As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel

by Rudy Rucker

Peter Bruegel's paintings---a peasant wedding in a barn, hunters in the snow, a rollicking street festival, and many others---have long defined our idea of everyday life in sixteenth century Europe. They are classic icons of a time and place in much the same way as Norman Rockwell's depictions of twentieth-century America. We know relatively little about Bruegel, but after years of research, novelist Rudy Rucker has built upon what is known and has created for us the life and world of a true master who never got old.In sixteen chapters, each headed by a reproduction of one of the famous works, Rucker brings Bruegel's painter's progress and his colorful world to vibrant life, doing for Bruegel what the best-selling Girl with a Pearl Earring did for Vermeer. We follow the artist from the winding streets of Antwerp and Brussels to the glowing skies and decaying monuments of Rome and back. He and his friends, the cartographer Ortelius and Williblad Cheroo, an American Indian, are as vivid on the page as the multifarious denizens of Bruegel's unforgettable canvases.Here is a world of conflict, change, and discovery, a world where Carnival battles Lent every day, preserved for us in paint by the engaging genius you will meet in the pages of As Above So Below.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Art, Fiction, 16th Century, Historical, Novels, Belgium

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre. He is best known for his Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which won Philip K. Dick awards. Presently, Rudy Rucker edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.

Reviews

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biographical fiction depicts the life of Peter Bruegel. There is little known about this Dutch painter. The story fills a lot of gaps, which are imagined vividly. However, the style of writing feels dry, as there is telling instead of showing.

The historical background is very interesting. It’s set during the Flemish Renaissance. It is also the time of Church’s Inquisitions.

The most popular paintings, done by this artist, drive the story. It is imagined how they were perceived and created. It does sound fascinating, but I think the execution is the problem with dialogue that does disservice to the story. Therefore, the story didn’t grasp me.

It is always fascinating to learn about lesser known artist, who is actually credited with influencing the Dutch Golden Age. I just wasn’t involved in this story due to the style of writing.

[Monolith94 · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems so tough to portray real-life artists in historical fictions... So often, you get the sense that the portrayer hasn't the faculty to grasp the significance of the portrayed. So often the need is felt to "explain" how a work came to be. For example, in Shakespeare in Love, we saw things in Shakespeare's environment which supposedly fed directly into his plays. There's more to art than the simple movement from observations on life to portrayal of life, whether with words or with brush. There's a complex alchemy inside the mind that takes the witnessed and threads it with other thoughts: dreams, fancies, knowledge of the work of other artists, and of course intuition. But to tread into this territory is to venture into the area where language loses its power to explain.

Indeed, the most successful depictions of artists in art seem to be ones where the artist abandons the futile task of "explaining" his subject matter, and setting about creating his or her own artwork that explores, questions, and even tries to outwit the honored artist of old. It is for this reason that literal translations of old works and artists so very rarely work: how is it appropriate to create a literal loaf from metaphorical dough?

Rucker has some success in creating his own artistry from Bruegel, organizing his exploration of the Flemish master's adult life into a course that seems paradoxically both meandering and purposeful. For example, he uses the symbolism of the gallows to frame his novel as a whole; other connections which help tie chapters together keep the experience from feeling too episodic. And he allows Bruegel to think more complex thoughts about his own art and how his art has worth in the world than one typically expects from stories like this. However, a bit too often the urge to simply explain the art in the context of its times takes over, and at times like that the life seems to drain just a bit. Thankfully, however, it isn't too often that the novel feels like Rucker checking off events from a list, which makes the experience a worthwhile visit, if not quite the sort of transcendent art that one might get from seeing Hunters in the Snow in person.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. It is the fictional imagining of the life of Peter Bruegel. The author combined the few known facts about Bruegel's life with the history and the culture of the Netherlands in the 1500s to craft a realistic and intriguing novel. Each chapter has a Bruegel painting featured at the beginning and vividly describes the events in the artist's life and times that shaped the painting. My only criticism of the book is that I wish the reproductions of Bruegel's paintings were in color to match the vibrancy of the characters, events and culture depicted by Rudy Rucker.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Rucker before I picked up this book; he has written non-fiction and science fiction, but I believe this is his first novel. Little is known of Peter Bruegel’s life, but Rucker has taken what facts there are and written an enjoyable account of life in the Low Countries in the 16th century, when ruled by Spain and the Spanish inquisition against the Calvinists was becoming more and more feared and widespread. Rucker’s notes for this book can be found on his web site www.RudyRucker.com with explanations of the lives of the characters in the book who are real historical people. I was impressed with how much Rucker had to know (or learn before he wrote the book) about methods of painting, and I was very interested in the veiled political commentaries that he put in his work, even one that seemed just to be an illustration of a Bible story, or pictures of the seasons.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

review of
Rudy Rucker's As Above, So Below — A Novel of Peter Bruegel
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 22, 2019

See entire review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

I've read 14 Rudy Rucker bks prior to this one. They've all been SF. I like them. I was delighted to find this, a non-SF bk based around the life of one of my favorite painters. I respect diversity in people's creative outputs & w/ this bk of Rucker's my perception of his diversity goes up a notch (whatever that metaphor may mean here).

""I have to draw this," he told de Vos. He shrugged the strap of his satchel from his shoulder, peeled off his skirted jerkin, and sat down cross-legged upon it. He found ink and pen and a bottle of water in his satchel, and pulled a sheet of paper out of a special flap in his jerkin's lining. All the while he was staring at the mountain. "It's quite unlike what we've seen in paintings back in the Low Lands, Martin. Different than what we've been taught. It's less contorted, more like a living thing. It's saying hello to me."" - p 12

Wch brings me to Hylozoism, an idea that I recall Rucker's writing introducing me to. Prior to that, I thought of myself as more of an Animist. In Hylozoism, everything has life; in Animism, everything has a soul. Hylozoism stays open to philosophies that question the concept of the soul. Does a mountain need a soul to say hello? Maybe a Mountain Dew.

Bruegel lived in a time & place far worse than anything I've had to go through & he managed to tightrope walk his way across the perils. Religious intolerance ruled. It could happen again. Let's hope it doesn't.

"To add to the pomp of the reception, an exemplary heretic had been hung upon a gibbet to one side of the arch, a stocky weaver who'd made so bold as to own a printed copy of the Bible." - p 16

Yes, owning a bible was considered to be a heresy punishable by execution. After all, the church wanted a monopoly. Is it any wonder if greed's involved?

"A sleek priest offered him a fresh-printed indulgence, good for one hundred years off from the time that was owed to Purgatory as a residual "temporal debt" even after a sin was forgiven. The curtained confession booth resembled an outhouse." - p 36

What a racket. Charge people to lessen an imaginary punishment in an imaginary after-death world. In the meantime, make the real world hell for everyone except the racketeers. Fortunately, there was another world competing for conceptual dominance, a world where cartographers were paying attn to reality.

"Ortelius loved maps, he took pride in moving them from city to city, spreading the new God's-eye worldview far and wide. There was a kind of alchemy to a map. First the mapmaker refined the ore of travelers' and surveyors' reports into numbers on an ideal mathematical globe—even if some reports were given only as sun positions and hours of travel. Next came the mysterious algorithmic transformations that projected the curved path of Earth's ideal globe down into a flat rectangle. And then came the illumination of the map." - p 51

""I despise the Church," said Williblad quietly. "I'd like to see it wiped off the face of the earth. There is no God, Abraham." Williblad stopped and smiled oddly, his lively eyes gauging Ortelius's reaction. "I speak these thoughts to keep from bursting. In so doing, I place my life into your hands. But I sense your readiness to be more than a passing friend."" - p 101

Well would ya look at that!: I'm already up to page 101 & I ain't hardly sd nuthin'!

Yes, the church. I think somebody sd something like "Thou Shalt Not Kill" a long time ago but they didn't really mean it. The Church's true precept is "I don't practice what I preach because I'm not who I'm preaching to."

"on the left was a gallows with three dark, ragged shapes suspended beneath it. Crows circled the gibbets, cawing and feeding. And on the other side of the road, red-shirted soldiers sat drinking before the inn. Seeing them filled Bruegel with a visceral fear. Thanks to the Blood Edicts of the foreign tyrant King Philip, the crime of heresy was to be punished only by death, with no lesser penalties to be contemplated. Out here in the country there were no limits upon what the occupying soldiers might do.

""I heard about these hangings earlier this week," said Franckert. "Two women and a man. They preached that all property should be held in common, but in the end, these three rebels couldn't share things any better than the rest of us. It seems the two women came to a falling-out over the man, and one of them set the Inquisitors upon the other two.["]" - pp 114-115

Never collaborate w/ an Inquisitor. What we need instead of Inquisitors are Councils of Talking-to-Yourself.. no, that's not right.

"Present for the Landjuweel were more than a dozen amateur theatrical groups—the so-called Chambers of Rhetoric." - pp 136-137

"The Cornflowers fully lived up to their reputation for irreverance. Their play was about a young man name Strotkop who wants to be an artist but whose father makes him become a priest. Nevertheless Strontkop keeps on drawing. His bishop tells that art is permissible only if he will paint religious scenes that the church can sell to pilgrims. But Strontkop wants to paint naked women. Unable to think of a way to find models, he hits upon the expedient of getting sinful women to undress for him inside the confession booth.

"On the stage, the women an Strontkop were mostly hidden by the mock confession booth, but the priest's arm motions were clearly not those of a man drawing. He was pulling himself off. Complications followed, and at the finale, one of the women's boyfriends showed up in the confession booth and farted in the priest's face, the fart stimulated by a great blast of bagpipe music. The audience became riotous with glee." - p 141

It's nice to know that they respected the most important thing of all: the spirit of Rabelais. Personally, the last time I tried to pull myself off it was like trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I just fell off the chair. Strotkop's mistake was in not hiring models to pose as the Virgin Mary getting impregnated by God. No matter how far she split her beaver the hymen wd still be there so what's to complain about? What I want to know is: is it true that Mary got the clap from God? That might just be a matter of his orgasm being confused w/ a clap of thunder.

Alas, Bruegel, too, is a blasphemer & he gets BUSTED b/c his girlfriend snitches on him. Gotta watch those girlfriends, they have no sense of proportion. He slighted me, I think I'll have him tortured! Fortunately for our pal Bruegie, his talent as a painter was recognized enough for him to become penalized by exploitation.

""Do you mean a dungeon, Your Worship?"

""An artist needs light," said Granvelle. "And a bit of comfort. No, my fine fowl, you'll have a gilded cage. I'll give you a room at the Regent Margaret's provincial palace in Mechelen, halfway between Antwerp and Brussels. I'm there regularly to visit the Regent. I'll keep a close eye on your progress."

""I'm to leave Antwerp?" This seemed to disturb Bruegel more than anything that Gravelle had said so far. Anja knew him as a creature of habit who hated to break his rituals of work. "For how long?"

""Let's try something like a year to start with," said Granvelle. "And then—who knows. We might send you into exile, or keep you on as Margaret's court painter, or mayhap hang you by the neck until dead. It depends on your actions."" - p 147

Yes, our boy Pieter gets spirited away by the naughty people. Further intrigue happens in wch Bruegel gets forced into an assassination intrigue against an aristocrat who's been good to him but not necessarily to others.

"Lazare brushed past Bruegel and pressed forward towards William, speaking rapidly in a low penetrating voice. "A word with you, Prince," said the Walloon. "Do you know that your tax assessor took my father's farm? And that one of your soldiers dishonored my sister? Eh? Do you know how many you've ruined in Luxembourg?" Matters were coming to a head." - p 203

Alas, it appears that Lazare's desire for vengeance was justified but Bruegel had managed to forewarn William so poor Lazare bit the dust instead. I don't blame him, Bruegel had his own problems.

"He poured a few inches of apple vinegar in each of the pots, and then had Bengt and Mayken put a number of beaten sheets of lead into each vessel. The sheets, pounded to the thinness of paper, were separated by pebbles so that the vinegar would touch all the surfaces. They covered the stack of pots back up with rotting compost and household dung."

[..]

"According to Peter, the decay of the offal released a fire element, which over the period of a few weeks would combine with the fire within lead and vinegar to turn the earthen elements of lead into an air element of fine, flaking white." - pp 217-218

Seem like a professional hazard to you? It does to me, these paints can be toxic & Bruegel's using them constantly. I remember once being stopped by a State Trooper for speeding. He explained that more people died in road accidents than they had in the Vietnam War. I've pointed out elsewhere that he must've been excluding the Vietnamese casulaties. Anyway, imagine a similar authority figure who stops you & informs you that more people died from falling afoul of the Catholic Church than from excessive exposure to lead paints.

"There was hardly a man or a woman in the Low Lands who wasn't technically subject to execution, and where facts were lacking, they could easily be made up. The Spanish rulers and their clergy were free to kill whomseover they chose. Not only did they seek out the rebellious, the wealthy people and landowners were also being executed so that Spain could claim their goods." - p 235

Williblad Cheroo, a man of Native American origin who's been whisked away & forced to live in European culture, proposes painting an abstraction to Bruegel. Since Rucker's source material is sd to be sparse, I have to wonder whther he has any basis for this at all other than knowledge that Native American culture had abstract art long before the Europeans did.

""Religion's in those panels, just the same," said Bruegel, "Nature is God's body."

""And men the lice upon her," said Cheroo, "Why not leave us vermin out of your next picture entirely? Paint the land alone, and, once you've mastered that, paint a landscape with no land at all."

""How do you mean?" said Bruegel, smiling a little at Cheroo's fantasy.

""Paint something with no human name on it. Paint a color or a shape . . . something that's not a picture of anything. When I was a boy, there was an elder of our tribe who'd pour out different-colored sands to make wonderful patterns. Sunbursts and stars and whorls and zigzags."" - p 246

One of the things I particularly like about this bk is the way that Rucker manages to bring in major historical elements via his characters's connection to them. I'm glad to have Mercator placed in time w/ Bruegel & the Inquisition.

""Are you the first to think of a book of maps, Abraham?" said Mayken, sidestepping the quarrel that Williblad perversely sought.

""The Italians have made some attempts at such a thing," said Ortelius. "But they mix everything into a jumble with no two images laid out the same way. I discussed the idea of a uniform map book with Mercator not so long ago, and he said he'd been considering something like the same idea. He'd wanted to call his book an Atlas, after the mythical Greek giant who carried the earth upon his back. Be that as it may, he's being good enough to let me finish my version first." - p 257

"The first world atlas to be published was the Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theatre of the world) in 1570. The Flemish cartographer, Abraham Ortelius' orig[i]nal collection was in Latin and contained 70 maps on 53 pages. Between 1570-1612, numerous updated editions were published including those in six other languages: German, Dutch, French, Spanish, English and Italian.

"Although the word 'atlas' here is retrospective (i.e it did not exist as a term in Ortelius' time), the collection was the first time maps had been presented in this way." - https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/...

Uh, oh! Is Rucker busted here w/ his use of the word "Atlas"? Or is the Guiness Book of World Records wrong? They misspelled "original" (I corrected it) so that's one strike against them.

Now it seems that back in them thar days there were Christian ICONCLASTS.

""It will be a small matter to destroy these graven images, which are only a species of idolatry," the Swiss preacher shouted. "For think, my Brethren, the Romish Church has done us a thousand times more hurt and hindrance through their persecutions. We propose to burn paintings and to smash stone statues, but the ecclesiastics have burnt and broken those 'statues' which God Himself has made, namely our dearest friends, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers."" - p 260

It's always something, right? You've got the religious nuts who're killing people & then you've got the religious nuts who're destroying the things the people make. If more people concentrated on making interesting things & stopping the nuts from killing people then most people wd be much better off.

"With a wild shout, the crowd dragged the Madonna's effigy out onto the floor, tore off her vestments and hacked her to pieces—yes, some of the men turned out to be carrying axes, sledgehammers, and crowbars beneath their loose gray Beggar robes. More image breakers came streaming in the cathedral's side doors, several of them bearing ladders." - p 263

Now breaking art instead of killing people is an improvement but I have a respect for the skill of the makers & hate to see it disrespected. But, HEY!, that was the 16th century, not NOW, eh?!

See entire review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

[Gail Baugniet · Rating 5 out of 5]

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW A Novel of Peter Bruegel by Rudy Rucker

If you have read Girl with a Pearl Earring and enjoyed the references to Vermeer’s paintings, you will likely enjoy reading Rudy Rucker’s imagined tale of artist Peter Bruegel’s progress with his many paintings. The story ends before his two sons, Little Peter and Jan, took up the brush.

Each of Rucker’s chapters is headed with the title and photograph of a Bruegel painting. The journey begins in the French-Italian Alps and Rome, but quickly moves to Belgium, mainly in Antwerp and Brussels.

Life in the middle 1500s was not easy, what with the Inquisition breathing down your neck or lopping off your head at the neck. But even with an uneasy certainty that someone you knew would soon be hung or headless, life went on in soap opera fashion. Family life, friendships, feuds and patched relationships abound with humor and tragedy mingled together in a fascinating narrative.

Throughout, Bruegel’s dry humor and joie de vivre shine a bright central light on the tale and move the story forward. A comment that especially struck me was:

“That was the thing about art:
your fingers spilled the secrets of your soul
before you knew them yourself.”

Another comment that remains vivid in my mind is presented after Peter Bruegel witnesses an everyday scene in a street filled with descriptive characters and everyday occurrences:

“—life was endlessly rich and endlessly various,
and it could take a man eight years simply to paint
one single moment of one single day.”

This intimate look at Bruegel’s Beekeepers, Beggars, and Birdsnesters is well worth reading.

[Matthew Felix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fascinating fictional account of Peter Bruegel's life. Several famous paintings by the master were cleverly employed to propel the plot. However, the stories got somewhat way too far-fetched. The author, obviously no artist, gave a pedestrian account of how inspirations and commissions came to Bruegel and the depictions of process of creations were less than inspired. The most serious flaw was the repetitive expositions (historical information best feed in through footnotes here) and the stiff dialogues. That said, it was a fascinating story about a fascinating artist in a most stirring time.

I remembered many paintings I saw in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and some in Rotterdam and I browsed a copy of a monograph on Bruegel and learned a scholarly account of those famous paintings and that made a complimentary study of this master. After you've read this novel, it would be great to read similar monograph to fully grasp his achievement and his time.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most insightful bios of an artist I've ever come across. Reconstructing the life of Bruegel from little more than his paintings and a lot of historical research into the period. Rucker creates chapters of an artist's life wherein the particular painting is conceived and created. The faces of the people in his works can be matched with characters in this fictional recreation. A truly wonderful book.

[MSJLibrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel, by Rudy Rucker (2002, 318 pages). “In sixteen chapters, each headed by one of the artist’s famous works, Rucker brings Bruegel’s painters progress and his colorful world to vibrant life, doing for Bruegel what the bestselling Girl With A Pearl Earring did for Vermeer. We follow the artist from the winding streets of Antwerp and Brussels to the glowing skies and decaying monuments of Rome” (Amazon.com book description).

[Ero · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable fictionalized (and well-researched) biography. Now I just wish I could see the paintings in person.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have actually created a "given-up-on" shelf because this book was so bad and annoyed me so much. One star is way too generous. I persevered until page 78 and then could not stand it any more. I had expected to really enjoy this as it is about one of my absolute favourite artists, behold my disappointment! I had misgivings after the first few pages when it really didn't grip and I had to keep dragging my eyes and mind back to the page. In well-written historical fiction the research is seemlessly woven into the plot as opposed to here where it is vomited all over the reader in largely undigested chunks. What is worse rather than leaving the odd word of Flemish unexplained as "flavouring" which could be worked out by anyone with two brain cells to rub together Rucker feels it neccessary to tell us that Mevrouw is Flemish for Mistress (p78), the second instance of him forgetting that he is supposed to be writing a novel and not "Flemish for Half-Wits". Each chapter is illustrated by one of Breugel's paintings, not that's not true - each chapter is really incompetently illustrated by what looks like a 1990s 3rd generation black and white photocopy of one of Breugel's paintings. The publisher of this book perhaps having decided that as the book was going to be read by fans of the artist who would know the paintings it wouldn't matter that they would be unable to make out much detail. For example in "The Fall of Icarus" I know that the unrecognisable splodge is Icarus but only because I know what the painting actually looks like. This book should have been really good, but it isn't, it's bloody awful, avoid it and read something else, seriously, anything else even if it's the back of a cornflake packet.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled a bit with this book because the writing was very very small (I see the reasoning behind this decision as with normal font, the book would have been 500+ pages long.)
As Above, So Below is to Bruegel what Across the Universe was to the Beatles or Tracy Chevalier for The Girl with a Pearl Earring. I can say that now I understand and love Bruegel more--the book was well researched and the plot (mostly imaginary as we know little of his life) was webbed around some of his most popular pieces of art. Lovely.

[Lindasp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an interest in art history and was fascinated to read what is known about Peter Bruegel's life and artwork. Rudy Rucker tells a very interesting story using descriptive writing to describe Bruegel's painting style, his paintings, and the challenges he faced in the 1500's during the time of political and religious unrests. "He'd painted what he saw, and more than that, he'd painted what he couldn't see, the God that fills the world, as above, so below"

[Reg Tripp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am new to Rudy Rucker but as I am about to give a talk on Peter Bruegel I thought I would read his novel - emphasis on novel. Interesting but for me a bit trivial and nothing that I did not already know, and some of his "facts" are incorrect. For example Bruegel also had a daughter but no mention of this at all. A light read suitable for the beach or a long flight or wait at an airport. Sorry.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

All we really know about this artist is based on a two-page biography written 30 years after he died, so there is a lot of conjecture in the book. However, the book was well researched, captivating, and I found that the author’s interpretation of many of Peter Bruegel’s strange paintings compelling.

[V.E.H. Masters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engrossing novel, cleverly laid out so that each chapter relates to a painting which Bruegel produced during that period of his life. Clearly well-researched, the descriptions draw the reader in to life in the Low Countries (or Low Lands) of the era: mid 1500s. Occasionally the author tells rather than shows, but otherwise this is an enjoyable and informative read.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novelized, yet, thorough, look at the life of Peter Bruegel (the Elder) - his art, the Spanish Inquisition, and other artists of the European Lowlands. Museum art Book Club selection

[Bat713 · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better Art Book Club selections. It read like a novel but told much information about Peter Bruegel and the times he lived in. I can’t wait to see and hear the lecture👍

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Agh. I am so sorry to say this one is a 1 star for me. I could never get into these characters. And I live Bruegel. Oh well. Next.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t finish it. I probably would have enjoyed it, if it wasn’t so unnecessarily vulgar. Didn’t appreciate the mountain being compared to a male body part.

[Karen Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Little is officially known about Peter Bruegel - no letters, no diaries, no details of his friendships, his problems, his day-to-day life. So there’s a lot of white space in between the images that have become so familiar.
Rudy Rucker fills in that white space in this novel – this ‘imagined biography’ (my own term; ‘fictional’ seems too permissive) – of Bruegel’s relationship to art, to people, and to the time and place in which he lived.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

it is true that the author didn't have much information to go on. when writing about the paintings he did a good job and i had a sense of the time period and how the art displayed that. but the dialogue between the character is so clumsy it took away from what should have been an enjoyable read. A really annoying thing followed after he used a Flemish ( ? ) term then in the next sentence defined or translated it. other authors do this much more smoothly by incorporating that info into a part of the story flow. that by itself made me crazy..

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have kind of mixed feelings about this book. I enjoy art historical fiction a lot, since I studied art history, and I did enjoy the book. The main problem I had was that, while a good story, at times it seemed to lack a forward drive. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but I was rarely dying to pick the book back up and see what happened next. Only a few spots really kept me interested in coming back for more. I enjoyed the story, but I could see how for people with less interest in art//history/art history it could get boring.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The format for this novel about the artist Peter Bruegel is interesting - the first page of each chapter is a painting by Bruegel and the chapter relates to the painting in some way. I enjoyed the descriptions of 16th century Flemish culture and historical events and what it took to be an artist in that time period. The weakness in the book is the dialogue and the social interactions of the characters which frequently seem strained or unrealistic.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very interesting to read about the source of paints in the 16th century and how they were produced. I particularly enjoyed learning how Breugel planned his paintings and their hidden meanings, epecially those paintings I've seen and like. I would have given the book 5 stars if the factual information of Breugel's life had been footnoted or highlighted in some way from the fictional part of the story. Beyond being entertained (I was!), I'd like to really know.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The pictures included at the beginning of each chapter are hard to see, but the internet provides copies that illuminate the story, which is well told. Apparently the author illuminated the story by studying the pictures.
The depiction of the times and the politics of the day was woven nicely with the story of the artist.
The book has introduced me to an artist I had never heard of, and who is worth looking at.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting subject matter (which I knew almost nothing about), and excellent presentation of the historical period. While I liked the book overall, I just did not care very much about any of the characters. I haven't been able to put my finger on why, but they just did not "live" in my mind. Still, an informative read that fans of historical fiction or art may enjoy.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable bringing-to-life of Bruegel through his paintings. A little frustrating to stare at small b&w pictures at the beginning of each chapter, given the generally large size of Bruegel's paintings, so it might be a good idea to read this book with the internet handy.

I found this much more effective on my sense of learning and imagination than a pure art history book would have been.

[Euroyank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have the good fortune of living near the museums where much of this art is on display, so reading a novel about the artist's life offered me insight that made my next viewing of any of the 12 paintings used as chapters much more meaningful. While I would not list this book as a work of great literature, it did exactly what the label said it would - help me imagine the life Bruegel led.

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rudy Rucker gives an accurate portrayl of the political climate in and around Antwerp in the 16th century and the intrigues of both church and state. As a biography of Peter Bruegel it reads as a bit of fact mixed with a large portion of conjecture and imagination.