Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 33 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 3,540 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 14 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,858 items Explore
  • 211 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,754 items Explore
  • 5,088 items Explore
  • 62 items Explore
  • 165 items Explore
  • 13,108 items Explore
  • 13,620 items Explore
  • 4,802 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,002 items Explore
  • 4,756 items Explore
  • 438 items Explore
  • 267 items
  • 105 items Explore
  • 19,975 items Explore
  • 36 items Explore
  • 1,912 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,166 items Explore
  • 455 items Explore
  • 920 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,385 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 792 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 319 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 44 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 9 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 926 items Explore
  • 724 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 38,113 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,880 items Explore
  • 1,531 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,750 items Explore
  • 9,682 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,781 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 7,364 items Explore
  • 4,929 items Explore
  • 2,005 items Explore
  • 1,195 items Explore
  • 23,845 items Explore
  • 3,660 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 106 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,330 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 374 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,087 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,519 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,954 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 108 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,932 items Explore
  • 1,529 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,305 items Explore
  • 1,341 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 848 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 252 items
  • 313 items
  • 687 items Explore
  • 344 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,535 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,394 items Explore
  • 40,356 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,876 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 776 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 24,010 items Explore
  • 916 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,648 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,336 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,309 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 455 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 287 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 276 items Explore
  • 481 items
  • 11,295 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,020 items Explore
  • 8,302 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,971 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,886 items Explore
  • 182 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 270 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,124 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,543 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,738 items Explore
  • 95 items
  • 18,934 items Explore
  • 3,137 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,979 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,448 items Explore
  • 35 items
  • 13,321 items Explore
  • 3,460 items Explore
  • 5,644 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 51,862 items Explore
  • 41 items
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,949 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 445 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 217 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,766 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,537 items Explore
  • 913 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 318 items
  • 509 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 2,289 items Explore
  • 1,666 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,877 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 80 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,102 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,670 items Explore
  • 23,753 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 177 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 92 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,586 items Explore
  • 3,641 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,534 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 30 items
  • 6,911 items Explore
  • 4,842 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,818 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,900 items Explore
  • 191 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 421 items Explore
  • 6,110 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,833 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,916 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,134 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,516 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,291 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 75 items
  • 17 items
  • 155 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 458 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,614 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 2 items
  • 9,671 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,807 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,170 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,565 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 6,727 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,949 items Explore
  • 1,418 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,176 items Explore
  • 14,885 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 16 items
  • 5,683 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,191 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 688 items Explore
  • 8,391 items Explore
  • 58 items
  • 1 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,741 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,715 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,694 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 1,123 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,139 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 229 items Explore
  • 80,433 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,139 items Explore
  • 2,871 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 5,352 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,515 items Explore
  • 4,931 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,176 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 13,209 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,710 items Explore
  • 217 items
  • 17,042 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 1,592 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 393 items
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 354 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

The Dormition of the Virgin

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Breda c.1525 - Brussels 1569)

Category

Art / Oil paintings

Date

circa 1564

Materials

Oil on panel (oak)

Measurements

677 x 853 x 126 mm

Place of origin

Netherlands

Order this image

Collection

Upton House, Warwickshire

NT 446749

Caption

This 'grisaille', or grey monochrome painting, shows the death of the Virgin, attended by the Apostles and other figures. In earlier versions of this subject, mourners had always been limited to the apostolic number of twelve. The subject has been developed by Bruegel into a natural or domestic event, to which numerous men and women are admitted. The picture once belonged to the famous geographer, Abraham Ortelius (1527-98). It was owned later by Rubens and is, in all probability, the Bruegel listed in the inventory taken after Rubens's death in 1641.

Summary

Oil painting on oak panel, The Dormition of the Virgin by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Breda or Bruegel c. 1525 - Brussels 1569), c. 1564, signed in brown pigment, lower right corner of the chest in front of the Virgin’s bed: BRVEGEL. The Virgin Mary, sitting up in bed in a darkened room, receives a lit candle from an elderly man, Saint Peter, who stands right, wearing a chasuble, amongst a group of kneeling Disciples. Mary Magdalene arranges the Virgin's pillows whilst the Virgin looks at a Crucifix propped up on a pillow at the foot of the bed, a kneeling monk ringing a bell beside. Across the room, beside a fire and before a messy table covered with plates and cups, a man, possibly Saint John, sleeps upright and open-mouthed in a chair. The room is unevenly lit from four sources; the candle, the torches placed high up on a carved wooded frieze between the bed and the door, a candle on the table and the taper held by Saint Peter. The scene shows the death or 'dormition' (falling asleep into death, without suffering) of the Virgin Mary.

Full description

Infrared reflectography revealed a limited amount of underdrawing, which appears to have been applied with brushes, and several compositional changes: the woman plumping the Virgin’s pillow was drawn to our right of the painted figure and her right arm was drawn and reserved lower; the cat’s rump was drawn and reserved slightly to the right of the painted animal; in the curtain behind the Virgin, underdrawn lines may perhaps show Bruegel conceiving a smaller bed seen in a different perspective; and the bed curtains behind St Peter were thus painted in slightly different positions and were differently lit. Tolnay writes that the inspiration for the composition is derived from a miniature, La Mort, in the Grimani Breviary, painted by Simon Bening and his workshop between 1505 and 1510 (repd. by Tolnay, pl. 153 and Gibson, pl.94). Schongauer’s influential engraving of the Death of the Virgin (see impression in British Museum, London, inv.no. 1868,0822.153) may also have proved a source for the group of Apostles around the bed. Grisailles are extremely rare amongst Bruegel’s oeuvre, although another, of Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, can be found in The Courtauld Gallery, London(inv.no. L1275).

Provenance

Abraham Ortelius (1527-98),1590; Isabella Brant (1591-1626), first wife of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, 1641; Jean-Baptiste Anthoine, Antwerp, 1691; Robert Langton Douglas (1864-1951), circa 1930; Lord Lee of Fareham (1868-1947), 1930, from whom it was acquired by Lord Bearsted the same year; given with Upton House to the National Trust by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882 – 1948), in 1948, shortly before his death.

Credit line

Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (National Trust)

Marks and inscriptions

Verso: written in ink: ouden (?) B[r]eugh[e]l followed by a series of illegible marks (numbers?)

Makers and roles

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Breda c.1525 - Brussels 1569), artist

Exhibition history

Bruegel in Black and White: Three Grisailles Reunited, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2016, no.1 New Light on Old Masters, Squash Court Gallery, 2013

References

Constable 1930 W.G. Constable, ‘Northern Painting in the Lee Collection’, International Studio, March 1930, pp.41, repd., 43 Glück 1930 G. Glück, ‘A newly-discovered Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder’, Burlington Magazine, LVI, 1930, pp.284-86, repd.; Popham 1931 A.E. Popham, ‘Pieter Brueghel and Abraham Ortelius’, Burlington Magazine, LIX, 1931, pp.184-8 Michel 1931 E. Michel, Brueghel, Paris, 1931, pp.85-86, pl.58 Glück, 1932 G. Glück, Brueghel’s Gemälde, Vienna, 1932, p.62, no.16 repd. Tolnay 1935 C. de Tolnay, Pierre Brueghel L’Ancien, Brussels, 1935, pp.51-2, 92, no.38, pl.148 Friedländer 1937: Max J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische malerei, 14 vols., Berlin and Leiden, 1924-37; trans. Early Netherlandish Painting, New York, 1967-76, vol. XIV, pp.29, 60, no.23, pl. XXIII; Grossmann 1952 F. Grossmann, ‘Brueghel’s Woman taken in Adultery and other Grisailles’, Burlington Magazine, XCIV, 1952, pp.221 ff. (passim), repd., p.227, no.6; Bruegel in Black and White: Three Grisailles Reunited (Ed. Karen Serres), The Courtauld Gallery, London, 4th February to 8th May 2016, Cat. 1, pp. 18

View more details

Related articles