La Chute des anges rebelles

Out of a blazing hole in the sky, angels tumble and turn into monsters: fish with legs, butterflies with human faces, armoured beasts. In the middle, Saint Michael swings his sword. For centuries this crowded vision was believed to be by Hieronymus Bosch.

The story behind the painting

Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted this oil on panel in 1562. It takes its subject from Revelation 12: Lucifer, created a perfect angel, rebels out of pride, draws a third of the angels after him, and the archangel Michael is charged with driving them out of heaven. When the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium received the picture there was no signature to be seen, so it was believed to be by Hieronymus Bosch. In 1900 a signature with Bruegel's name was found under the frame; it was first given to Pieter the Younger, and only after a date was found was it settled as the work of the Elder.

What to look for

The panel, about 117 by 162 cm, is filled almost to the edges. At the top is heaven in light blues and bright colours; below, the dark tones of hell. In the centre stands Michael in triumph, sword raised, flanked by two good angels in white whose brightness stands out against the darkness beneath them. From the sun above, the rebels pour down and become hybrids: heads on the wrong bodies, exotic animals, armour, weapons and musical instruments. In both upper corners angels blow trumpets, as if the battle were already won. Look for the butterflies and fish mixed among the creatures.

Meaning and intent

Good against evil and virtue against vice run through Bruegel's work, and here they become a single falling avalanche. His debt to Bosch is clear: The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Last Judgement both show hybrid creatures and fallen angels, and Bruegel took Bosch's small scene and made it the whole subject. He also drew on Dürer's woodcut of Saint Michael fighting the dragon, on Frans Floris's own Fall of the Rebel Angels, and on his 1558 drawing of the Last Judgement for the trumpet angels. Tine Luk Meganck compares the painting to a cabinet of curiosities, mixing natural and man-made objects.

Legacy

Bruegel was called a second Bosch, and their methods were so close, sketching with a brush and then building thin layers of pigment, that their works could be hard to tell apart, which explains the long confusion over this panel. It is now in the Oldmasters Museum in Brussels, part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. The painting has found a life in popular culture: it appears at the start of the Korean music video for BTS's Blood Sweat and Tears, on a 2016 jacket by Supreme and Undercover, and as a jigsaw puzzle in the series Interview with the Vampire.

Le saviez-vous ?

Painted in 1562, oil on panel, about 117 by 162 cm.
Long attributed to Hieronymus Bosch; a Bruegel signature was found under the frame in 1900.
Subject taken from Revelation 12.
In the Oldmasters Museum, Brussels.

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