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拍品专文
This painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger is exceptionally rare for not being known in any other autograph or studio versions. Like so many of his paintings, the composition was invented by the artist’s father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569): in this case, it relates to the pen and brown ink drawing, augmented with gray and gray-blue washes preserved today in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (fig. 1). The drawing is dated on stylistic grounds to around 1562, and is thus nearly contemporaneous to Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, in which the artist populated his composition with similarly-elongated figures with angular limbs. Though significantly damaged, the drawing must originally have been extraordinarily refined and detailed, as revealed by the engraving that was produced before 1563 by Philip Galle (1537-1612) and published soon afterward by Hieronymus Cock (c. 1510-1570; fig. 2).
The subject of the drawing and the present painting is Christ’s Resurrection, the climax of the Crucifixion narrative. Brueghel portrays this critical event with intense drama, following the account in the Gospel of Matthew (28:1-9), which relays that after the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea, assisted by Nicodemus, brought Jesus’s body to his own, unused tomb, which had been carved into a rock, and sealed the entrance with a large stone slab. When dawn broke on Sunday morning, the third day following Jesus’s death, the Virgin and 'the other Mary' went to the tomb, 'And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it'. While the guards trembled in fear, the angel directed the holy women to return to Galilee, for Christ had risen and was no longer there. Here, the newly risen Christ floats above the entire scene in triumph while below, a jumble of sleeping and waking soldiers react to the miraculous event.
Klaus Ertz, who was not able to study this painting in person (loc. cit.), remarked on how it reflects Pieter the Younger’s role as a copyist and interpreter of his father’s compositions. In particular, he pointed to several elements that differ from the source, including the omission of the bundle of faggots leaning against the tree at left and the reinterpretation of the fire, which here is lit, but in the drawing has been extinguished, as well as a general simplification of the myriad details that fill the father’s drawing. How Pieter the Younger would have had access to his father’s grisaille drawing, however, remains an open question (ibid.). As Manfred Sellink has noted (Bruegel. The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York, 2007, p. 183), Pieter Bruegel the Elder most likely originally intended his drawing to be enjoyed as an independent work of art, perhaps to be given as a gift, and only later decided to have it engraved. The drawing’s large scale and highly-detailed finish lend credence to this theory. Moreover, the artist typical prepared his drawings in reverse in order to facilitate the engraving process – in Galle’s design, Christ thus raises his left hand in benediction, rather than his right, as would be customary in this imagery. That the present painting is not a mirror image of the drawing, suggests that Pieter the Younger may not have been working from the print, but rather had firsthand knowledge of the original (the earliest provenance for the Rotterdam drawing places it in an unknown Italian collection, likely around the late 18th or early 19th century), or perhaps another version of it that was preserved in the Brueghel workshop.
The subject of the drawing and the present painting is Christ’s Resurrection, the climax of the Crucifixion narrative. Brueghel portrays this critical event with intense drama, following the account in the Gospel of Matthew (28:1-9), which relays that after the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea, assisted by Nicodemus, brought Jesus’s body to his own, unused tomb, which had been carved into a rock, and sealed the entrance with a large stone slab. When dawn broke on Sunday morning, the third day following Jesus’s death, the Virgin and 'the other Mary' went to the tomb, 'And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it'. While the guards trembled in fear, the angel directed the holy women to return to Galilee, for Christ had risen and was no longer there. Here, the newly risen Christ floats above the entire scene in triumph while below, a jumble of sleeping and waking soldiers react to the miraculous event.
Klaus Ertz, who was not able to study this painting in person (loc. cit.), remarked on how it reflects Pieter the Younger’s role as a copyist and interpreter of his father’s compositions. In particular, he pointed to several elements that differ from the source, including the omission of the bundle of faggots leaning against the tree at left and the reinterpretation of the fire, which here is lit, but in the drawing has been extinguished, as well as a general simplification of the myriad details that fill the father’s drawing. How Pieter the Younger would have had access to his father’s grisaille drawing, however, remains an open question (ibid.). As Manfred Sellink has noted (Bruegel. The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York, 2007, p. 183), Pieter Bruegel the Elder most likely originally intended his drawing to be enjoyed as an independent work of art, perhaps to be given as a gift, and only later decided to have it engraved. The drawing’s large scale and highly-detailed finish lend credence to this theory. Moreover, the artist typical prepared his drawings in reverse in order to facilitate the engraving process – in Galle’s design, Christ thus raises his left hand in benediction, rather than his right, as would be customary in this imagery. That the present painting is not a mirror image of the drawing, suggests that Pieter the Younger may not have been working from the print, but rather had firsthand knowledge of the original (the earliest provenance for the Rotterdam drawing places it in an unknown Italian collection, likely around the late 18th or early 19th century), or perhaps another version of it that was preserved in the Brueghel workshop.