Magpie on the Gallows by Pieter Bruegel Postcard

The Magpie on the Gallows by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1568, is a small egg tempera and oil painting on wood panel. A group of peasants play music on bagpipes and dance in a dense, forest landscape. Before them is a hangman’s gallows, a magpie bird perched on top of it. The dark foreground forest opens up into the vast spaces of distant country landscape with watermill, hills, a town and castle. 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 subject matter from landscape and the life of common people, Bruegel all but invented the art of Dutch genre painting. Bruegel painted a number of religious works but is best known for his lively, allegorical paintings of peasants and witty commentary and on life, sin and virtue. His innovative compositions and carefully observed, realistic details influenced many generations of artists, from Rembrandt through the Realists of the modern era.