BRUSSELS.- The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium presented the results of several years of research on the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The Museums own the second largest Bruegel collection in the world, including the Fall of the Rebel Angels. It is thus fitting to launch a new book about this masterpiece on these premises. This book reveals some long kept secrets about the painting, in particular its rendering of fantastic creatures and enigmatic objects and traces unexpected links between art, knowledge and politics in Bruegel’s time.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels
The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562), an absolute masterpiece of Bruegel, illustrates the scenes of the Fall of the Angels and the Apocalypse. At the centre, Saint Michael, in golden armour with a blue-turquoise cape, fights a seven-headed dragon.

This monster is partially hidden by an endless maelstrom of frightening hybrids. Remarkably, this fascinating painting has never been thoroughly studied.

Publication
Tine Meganck argues that Bruegel, in a most ingenious attempt to surpass Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), transforms the traditional moralizing story about the sin of pride into an innovative commentary on his own time.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels becomes a reflection on the potential danger of men in their quest for art, knowledge and politics, a universal theme that is still very poignant to this day.

This beautifully illustrated publication is based on an exhaustive research financed by a project of the Interuniversity Attraction Pole programme (IAP) P7/26 “City and Society in the Low Countries (ca. 1200-ca. 1850)” (Belspo).

Art, Knowledge and Politics
Many of the falling angels are hybrids, carefully composed of closely observed naturalia (things made by nature) and artificialia (things made by man), as they were then collected in art and curiosity cabinets. Among the swarming falling angels we discover rare and exotic animals such as the armadillo and the blowfish, a Native American attired with colourful feathers, an Ottoman helmet, as well as references to sought-after artworks by other old masters, such as Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer.

By zooming in on the creation year 1562, the author offers fascinating insights on the emerging global knowledge society, and the role of art in local politics on the eve of the Dutch Revolt. Among others she suggests, through multiple evidences and analyses, new connections between Bruegel and Brussels, the city, the court, the chambers of rhetoric and the Brussels tapestry industry.

The valuable collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Pieter Bruegel the Elder is one of the most famous Renaissance painters. Only about forty of his paintings from his short career (he died in 1569, around the age of 40) have been preserved, making them rare and extremely valuable. It is perhaps little known that the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium house the second largest ensemble of Bruegel the Elder paintings, after the exceptional collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The RMFAB own several of his paintings: the Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562), the Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap (1565), and the Census at Bethlehem (1566), as well as one preparatory drawing for Prudence (1558). The three paintings are visible for the public, at the Musée OldMasters Museum.