Desidia (Sloth) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Postcard

Desidia (Sloth) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1557, is a finely finished pen and ink drawing for his Seven Deadly Sins series of engravings. The influence of the proto-surrealist older artist Hieronymus Bosch is obvious. Various figures laze about and slumber in acts of sloth in a surreal landscape of fantastical, demonic creatures. Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569) was a Dutch/Flemish painter and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance. Among the first artists to incorporate realistic details and subject matter from landscape and the life of the common people, Bruegel all but invented the Dutch art of genre painting. His many lively and witty paintings of peasants influenced many generations of artists, from Rembrandt through the Realists of the modern era.