und dessen Gestalt die des Künstlers überragt. Außerdem zeigt die Figur des Malers eine perspektivische Diskrepanz. Der sorgfältig durchgearbeitete Kopf wirkt wie von einem fernen, etwas tiefer gelegenen Standpunkt aus studiert, während der lebendig gezeichnete Oberkörper offensichtlich aus nächster Nähe und mehr von oben her betrachtet wurde. Die an den Rand gedrückten Halbfiguren wurden vermutlich nur wenig beschnitten (siehe AK Albertina/Washington/New York 1984-1986, S. 214).
Charakteristisch für Bruegels späten Zeichenstil um die Mitte der 1560er-Jahre sind die voluminösen, blockartig isolierten Körperformen, verbunden mit der modellierenden Wirkung des Lichtes.

Marian Bisanz-Prakken, in: Klaus Albrecht Schröder (Hg.), Die großen Meister der Albertina (Kat. Best. Albertina, Wien 2008), Petersberg 2008, Nr. 27.

On Art and Artists

Eva Michel

One might call drawing or the celebrated art of draftsmanship the father of painting, and indeed also the proper access or gateway to many other art forms, such as that of the goldsmith or the architect. The seven liberal arts could also not exist without it, for the art of drawing encompasses all things and holds all the arts in its gentle embrace.[i]

In August 1566, a storm of iconoclasm raged in the Netherlands, which brought with it a hitherto unknown wave of destruction of art. Already in the decades before, artworks with Christian themes had been destroyed throughout Europe as the result of a ban on images demanded by the reformers (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”). Parallel to this, an intellectual debate arose as to the legitimacy of images in general and religious depictions in particular. Whereas Martin Luther primarily contested the sale of indulgences but permitted images for didactic purposes, John Calvin, whose teachings found increasing acceptance among the Dutch population from the 1550s onward, spoke out for a complete ban on images. In contrast, at the Council of Trent in 1563, the Catholic Church reaffirmed the use of images, as long as veneration was directed toward the depicted and did not lead to idolatry. On the eve of the Dutch War of Independence from the Catholic-Spanish Habsburgs (1568–1648), religion and politics were thus closely interlinked. In 1566, the smoldering tensions in many cities led to the complete destruction of churches and monasteries. King Philip II of Spain reacted by dispatching the Duke of Alba, who was to reestablish order with the help of an army, a blood court, and an inquisition.[ii] Although Bruegel experienced only the beginning of the Eighty Years’ War, he was certainly a witness to a turbulent era, in which several of his own works may also have been willfully destroyed. As a visual artist, he may also have followed the discussion revolving around the banning of images with particular attention.

In one of his most famous drawings, Painter and Patron (circa 1566), Bruegel made the production of art itself his primary theme: an artist with a broad paintbrush in his right hand gazes pensively in the direction of his work, which is located outside the pictorial space. He wears a simple smock tied at the waist, and his disheveled hair and cap, his shaggy beard, and the grim expression on his face lend him a prophet-like appearance. The presumption that we are dealing here with a self-portrait is refuted by the engraving Half-length Portrait of Pieter Bruegel Looking toward the Right, published in 1572, which shows him in a fine doublet and frilled shirt collar, wearing a hat and a long, groomed beard. The elegant impression corresponds with Karel van Mander’s description of Bruegel as a “very quiet and able man,” who was profound but, in the company of others, also had a sense of humor.[iii] The drawing has little in common with this posthumously published portrait engraving. The thoughtful, deeply melancholic gaze of the depicted artist is virtually paradigmatic for the conception—widely held since the fifteenth century—of melancholy as a characteristic feature of intellectually creative artistry and creative ingenuity.[iv] Compared with traditional artist portraits[v] of Bruegel’s presumed teacher, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, or his publisher, Hieronymus Cock, the profundity of Bruegel’s pen-and-ink drawing becomes apparent. The portraits of Coecke und Cock—the one with a palette in the artist’s hand, and the other with a skull as a reference to his namesake and as an attribute of the pictor doctus (scholarly artist)—are representative, but unrealistic, since no painter worked in such an elegant vestment. With Bruegel, however, it is neither a question of representation nor of physiognomic likeness. His portrait is, accordingly, not a self-portrait, but rather self-portrayal: the realistic depiction of artistic creativity. For this, he needs no elegant clothing, no palette, no studio, not even a painting.

In Bruegel’s drawing, the figure of the cerebral, detached painter completely absorbed in his work is contrasted with a man wearing a pince-nez and approaching him from behind. The latter stares at the evolving artwork, his lipless mouth inanely open, and reaches overhastily into the purse attached to his belt in order to immediately secure the painting for himself. The meeting of an artist and a collector is reminiscent of studio visits such as that of Alexander the Great to the studio of his court painter, Apelles, or that of Emperor Maximilian I.[vi] While the latter not only visited the artist to assess the work in progress, but also to guide the painter’s brush himself, so to speak, Bruegel emphasizes the intellectual work of the painter and, at the same time, the insurmountable mental distance between himself and his audience. Short-sighted in both a literal and metaphorical sense, the purported art connoisseur sees and recognizes nothing. His only reactions to the work of art are uncomprehending awe and the reaching for his purse, for he thinks only about the material value of the painting, the ideational content of which remains hidden from him. As in the widespread depictions of unequal couples—a wealthy old man with a young woman, or an ugly old woman with a youthful lover—it is only the purse that perhaps allows a short-term relationship between the two otherwise incompatible figures to be established. The distorted arm of the buyer, his position, wedged in between the painter and the edge of the picture, and the different graphic quality of the two unequal figures[vii] led to the presumption that the potential client was added at a later date.[viii] That this occurred, if at all, very soon afterward is substantiated by four copies of the complete composition, all of nearly the same format.[ix] This unusually broad reception is evidence of the popularity and high regard enjoyed by the unique motif both among Bruegel’s successors and later collectors.

The intended message of the drawing is obvious: the serious struggle of the artist stands in diametrical opposition to the lack of knowledge and ignorance of the viewer—both in the image and perhaps in general.[x] Consequently, this bitingly satirical image can hardly have been a commissioned work, a print design, or a work intended for sale. The drawing was more likely created as an autonomous work, which Bruegel either kept for himself or gave to one of his close friends as a gift. It is also probably his most personal extant work, since it deals with his existence as an artist and the intellectually creative act of image production. Contrary to later claims that Bruegel created a great deal after nature (“naer het leven”),[xi] in other words, that he needed real models for his pictures, and contrary to the cliché that, with his skills, he outdid nature itself,[xii] the drawing expresses the notion that the work of art emerges first of all in front of the inner eye of the artist, without the need of any model or muse. Unlike the depictions of the evangelists Luke, before whom the Madonna appears in a vision,[xiii] or Matthew, who is approached by an angel and writes the text of the Gospel through divine inspiration, the creativity of Bruegel’s artist germinates solely within himself.[xiv] His aversion to external things—in the sense of the contemptu mundi described by the Neoplatonic Benedictine monk Bernhard von Cluny—is accompanied by a disdain for the “evil” world oriented solely toward profit, a concept that Bruegel also visualizes in his Misanthrope (circa 1568; fig. p. ##).[xv] The painter’s broad brush, which contrasts with the refinement of Bruegel’s pen-and-ink drawing, is brought into use only after careful consideration. This substantiates the claim that his work as an artist is a mental activity that goes far beyond pure handcraft. Since the discussion over the classification of painting as belonging to the liberal arts (instead of to the artes mechanicae, as had been common since antiquity) was still in full swing in the Netherlands, this aspect is highly relevant.

In a second drawing, Bruegel also addressed the theme of the role of the artist: The Calumny of Apelles (1565–69; fig. p. ##) is based on a lost antique model by the painter Apelles, who created it after he had been wrongly denounced by a rival as a being member of a conspiracy. It was only through the intervention of one of the actual conspirators, who confirmed Apelles’ innocence, that the impending death sentence was prevented.[xvi] The antique painting was known solely from a description by Lucian, which had enjoyed widespread renown through Alberti’s art-theoretical treatise De Pictura (1435; Ital. Della Pictura, 1436), as well as through Philipp Melanchthon’s translation of Lucian’s text, published in 1543. Based on this, a large number of copies were created, all of which are identical in their friezelike arrangement of figures—the enthroned, donkey-eared King Ptolemy is consulted by the personifications of ignorance and suspicion; the victim of defamation, who is being dragged over by the hair by the personification of slander, is surrounded by envy, betrayal, and deception; while remorse and the naked truth round off the line of figures. With his own unique painterly means, Apelles thus created an admonition against slander. His model was copied by, among others, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna, and Albrecht Dürer, so that Bruegel’s drawing—his only drawing on a theme from antiquity—fits into a prominent line of tradition. It is possibly a subtle copy of Bruegel’s composition that accompanies a defamatory poem published in 1565[xvii] by Lucas de Heere, a poet and painter who had trained under Bruegel’s rival Frans Floris. After Bruegel was alleged to have pejoratively described the art of Floris and his apprentices as “candied little pictures,” de Heere claimed, without mentioning him by name, that Bruegel decorated his pictures like kermis puppets, and that one could not tell by looking at his works that he had spent time in Rome.[xviii] By choosing a theme from antiquity, Bruegel defended himself against this defamation and simultaneously demonstrated his knowledge of his ancient and Italian forerunners, whose role model effect he then overrode,[xix] however, by relocating the events onto a Dutch rederijker stage.[xx] This delicately washed drawing is thus also certainly neither a print designnor a preliminary study for a painting,[xxi] but rather an autonomous work with which Bruegel addressed the issue of the status of the artist within society.

In contrast, his drawing of the Painter and Patron can ultimately be understood as a reflection on the power of images. The position of the work in progress outside the pictorial space encourages one to imagine the invisible masterpiece and thus imitate the creative process of creating an image.[xxii] It is precisely through the absence of the picture that the question as to its legitimacy is posed, and the freedom of art in the age of iconoclasm is defended. That Bruegel does this by means of a drawing may be due—in the case of such a personal work—to the intimate pictorial format and the spontaneity made possible through the medium of drawing. It is, however, also consistent with the notion that the drawing is the basis of all other arts.

Exhib. cat. Pieter Bruegel. Drawing the World, ed. by Eva Michel, (Hirmer) Munich 2017 (published on the occasion of the exhibition Pieter Bruegel. Drawing the World. The Albertina Museum, Vienna, September 8 – December 3, 2017).