Bruegel el Viejo, Pieter – El triunfo de la Muerte Part 4 Prado Museum

Description of Peter Brueghel’s painting The Triumph of Death

Peter Brueghel’s painting "The Triumph of Death" is unusually bleak. It depicts the triumph of death that reigns over everything. A truly global end of all mankind is felt, although here, unlike the artist’s earlier paintings, there is no demoness.

Suddenly, the laws have been broken, and a certain boundary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead, which was not reliable enough, has been breached.

The painter did not invent this plot. As far back as the Middle Ages, similar motifs existed in icons. In such paintings, death with an eternal scythe begins to rule the world.

Bruegel combined those motifs that existed before him and created something of his own. In his interpretation, death is mowing down everyone. The painter also introduced an element of mockery of people (death seems outwardly merciful). Bruegel creates a panorama by observing everything that happens from above.

Some try to resist. So a tall man, trying to resist Death, but in vain. We see a pair of lovers engaged in music, completely unaware of what will happen in the next moment.

As we carefully look at the details, what is striking is that there are hundreds of skulls and skeletons scattered everywhere. The artist manages to depict seemingly monotonous skulls in such incredible positions that they acquire a certain facial expression.

The ground is completely empty and barren. Instead of vegetation there are gallows and execution wheels.

The painting depicts the judgment of the dead. We see skeletons dressed in a kind of white toga on a dais. They are like a tribunal. Breughel’s contemporaries recognized in such a scene a clear allusion to the Holy Inquisition and its tribunal.

Breughel’s work is more than topical, but its meaning is hidden beneath the absolutely traditional motifs of the plot.