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Forest Landscape with Wild Animals
Pieter Bruegel, the elder (Flemish, 1525/30-1569)
late 16th century
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink on buff laid paper, laid down on card
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- Primary support: 36 × 24.4 cm (14 3/16 × 9 5/8 in.); Secondary support: 47.8 × 36.5 cm (18 7/8 × 14 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This drawing belongs to a group of some 20 similar sheets that record compositions by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (most of which are now lost). Far from direct observation, they are inventions that use landscape motifs for imaginative purposes. Because of the relative novelty of landscape compositions as independent of narrative or devotional subjects, Bruegel’s landscape drawings provided new inspiration for the artists who had access to his works. As such, drawings made after his compositions not only attest to Bruegel’s influence in the rise of landscape as a distinct genre of artistic expression, they also record some of his compositions that would otherwise be unknown.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
