L’apiculteur sans visage : Entomologie moralisée et poétique du minuscule chez Pieter Bruegel l’Ancien

Abstract

In the second half of the 16th century, when the first naturalist works devoted exclusively to bees appeared, there was a proliferation of astonishing depictions of hives and swarms, which considerably renewed the imaginary world of beekeeping – a practice that was half-agricultural, half-spiritual. A pen-and-ink drawing by Bruegel the Elder, generally dated 1568, is particularly striking: it shows three beekeepers at work, whose facelessness is enigmatic. Earlier, between 1556 and 1568, the Flemish painter had shown an interest in the beekeeping motif: in particular his various representations of the Tower of Babel, whose gigantic honeycomb structure we shall examine. It seems to be part of a tradition that established a link between honey and language. At the end of the tour, as a hypothesis, we will present the painter as a beekeeper: does he not play this role, or even that of an entomologist, when he depicts with extreme precision the habits of human insects?

Keywords

• bruegel the elder
• reformation
• honeybee
• beehive
• beekeeper
• babel