The Suicide of Saul

Common card · No. 354341

The Suicide of Saul is an oil-on-panel painting by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1562. It is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna. The Suicide of Saul is an early attempt by Bruegel to reconcile landscape and figure painting. Despite the scale of the subject, at 33.5 cm × 55 cm (13.2 in × 22 in) it is rather small compared to his later landscape subjects, but has an "astonishingly dense and highly dramatic composition". If it is compared with one of his last works, The Magpie on the Gallows of 1568, its weaknesses are apparent: the foreground and background are not yet reconciled and the jutting outcrop of rock in the centre see 2nd detail is a Mannerist device which one may see again in The Procession to Calvary. However, the distant world landscape is seen through a shimmering haze, which seems to have the effect of emphasizing the foreground detail, and this does represent a new stage in the evolution of Bruegel's depiction...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Public domain