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The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
  • Original Title: De val van de opstandige engelen
  • Date: 1562
  • Style: Northern Renaissance
  • Period: Antwerp Period (1554-1562)
  • Series: Boschian series
  • Genre: religious painting
  • Media: oil, panel
  • Dimensions: 117 x 162 cm
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'The Fall of the Rebel Angels' reveals the artist's profound debt to Hieronymous Bosch, especially in the grotesque figures of the fallen angels, shown as half-human, half-animal monsters. Together with 'Dulle Griet' and 'The Triumph of Death', which have similar dimensions, it was probably painted for the same collector and destined to become part of a series.

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The Fall of the Rebel Angels is an oil-on-panel by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1562. It is currently held and exhibited at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.

Painted in 1562, Bruegel's depiction of this subject is taken from a passage from the Book of Revelation (12, 2-9) and reveals the artist's profound debt to Hieronymous Bosch, especially in the grotesque figures of the fallen angels, shown as half-human, half-animal monsters. Together with Dulle Griet and The Triumph of Death, which have similar dimensions, it was probably painted for the same collector and destined to become part of a series.

The composition with a central figure placed among many smaller figures was favoured by Bruegel at this time, not only in other paintings such as Dulle Griet, but also in the series of engravings of the Vices and the Virtues which he had just completed for the Antwerp publisher Hieronymous Cock. The archangel Michael and his angels are shown by Bruegel in the act of driving the rebel angels from Heaven. Pride was the sin which caused the fall of Lucifer and his companions, and the conflict of good and evil, vice and virtue, is a theme which recurs constantly in Bruegel's work.

The painting is used in the music video for the song “Blood Sweat and Tears” by South Korean boyband BTS.

The painting, along with Heironymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, is alluded to in the song "Painters of the Tempest, Part Two: Triptych Lux" by Australian progressive metal band Ne Obliviscaris.

This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). The full text of the article is here →


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