The Painter and The Buyer

Painter and the buyer is a pen drawing Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1565 in the Graphic Collection Albertina. An alternative title is an artist and connoisseur.

Content and design

The painter maintains in his right hand a brush and looks left past the viewer, presumably to the object he paints A second man looks over his shoulder at the resulting paintings. This work is hidden from the viewer, however. Bruegel is limited entirely to the presentation of two dissimilar men: the detail drawn painter with disheveled hair, bushy eyebrows and a shaggy beard and the more vague outline reproduced viewer behind him with pince-nez, unsightly nose and mouth slightly open.

Technology and exhibition

It is a brown pen and ink drawing with dimensions of 25.5 x 21.5 cm. Repository is the Graphic Collection Albertina in Vienna, inventory number 7500.

Interpretation

In the Middle Ages artists were in a solid craftsmanship tradition that was co-sponsored by the contracting authorities such as the church, nobility or later the bourgeoisie. The representation of a painter and the buyer respectively artists and connoisseurs already reflects the new humanistic conception of art that makes the painter on the subjective judgment of an expert -dependent. After Hans East it is a " foolish observer " Quote: ... with stupid open mouth, with difficulty through the glasses he stares over the artist 's shoulder. This is the connoisseur and amateur, as he later in the circle of the Roman booksellers we meet to Philipp von Stosch.

It is uncertain whether it is with the painter, as is often assumed, a self-portrait Bruegel is conceivable is also a portrait of Hieronymus Bosch. Whose work had influenced the young Bruegel relevant, a number of early drawings in Bosch's fantastic style is maintained. One example is The big fish eat the little ( 1556 )