etherlands, in whose palace in Brussels the sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck had a studio. He and Bruegel had traveled in Italy at the same time, and his brother, a rich Antwerp collector, Niclaes, was Bruegel's greatest patron, having by 1566 acquired sixteen of his paintings. Another patron was Abraham Ortelius, who in a memorable obituary called Bruegel the most perfect artist of the century. Most of his paintings were done for collectors. Bruegel's earliest works were landscapes, an interest he retained throughout his life. A number of panoramic landscape drawings made on his Italian trip show Bruegel's ability, even in his early career, to show the changing moods and the qualities of nature. These same characteristics appear in his later landscape paintings, such as Hunters in the Snow and Magpie on the Gallows . After his return to Antwerp from Italy in 1555, Bruegel regularly made drawings for engravings published by the printing house owned by the graphic artist Hieronymus Cock. Some of Bruegel's drawings for Cock were landscapes, but others were clearly meant to capitalize on the popularity of the strange art of Bruegel's famous Flemish predecessor Hieronymus Bosch. The fantastic, monstrous figures and demonic dwarfs in Bruegel's series of engravings The Seven Deadly Vices (1557) belong to this category. Late in the 1550s, Bruegel began a series of large painted panels with complex compositions depicting various aspects of Flemish folk life. The earliest of these is an encyclopedic portrayal of common sayings, Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) followed by Combat Between Carnival and Lent (1559) and Children's Games (1560). All are marked by a perceptive observation of human nature, a pervasive wit, and the vitality of Bruegel's peasant figures. One example is The Alchemist, a satire on foolish learning as well as greed, designed by Bruegel for Cock in the same year as the worldly series of Seven Virtues. Later examples of peasant fo...
