Biographical specifics about Bruegel are at a minimum, but his work can often be revealing in a historical sense. Antwerp at the time was a boom town that became the economic center of the Western world, and, as a consequence, there was a diverse society of influences to draw on. Bruegel chose three times the biblical subject of The Tower of Babel, taken from the story where God punished those who chose to build a tower to the heavens by stripping man of a common language. His paintings "The Tower of Babel" (1563) and "The Little Tower of Babel" from the same year are often seen like allegories for Bruegel's Antwerp. The works are almost astonishingly detailed.
Breugel also executed some religious works, including "The Adoration of the Kings" (1564), "The Procession to Calvary" (1564), and "The Adoration of The Kings in the Snow" (1567), the latter work featuring a dramatically effective rendering of a snowy landscape.
But perhaps Bruegel is best known for his sense of the macabre. His demons draw on influences by another Flemish artist, Hieronymus Bosch, but are no less striking and bizarre. Bruegel shows all variety of hideous animal-like demons in his "The Fall of The Rebel Angels" (1562) being driven out of heaven by the Archangel Michael. "Dulle Griet" (1562), also known as "Mad Meg," shows a traditional Flemish folk character filled with monsters on her way to the open jaws of hell. "The Triumph of Death" (1562) shows a landscape of skeletons and devastation in an apocalyptic vision.
Breugel is also known for his outstanding work in landscapes as landscape art was working its way from it's relatively minor role it had played compared to religious subject matter. "The Return of the Herd" (1565) is one of a cycle of five surviving paintings Breugel made on the seasons, while "Landscape With The Fall of Icarus" (1558) shows the mythical occurrence being ignored by a farmer and his plow. His paintings of peasants are also striking in their detail, and "The Peasant Wedding" (1568) is perhaps the best known of Bruegel's peasant paintings.
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