Although Pieter Bruegel's pictures have been celebrated throughout the past four hundred years, the artist himself remains a shadowy and misunderstood figure. In a volume which will widen the understanding and enhance the enjoyment of Bruegel's many admirers, Walter Gibson illuminates the sixteenth-century world in which the artist lived. He analyzes the different strands of Bruegel's inspiration, examines his works, and considers his influence on later artists. Dispelling the notion of Bruegel the simpleton peasant, the author shows us Bruegel the cultivated artist, satisfying an urban society's pleasure in moralizing tales and proverbs, rooted in the rich, bourgeois, brilliant Antwerp of the Flemish Renaissance. 153 illus., 20 in color