Bruegel. A European painter in the time of Titian

At the conference, Bernard Aikema will present a first overview of the exhibition on the artistic family of the Bruegels, which will take place in the autumn of 2026 in Milan, Palazzo Reale, and then move to Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in 2027.

The name Bruegel evokes scenes of peasants, episodes of everyday life, but also fantastic visions: themes that were strongly innovative for the time, between the second half of the 16th century and the early decades of the following century.

The three main members of the family, Pieter the Elder, and his sons Jan and Pieter the Younger, created a true pictorial “brand,” which will be illustrated in the conference, transforming artistic production between Antwerp, Prague, the Netherlands, with effects also felt in the Mediterranean world.

This is the period that sees the origins of what are called the pictorial genres, including still life, landscape, battle, scenes of daily life, etc.

The Bruegels played an essential role in this process, as will be explored in the conference with many spectacular examples and, of course, in the exhibition.

BERNARD AIKEMA.

A graduate of Amsterdam, professor at the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and Leuven (Belgium), he has been a guest professor at Princeton and Harvard, has given lectures on Venetian art in many European countries and in North America, and is the author of over 100 publications in English and Italian on Venetian painting and drawing.

His research methods range from philology to iconology to the social history of art.

He was the creator and co-curator of exhibitions held at the Cini Foundation, in Amsterdam, and in New York.

In ’99 in Venice at Palazzo Grassi he curated “The Renaissance in Venice and Northern Painting”; he initiated the activities of the Tiziano and Cadore Foundation establishing the research methods of the Study Center, of which he was the president of the Scientific Council from 2003 to 2020; in Rome in 2010, at the Galleria Borghese the exhibition “Lucas Cranach. The Other Renaissance”; in Verona at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia “Paolo Veronese, the Illusion of Reality” (2014).

In 2017 he curated the exhibition for Palazzo Ducale “Jheronimus Bosch and Venice” and was the supervisor of the exhibition “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese,” set up at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

In 2018 he curated at Palazzo Reale in Milan “Albrecht Dürer and the Renaissance between Germany and Italy” and in 2022, also at Palazzo Reale in Milan, “Bosch and Another Renaissance” and in 2024 at the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento, "Dürer and the Others. The Renaissances on the banks of the Adige."

For information: Tiziano and Cadore Study Center Tel. +39 0435 501674 - centrostudi@tizianovecellio.it - www.tizianovecellio.it