Pieter Bruegel the Elder,1559, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Despite portraits being a stalwart (someone who supports an organization, team, etc in a very loyal way)of Dutch and Flemish art in the 16th century, and a lucrative (if something is lucrative, it makes a lot of money) market for artists, Pieter Bruegel never painted any. He specialized in genre paintings portraying the lives of peasants – not a common subject matter at the time.

But humanist ideals were beginning to influence artists and scholars (someone who has studied a subject and knows a lot about it), and Italy was coming to the end of its High Renaissance (the period during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe when there was a lot of interest and activity in art, literature, ideas, etc) of art and culture, making Bruegel an innovative pioneer in the Dutch Golden Age. He was to become increasingly influential.

He is sometimes referred to as “Peasant Bruegel”, in an attempt to distinguish him from the other painters in his family, including his remarkably gifted son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger. The epithet (an adjective added to a person's name or a phrase used instead of it, usually to criticize or praise them) came about because it was believed that he must have come from humble(poor or of a low social rank) origins, due to his emphasis ( particular importance or attention that you give to something) on highlighting the routine working days of the lowly. But in more recent years, scholars have noted the intellectual sophistication of his work and thinking, and believe that he was a highly educated member 

of the gentry (people of high social class, especially in the past).

After his training, Bruegel travelled to Italy to see the works of the Italian masters. In 1555 he returned to Antwerp, working as a successful print designer for the main publisher at the time. It was only later in life that he concentrated purely on painting, and all of his great masterpieces were produced in little more than a decade. By then, his pictures had become much sought (to try to find or get something) after by wealthy patrons and collectors.

In 1559 Bruegel painted one of his most exquisite works, the richly detailed and mesmerizing (to have someone's attention completely so that they cannot think of anything else) Netherlandish Proverbs ( illustrations of Dutch language proverbs and idioms, a famous phrase or sentence that gives you advice), which depicts literal (the literal meaning of a word or phrase is its real or original meaning)visual representations of more than 90 Dutch sayings. Variants of a large number of the proverbs Bruegel illustrated are still used in modern Flemish, French, English and Dutch. To the people of 16th-century Flanders, proverbs were a familiar part of their vocabulary, and as the subject of an artwork would have been recognisable as well as entertaining.