Tag: dutch

Is the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder the only one to paint farts? I would have thought yes, but no, there’s more than a few childish artists out there that have painted farts. Bruegel’s art may not have been as strange as the bizarre worlds created by Hieronymus Bosch but some of his paintings do come close. They don’t get much stranger than his 1562 work The Fall of the Rebel Angels which depicts a scene from that equally nutty piece of literature, the Book of Revelation. Among the farting beasts and fallen angels are all kinds of weird and horrible creatures.

I have never seen the Fall of the Rebel Angels painting in person, which is owned by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, but with Google’s Art Project we can see the work in great detail. We can zoom in on the farts and other wonders depicted by Bruegel.

Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels. Some kind of weird half man thing with lobster legs clearly doing a fart.

Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels. Another beastly, half human, lizard monster thing farting.

Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels. There’s no farting in this scene, just a few freaks and monsters doing their thing.

Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels. Again, no farts here, just a horrible monster tearing its own stomach open. There’s also a few ugly beasts wearing royal crowns. Ugly beasts still wear crowns today so I guess some things never change

Here’s the whole painting with all sorts of weird stuff happening.

Find out more about the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium collection at their website here. The collection section of the website can only be seen in French and Dutch but you don’t need to to know the language to look at a work, it’s easy enough to navigate.

SOURCE: Art News Blog - Read entire story here.