. Stories of the Flemish & Dutch artists, from the time of the Van Eycks to the end of the seventeenth century . be seenat Vienna, we look at a representation of thetower of Babel, which lies in the valley somedistance below us, but the summit stretchesabove into the clouds. Tier upon tier the im-mense structure towers up, painted in extraordi- ?nary detail, and showing the most curious andunusual imagination. Tiny figures are to beseen everywhere at work upon the building;and in the near foreground, amid the piles ofstone, stands Nimrod, the conceiver of it all,the king of Sennaar, to whom a
. Stories of the Flemish & Dutch artists, from the time of the Van Eycks to the end of the seventeenth century . be seenat Vienna, we look at a representation of thetower of Babel, which lies in the valley somedistance below us, but the summit stretchesabove into the clouds. Tier upon tier the im-mense structure towers up, painted in extraordi- ?nary detail, and showing the most curious andunusual imagination. Tiny figures are to beseen everywhere at work upon the building;and in the near foreground, amid the piles ofstone, stands Nimrod, the conceiver of it all,the king of Sennaar, to whom a slave bows lowbefore he reports to him the progress of thework. Everywhere in Brueghels work is to befound evidence of an extremely original mindand imagination, able to contemplate and tostudy profitably the work of other artists, with-out ever being tempted to imitate them. Itspeaks much for the force of his mind and hisindependence, that although he made a longstay in Italy his work shows not the least traceof Italian influence. And, indeed, there wereamong his rivals at Bruges other men also who ^1 %^. PEASANT BRUEGHEL 79 still kept alive the earlier traditions of theFlemish school; belated followers of the mannerof the Van Eycks and of Memling, long afterthe public mind had turned to other ideals. Butthe work of these latter, such as Peeter Pourbusand Peeter Claessens, is not a vigorous growthfounded upon the study of nature, like that ofBrueghel, but rather a repetition of what hadalready been done by others. There exists in the Vienna Gallery the mostwonderful collection of Brueghels work, and itis there that his great gifts as a colourist anda minute observer of nature may be best of the most beautiful of these paintings isthe Winter, wherein we see a party of hunts-men setting out through the snow, accompaniedby their dogs. Beyond them, and down belowin the valley, is a large pond or lake, where anumber of peasants are skating. The leaflesstrees that stand out
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidcu3192, booksubjectartists
