Collection: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder (c. 1525–1530) was among the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genre painting); he was a pioneer in presenting both types of subject as large paintings. He was a formative influence on Dutch Golden Age painting and later painting in general in his innovative choices of subject matter, as one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting.

He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp, where he worked mainly as a prolific designer of prints for the leading publisher of the day. At the end of the 1550s, he made painting his main medium, and all his famous paintings come from the following period of little more than a decade before his early death in 1569, when he was probably in his early forties. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Bruegel's works have inspired artists in both the literary arts and in cinema.

He trained under Pieter Coecke van Aelst. Among his most cited paintings: Two Chained Monkeys, The Peasant Dance, and Dull Gret. His principal genres were animal art, still life, and marine art.

Within his body of work, the Northern Renaissance current is dominant.