Joris van Grieken Book order (chronological)

One of the greatest Flemish artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30–1569) is best known today for his paintings of peasant life. Yet it was, above all, through his exceptional graphic work that he achieved widespread fame during the sixteenth century. Bruegel offers readers the opportunity to get up close and personal with Bruegel’s famous prints, reproduced at actual size. The book provides a wonderful showcase of Bruegel’s imaginary world, featuring meticulous reproductions of his preparatory drawings and finished prints depicting Italian landscapes, the seven deadly sins, extraordinary figures, and more. Essays by a distinguished group of Bruegel scholars open the book. They discuss the Royal Library of Belgium’s collection of Bruegel prints; the results of the Fingerprint research project; Bruegel as draftsman and printmaker; Bruegel’s editions, in particular his collaboration with Hieronymus Cock; and the posthumous survival of his art.This luxurious book accompanies a major exhibition at the Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, a center of Bruegel scholarship that holds an unparalleled collection of the artist’s graphic work.

Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) was an Antwerp painter and printmaker. Together with his wife, he was one of the first to establish a publishing house for prints. From 1548 their firm “At the Sign of the Four Winds” issued hundreds of important etchings and engravings. Prints after frescoes and paintings by Italian artists Raphael and Bronzino, the first series of classical ruins, antique sculpture, as well as designs by such Northern artists as Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were distributed all over Europe and helped to spread Renaissance ideals of beauty. It was Cock who spotted the talent of Pieter Bruegel, an artist who would eventually supply Cock with more than sixty designs for prints.