Pieter Bruegel the Elder's mysterious paintings

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, also known as "Peasant Bruegel," was born between 1526 and 1530 in the Netherlands. As a young painter, he lived in Antwerp and later in Brussels, where he married and died in 1569. Despite his nickname — which stuck because he portrayed rural life — he was an absolute city boy.

In the early 1550s Bruegel set out to study painting, sculpture, architecture and the landscape of Italy. This was not unusual for painters at the time. The many drawings he made along the way show that his route took him via Lyon to Rome, Naples, Reggio Calabria and Sicily.

In 1563, Bruegel converted the famous story from the Old Testament into a painting. He moved the story from Babylon in Mesopotamia to a Dutch polder landscape. Perhaps he modeled the tower on the Colosseum in Rome that he had closely inspected during his trip to Italy.

Framed by a pub (left) and a church (right), people with a passion for drinking and celebrating carnival skirmish with faithful representatives of the Church in this 1559 painting. They fight with skewers and bread shovels while people around them continue to do their jobs. A close look reveals social grievances everywhere.

Pieter Bruegel painted the two monkeys in a window arch in 1562. There are countless interpretations of the tiny painting. Are the monkeys a symbol of human simplicity, greediness and instinct? Or do the chains stand for Spanish-occupied 16th century Netherlands? No one knows.

In this impressive work from 1562, "The Fall of the Rebel Angels," the fallen angels are shown as half-human, half-animal monsters. Bruegel's views on faith and religion are an ongoing topic of debate among art historians. Did he express a worldview at the edge of Christian orthodoxy or was he conveying a more sophisticated humanistic-theological perspective?

In 1563, the year Pieter Bruegel married Mayken Coecke, the daughter of his former master, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, he also painted "Dulle Griet," also known as "Mad Meg," which depicts a toothless female warrior leading an army of women to loot Hell in a chaotic, nightmarish scene.

There are around 40 paintings as well as some 90 prints attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This one, from 1564, features once again a scene from the Bible: "The Procession to Calvary" depicts Christ carrying the Cross. It's set in a large landscape that was also inspired by his own homeland, the Netherlands.

Stylistically, Bruegel is often compared to Hieronymus Bosch. In this painting, the situation is eerie: People are dying everywhere, skeletons seem to take over, there is no consolation, no redemption, no reference to a redeeming god. The picture was probably created around 1562.

Pieter Bruegel died on September 9, 1569 in Brussels. His sons, Pieter and Jan, were still very young at the time, but they nevertheless followed in his footsteps, trained by their grandmother. The descendants however kept the "h" in their name, Brueghel. Jan's sons Ambrosius and Jan also became painters. Still, the most successful among them remains Pieter Bruegel the Elder.