Art Institute of Chicago

Wooded Landscape with Donkeys and Goats, and Castle on Hill in Distance

After Pieter Bruegel, the elder

Date: n.d.
Medium: Pen and brown ink on cream laid paper
Culture: Flanders
Department: Prints and Drawings
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago

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.

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