Pieter Brueghel or Bruegel (/ˈpitəɾ ˈbɾøːɣəl/) n 2 known as the Elder, sometimes Frenchified as Pierre Brueghel the Elder2 (in Brabant Pieter Bruegel den Aauwe) is a Brabant painter and engraver born around 1525 and died on September 9, 1569 in Brussels in the Spanish Netherlands.

Along with Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Paul Rubens, he is considered one of the great figures of the Flemish School, and one of the principal figures of the Antwerp School.
The biography of Pieter Brueghel the Elder is extremely incomplete and in the absence of written sources, historians are often reduced to hypotheses. The place and date of his birth lends itself to much conjecture, as does the spelling of his name 3,n 4.
Birth

Thanks to the date of his death in 1569 "in the prime of life" ("medio aetatis flore"), i.e. between 35 and 45 years old, and that of his admission as master in the liggeren ("registers") of the Guild of Saint-Luc in Antwerp (in 15513), usually between 21 and 25 years old4, we can place Brueghel's date of birth between 1525 and 1530, which makes him a contemporary of Charles V and his successor Philip II of 'Spain.

According to Carel van Mander (1548-1606), Pieter was born “not far from Breda, in a village formerly called Bruegel, a name he kept for himself and for his descendants”5,n 5. Dominique Lampson (1532-1599) mentions Pietro Brueghel di Breda around 1564, a name taken up by Lodovico Guicciardini in 15676,7 and Giorgio Vasari in 15688.

However, there were two villages bearing the name Brueghel (or Brogel): one located in North Brabant, approximately 55 km from the current Dutch city of Bréda, the other - which was double and named Grote (Grand) Brogel and Kleine (Petit) Brogel — located in present-day Belgian Limburg and at the time belonged to the principality of Liège9. Various biographers and historians subsequently established that Grote-Brogel was approximately 5 km from the town of Brée10 (Brée was originally written Breda before becoming Brea).

The question of the exact place of birth of Brueghel the Elder is therefore not resolved to this day, even if the proximity between Grote-Brogel and Bree is favored by several historians11, whether Brueghel is a toponym or a surname in its own right. .
Career
Hunters in the Snow (1565).

Still according to van Mander12, he was a student of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a cultivated artist, dean of the artists' guild, both painter and architect. In 1552, he traveled to Italy, residing in Rome where he was able to work with the miniaturist Giulio Clovio. The Port of Naples, the setting of The Fall of Icarus and The Suicide of Saul as well as some drawings bear witness to his journey. It is likely that Brueghel extended his journey further south. In the background of the naval combat in the Strait of Messina, some recognized the village of Reggio di Calabria, facing Sicily13.

Between 1555 and 1563, he settled in Antwerp and worked for the publisher Jérôme Cock, making preliminary drawings for series of prints.

In Antwerp, he frequented a circle of artists and scholars.