Saul Falling on His Sword Saul Falling on His Sword Art
| The Suicide of Saul | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Pieter Bruegel the Elderberry |
| Year | 1562[1] |
| Type | Oil on panel |
| Dimensions | 33.v cm × 55 cm (13.2 in × 22 in) |
| Location | Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
The Suicide of Saul is an oil-on-panel by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1562. It is in the drove of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Clarification [edit]
An inscription on the painting identifies the subject as the rarely represented scene of the suicide of Saul later his defeat by the Philistines. These events are described in ane Samuel 31, 1-5:
Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from earlier the Philistines, and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. Then the Philistines followed hard after Saul and his sons. And the Philistines killed Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul'due south sons. The boxing became fierce against Saul. The archers hit him, and he was severely wounded by the archers.
Then Saul said to his armorbearer, "Depict your sword, and thrust me through with information technology, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and abuse me."
But his armorbearer would non, for he was greatly afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and vicious on it. And when his armorbearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword, and died with him.
—one Samuel 31:one-5, NKJV[2]
Bruegel has called the highly dramatic moment of the death of the armourbearer, just as the Philistines are budgeted. Come across 1st detail
Saul's expiry was interpreted as a penalization of pride - it was among the proud that Dante met Saul in the Purgatorio - and this may account for Bruegel's choice of such an unusual subject area.[iii]
As with most of his subjects taken from the Bible, Bruegel treats Saul'due south suicide equally a contemporary outcome, showing the armies in 16th century armour. In 1529 the German painter Albrecht Altdorfer had shown the clash of the forces of Alexander the Swell and Darius at the Battle of the Issus in this way, and in many other respects, too, Bruegel is in Altdorfer's debt, particularly in the representation of the tiny, massed figures of the soldiers and their forests of lances.[4] Bruegel may also have looked at the boxing-scenes of another German painter, Jörg Breu the Younger, and at a now lost battle-scene by the Antwerp mural painter Joachim Patinir which is mentioned by biographer Karel van Mander.[5]
The Suicide of Saul is an early on attempt by Bruegel to reconcile landscape and figure painting. If it is compared with i of his latest works, The Magpie on the Gallows of 1568, its weaknesses are apparent: the foreground and groundwork are non yet reconciled and the jutting outcrop of rock in the eye run across 2nd detail is a mannerist device which one may see once again in The Procession to Calvary. Yet, the afar landscape is seen through a shimmering haze, which seems to have the effect of emphasizing the foreground particular, and this does represent a new phase in the development of Bruegel'southward delineation of naturalistic mural.[6]
References [edit]
- ^ signed at bottom left: "SAUL XXXI CAPIT BRVEGEL M.CCCCC.LXII"
- ^ From online NKJV, 1 Samuel 31
- ^ Cf. Dante'south Canto XII, vv.40-42: O Saul, transfixed past your own sword, how dead / yous seemed to lie on Mount Gilboa'southward patently, / which since that time has known no rain or dew. (transl. M. Musa, Penguin Books, 1985). Saul was placed in the 2d Terrace of Purgatory, with Male monarch Nimrod, the subject of another Bruegel painting, The Tower of Babel.
- ^ Some of the cracking battle scenes of The Lord of the Rings motion picture trilogy are strongly reminiscent of this composition's boxing deployment.
- ^ Screech, Matthew (2005). Masters of the ninth fine art: bandes dessinées and Franco-Belgian identity. Liverpool University Printing. p. 85. ISBN9780853239383.
- ^ Cf. Pietro Allegretti, Brueghel, Skira, Milano 2003. ISBN 0-00-001088-X (in Italian)
External links [edit]
- The Suicide of Saul at the KHM (High german)
- Kunsthistorisches Museum's Official Website
- Bosch Bruegel Guild
- 99 works by Pieter Bruegel the Elderberry
- Artistic Bruegel laid the foundation of the Netherlands School (Russian)
- . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Suicide_of_Saul
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