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The True Copy: Imitation and
Truth in Pieter Bruegel’s
Landcape with the Magpie on the
Gallows
Catherine Levesque, The College of
William and Mary
In his short biography of Pieter
Bruegel Carel van Mander notes
that, “In his will he left his wife
a painting of a Magpie on the
Gallows. By this magpie he meant
the babbling of tongues, which he
thus delivered to execution.” This “
babbling of tongues” is generally
interpreted as gossip but such
chattering without meaning or
reason might - I think - signify
superficial imitation more
generally. This emphasis makes
sense since imitation appears as a
leitmotif in Bruegel commentary,
from Ludovicco Guicciardini’s 1567
praise of the artist as a “grand
imitatore della scienza &
fantasie di Girolamo Bosco” to
Ortelius’ epitaph praising his
friend as “not just the best of
painters but ‘nature’s painter,’
worthy of being imitated by all.”
The proposed paper seeks to relate
the role of mimesis, imitation, and
copying in Bruegel’s Magpie on
the Gallows to the humanist
understanding of these concepts in
his day. If, as I believe, this
painting directly addresses
imitation as the repetition of a
half truth or a truth ill
understood, it also presents an
ideal of true imitation that is an
underlying theme in a number of
paintings and prints by and after
Bruegel.
In Landscape with the Magpie on
the Gallows Bruegel situates
the figures and motifs to
accommodate a perceiver who must
observe the world of the picture
from many perspectives - one who
has traveled about and used his
eyes. This point of view takes into
account the defecator, the two
observers, and the dancers. Figures
who - to paraphrase the
sixteenth-century natural historian
Conrad Gesner - contract or expand
our view of nature. Moreover, the
viewer moves visually across a
foreground painted in thick dark
textured brown strokes beyond the
gallows, cross, and mill to the
outermost borders of this world
(the eschata), a luminous
thinly painted distance where
earth, sea, and sky meet. Bruegel
sets out these extremes and invites
us to explore the juxtaposition and
the interaction between them.
According to my reading of the
Magpie on the
Gallows,Bruegel encourages the
viewer to emulate the artist who,
in the creation of his work, drew
on both phantasia (the
process of discovery and judgment
through which models of various
objects and courses of events are
created) and scientia
(speculative reason or inductive
study of the rational). Here, the
viewer, like the artist, moves from
contemplatio to
actio, from appreciation of
natural art (nature copying God) to
comprehending invented or practical
art (the artist copying nature).
This understanding of the artist’s
active ability to remake natural
effects in works of art through
deep understanding of natural
causes bears directly on the
qualities of imitation and natural
painting so remarked on by Bruegel’s
contemporary commentators. It also
accords with the humanist view
whereby pursuit of the arts might
lead to “prudence and experience.”
In short, true looking, like a true
copy, realizes the ethical as well
as the technical potential of the
original. My interpretation of the
Landscape with the Magpie on the
Gallows gives new poignancy and
significance to the copies after
this painting by Bruegel’s sons
Pieter and Jan and, perhaps,
suggests why so many subsequent
artists were inspired to work “
after Bruegel.”
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