The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel

Breugel, The Harvesters

Pieter Bruegel's sense of space in The Harvesters largely seems to conform to the rules for perspective as laid down by Alberti. For example, we can observe in Bruegel a fairly sophisticated understanding of Alberti's basic principles for establishing perspective. For example, Alberti describes the upshot of using his basic mathematical formula in this way: "I go on from there without any difficulty to do the heights of the surfaces, since a quantity will maintain the same proportion for its whole height as that which exists between the centric line and the position on the pavement from which that quantity of the building rises" (Alberti 1436). Perhaps the strongest central structural device in Bruegel's The Harvesters is established along this principle: this is the depiction of the row of as-yet-unharvested grain, which (roughly speaking) begins in the painting's lower left corner and extends diagonally towards the painting's upper right corner. The ratio between the height of the grain as depicted in the lower left (when it is closest to the viewer) to the height of the grain as seen at the furthest distance depicted by Bruegel, to the right of the tree and in front of the blue steepled building, mid-canvas and just right of center) would seem to be exactly the right mathematical proportion of "braccia" that Alberti specifies for establishing the mathematical depth. The grain at the lower right looks to be about 3 times higher than it is at its furthest distance. But Bruegel also establishes this perspective immediately in the lower left corner: where the first notch is cut in the line of grain, we can tell that, from above, the corner would be orthogonal and the angle looks to be about 90 degrees: but viewed from Bruegel's perspective, the orthogonal seems to have been squeezed down to about 45 degrees. It is no accident that this lower corner is where Bruegel begins constructing his perspective like this: he expects the viewer to read the canvas like a text, from left to right, and to find the painting's structure to be harmoniously constructed.

What is interesting, however, is to observe the way that Bruegel violates many of Alberti's classicizing dicta. We can see this when comparing Bruegel with a painter like Raphael, of whom Alberti (it seems) would wholeheartedly approve. Raphael's constructions are highly formal. It is true that the individual figures in a large disegno by Raphael, like the School of Athens or Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, are each depicted in such a way as to make them appear as natural and unforced as possible -- one can consider the perfect spontaneity and realism of the figures in the lower left and right corners of the Disputation, the kerchiefed woman on the lower left finding a word in the book, the figure at the lower right leaning forward to get a good look at the eucharist, to see how Raphael's individual figures are actually far more realistic and lifelike than Bruegel's. However, this spontaneity in the individual figures vanishes when one steps back to consider the tightly-constructed formalism of the gestalt. Admittedly a fresco like the Disputation or School of Athens has to be constructed in horizontal bands, with the painter working directly onto wet plaster before it dries, so Raphael's tight formal overall construction is to some extent constrained by the limitations of the medium.

What is interesting is the way in which Bruegel's painting does still maintain strong formal devices. Consider the tree that essentially divides the canvas vertically. For a start, its placement (off-center to the right) is hardly accidental: Bruegel is roughly observing the proportions of the Pythagorean golden rectangle here, and the right segment of the canvas observes the same rough rectangular proportions as the canvas as a whole. Similarly the left segment of the canvas observes the same sort of construction in structured and composed horizontal bands that we can observe in Raphael's Disputation -- the difference, though, is that Bruegel is not painting a fresco. He is working in oil, and thus has the opportunity to work methodically and correct his work where necessary. As a result, Bruegel seems to aim for a more calculated sprezzatura in his effects: although the vertical line of the tree divides the canvas with a perfect mathematical proportion, Bruegel's genius here is to make it seem almost like an accident of the tree's placement, until we realize it is doing precisely the same sort of mathematical calculation that Alberti advises.