Caritas (Charity) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Postcard

Caritas (Charity) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559, is a large, finely finished pen and ink drawing for his series of engravings, The Virtues. In a complex landscape composition of a town, an enormous number of figures engage in acts of charity, giving alms, ministering to the poor, the sick, the disabled, and prisoners. Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569) was a Dutch/Flemish painter and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance. Among the first artists to incorporate realistic details and subject matter from landscape and the life of the common people, Bruegel all but invented the Dutch art of genre painting. His many lively and witty paintings of peasants influenced many generations of artists, from Rembrandt through the Realists of the modern era.