preview

Peter Bruegel's As Above, So Below

Decent Essays

In the Renaissance, many people shared their thoughts and ideas throughout paintings and art. The book, As Above, So Below, is a novel about painter Peter Bruegel’s life and adventures. This book displays the life in the Renaissance period through art and imagery. The story starts with Peter and an associate looking for help with their financial situation and paintings, they find someone willing but their partnership was lost. Peter meets up with Anja, a woman he grew up with and a relationship between them was established. Soon after, Peter was asked for three paintings done and he believes his wealth will rise significantly. Peter and Anja’s relationship is diminished when Peter finds out Anja was out with other men consistently and Peter’s attention goes to Mayken. Mayken and Peter had a successful marriage but was threatened when Mayken has an affair with another man. Their …show more content…

The Renaissance Era was acknowledged as the beginning of the modern period, it was recognized by the advancement of literature, art, music, and religion. Bruegel's words: “I’ll paint what lives and breathes and thinks- not what you see in dusty lesson-pictures. God’s world, we creatures in it, and the world as mirrored in the phantasmagoria of our souls- that’s my theme” (Rucker, 21) help us time travel back into the Renaissance Era to identify their way of life. The streets of every European city were populated with painters, what was displayed were a “number of cosmic landscapes of hills, rivers, mountains, and lakes… Scriptures and myths, by saints and philosophers, by patrons and kings…Heavens and Hells… But overwhelming every other category of paintings was an endless glut of… Jesus, Mary, the Apostles and the saints, over and over again” (Rucker, 88). This quote endorses the Renaissance Era and praises the painters and their relationship to the Era’s

Get Access