Shop art print and framed art Children's games by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

The Children's Games is an oil painting on wood panel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder dating from 1560, currently on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Measuring 116 × 161 cm, it bears the signature and date "BRVEGEL 1560" in the lower right-hand corner. First mentioned by Carel van Mander in his account of Bruegel's life, this painting came into the possession of the Duke of Austria in 1594. It depicts 200 children - 122 boys and 78 girls - playing 91 different games. The Children's Games, an oil on wood dating from 1560, is striking for the architecture of the painting - buildings with clean lines, deliberate perspective that has been seen as reminiscent of Italian art or Hans Vredeman de Vries in Flanders - and for the joyful world that is being built up in every direction, that of childhood, which could be contrasted with the frightening vision offered by The Triumph of Death a few years later. The theme, taken from breviaries, books of hours and calendars, parallels the allegories of the sixteenth century, infantia or innocentia, and is renewed by the astonishing animation created in an urban site, invaded by some two hundred and thirty children and from which adults are banished, with the exception of a woman throwing a bucket of water over two boys who are fighting, as one would over excited dogs. While the games are identifiable (we counted nearly 91), the children are hardly individualised: an attitude, an expression brings them to life, and movement is [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the flemish & northern renaissance style.

 

« Children's games » is kept at Art History Museum, Vienna, Austria.

 

Find the full description of Children's games by Pieter Brueghel the Elder on Wikipedia.