The Suicide of Saul

Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Suicide of Saul

Artist| Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Year| 1562[1]
Type| Oil on panel
Dimensions| 33.5 cm × 55 cm (13.2 in × 22 in)
Location| Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Suicide of Saul is an oil-on-panel by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1562. It is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

## Description

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An inscription on the painting identifies the subject as the rarely represented scene of the suicide of Saul after his defeat by the Philistines. These events are described in 1 Samuel 31, 1-5:

> Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. Then the Philistines followed hard after Saul and his sons. And the Philistines killed Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul's sons. The battle became fierce against Saul. The archers hit him, and he was severely wounded by the archers.

> Then Saul said to his armorbearer, "Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and abuse me."

> But his armorbearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and fell on it. And when his armorbearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword, and died with him.

> — 1 Samuel 31:1-5, NKJV[2]

Detail 1

Bruegel has chosen the highly dramatic moment of the death of the armourbearer, just as the Philistines are approaching. See 1st detail

Saul's death was interpreted as a punishment of pride \- it was among the proud that Dante met Saul in the Purgatorio \- and this may account for Bruegel's choice of such an unusual subject.[3]

As with most of his subjects taken from the Bible, Bruegel treats Saul's suicide as a contemporary event, showing the armies in 16th century armour. In 1529, the German painter Albrecht Altdorfer had shown the clash of the forces of Alexander the Great and Darius at the Battle of the Issus in this way, and in many other respects, too, Bruegel is in Altdorfer's debt, particularly in the representation of the tiny, massed figures of the soldiers and their forests of lances.[4] Bruegel may also have looked at the battle-scenes of another German painter, Jörg Breu the Younger, and at a now lost battle-scene by the Antwerp landscape painter Joachim Patinir which is mentioned by biographer Karel van Mander.[5]

Detail 2

The Suicide of Saul is an early attempt by Bruegel to reconcile landscape and figure painting. If it is compared with one of his latest works, The Magpie on the Gallows of 1568, its weaknesses are apparent: the foreground and background are not yet reconciled and the jutting outcrop of rock in the centre see 2nd detail is a mannerist device which one may see again in The Procession to Calvary. However, the distant landscape is seen through a shimmering haze, which seems to have the effect of emphasizing the foreground detail, and this does represent a new stage in the evolution of Bruegel's depiction of naturalistic landscape.[6]

## See also

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* List of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

## References

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1. ^ signed at bottom left: "SAUL XXXI CAPIT BRVEGEL M.CCCCC.LXII"
2. ^ From online NKJV, 1 Samuel 31
3. ^ Cf. Dante's Canto XII, vv.40-42: O Saul, transfixed by your own sword, how dead / you seemed to lie on Mount Gilboa's plain, / which since that time has known no rain or dew. (transl. M. Musa, Penguin Books, 1985). Saul was placed in the 2nd Terrace of Purgatory, with King Nimrod, the subject of another Bruegel painting, The Tower of Babel.
4. ^ Some of the great battle scenes of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy are strongly reminiscent of this composition's battle deployment.
5. ^ Screech, Matthew (2005). Masters of the ninth art: bandes dessinées and Franco-Belgian identity. Liverpool University Press. p. 85\. ISBN 9780853239383.
6. ^ Cf. Pietro Allegretti, Brueghel, Skira, Milano 2003. ISBN 0-00-001088-X (in Italian)

## External links

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Suicide of Saul.

* The Suicide of Saul at the KHM (German)
* Kunsthistorisches Museum's Official Website
* Bosch Bruegel Society
* 99 works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
* Creative Bruegel laid the foundation of the Netherlands School (Russian)
* "Bruegel" . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Paintings|

* List of paintings
* Parable of the Sower (1557)
* Naval Battle in the Gulf of Naples (1558–1562)
* The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559)
* Netherlandish Proverbs (1559)
* Children's Games (1560)
* Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
* The Triumph of Death (c. 1562)
* The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562)
* The Suicide of Saul (1562)
* Two Monkeys (1562)
* Dull Gret (1563)
* Adoration of the Magi in a Winter Landscape (1563)
* The Tower of Babel (1563)
* Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (1563)
* Adoration of the Magi in a Winter Landscape (1563 or 1567)
* Adoration of the Kings (1564)
* The Procession to Calvary (1564)
* Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (1565)
* The Gloomy Day (1565)
* The Harvesters (1565)
* The Hay Harvest (1565)
* The Return of the Herd (1565)
* The Wine of Saint Martin's Day (c. 1565–1568)
* The Hunters in the Snow (1565)
* Winter Landscape with Ice skaters and Bird trap (1565)
* Massacre of the Innocents (c. 1565–1567)
* The Census at Bethlehem (1566)
* The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (1566)
* The Wedding Dance (1566)
* Conversion of Paul (1567)
* The Land of Cockaigne (1567)
* The Peasant Wedding (1567)
* The Peasant Dance (c. 1567)
* The Beggars (1568)
* The Peasant and the Nest Robber (1568)
* The Blind Leading the Blind (1568)
* The Magpie on the Gallows (1568)
* The Misanthrope (1568)
* The Storm at Sea (c. 1569)

Drawings|

* The Painter and The Buyer (1565)

Related|

* Pieter Brueghel the Younger (son)
* Jan Brueghel the Elder (son)
* Jan Brueghel the Younger (grandson)
* Breugel, Netherlands
* Son en Breugel
* The Mill and the Cross (2011 film)
* Bruegel (crater)
* 9664 Brueghel
* Bruegel (institution)

Authority control databases |

* RKD ID

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