As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel (Hardcover)

~ Rudy Rucker (Author) "Peter Bruegel was looking at his first mountain, a steep, rounded foothill at the edge of the Alps..." (more)
Key Phrases: hedge sermon, peasant wedding, oak panel, Master Coecke, Low Lands, King Philip (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As intricate-if not as fluent-as one of its subject's own vivid depictions of 16th-century life in the Spanish-dominated Low Countries, Rucker's fictionalized life of Bruegel draws its readers into a teeming world of politics, art, love, sin and loss. Rucker has marshaled years of research into 16 chapters, each built around one of Bruegel's famous paintings and highlighting a pivotal experience in the artist's life. Bruegel left his boyhood village to be apprenticed to Master Coecke of Antwerp, and once a master himself, traveled to Italy to be smitten by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Once back in Belgium, he began to receive commissions for his paintings, using audacious perspectives and even more risky interpretations of religious themes. Rucker's own boisterously crowded canvas includes characters like homosexual cartographer Ortelius, the scheming bishop and later cardinal Granvelle, the charismatic half-American Indian Williblad Cheroo, and young Mayken, Bruegel's adored wife and canny business manager. Though Rucker's literal-minded narration repeatedly leads him to tell rather than show ("Bruegel was beginning to feel the stirrings of romantic love"; "For her part, Mayken acted quite unromantic"), he skillfully interlaces his account of Bruegel's various artistic and literary influences with insights into the genesis of some of his most renowned works. This is clearly a labor of love and, though sometimes less than graceful, it grapples handily with Bruegel's genius-his ability to wittily and gracefully recreate all human activity, from the sublime to the scatological. 16 b&w reproductions.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* What possesses a popular science fiction writer to write a historical novel about a sixteenth-century Flemish painter enamored of peasant ways? Unbridled fascination with the depiction of worlds real and imagined. Rucker's keen insights into Peter Bruegel's spellbinding and politically subversive work underpin this animated, suspenseful, and affecting tale, a step up from Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring (2000). Biographical information about Bruegel is scant, but Rucker's sense that the painter was lively, compassionate, courageous, and determined feels right, and the characters Rucker invents to flesh out Bruegel's violent and precarious universe are equally compelling, especially the cultured mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, who is so careful to conceal his homosexuality; the sexy and volatile half-Native American, Williblad Cheroo; and Bruegel's smart, saucy wife. Just as Bruegel's paintings are a great joy to behold even as they induce the viewer to face the grimmer aspects of life, Rucker's vivid imagining of Bruegel's trials and triumphs is set against a cutting indictment of the horrors of the Spanish occupation and Inquisition. Bruegel's great gift was his perception of the sacred in the earthy, and Rucker follows suit in this vital portrait of a sweet-natured disciple of life's fecund beauty in a time of cold-blooded tyranny. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (November 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765304031
• ISBN-13: 978-0765304032
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,258,708 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars M. C. Eschers inspiration......, December 31, 2006

By	Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: As Above, So Below : A Novel of Peter Bruegel (Paperback)

Rudy Rucker has managed to give some insight into the thought processes that created the wonderful works of this 16th century Flemish painter as well as exposing the reader to the hardships endured by the residents of the "low countries" during the merciless Spanish control of the Netherlands.

Brugels early works give a birds-eye perspective of the subject matter as well as depicting religious events as if they were happening in the 16th century. It is my belief that M.C. Escher as well as Salvador Dali both capitalized on Brugels early vision.(See Escher's Tower of Babel as well as Ascending & Descending and several of Dali's works appear to have been inspired by Brugel's "Fall of the Rebel Angels".) Both of these men owe a large debt of gratitude to Brugel for his inspiration.

Although this book is "historical fiction", the author has done such an exemplary job of providing a discerning and perceptive insight into Brugels life and times, it almost reads like an autobiograpy.

If you enjoy history, art, and great storytelling this book is definitely for you! 4 1/2 stars!!!!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Look deeper!, January 4, 2003

By	Julie Barreto (Kamuela, HI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I picked this up blind from the new book bin at the Kailua-Kona public library, and boy, I'm glad I did. I've always enjoyed Bruegel, but this novel really makes you look at each picture with new eyes. Thank goodness I had an art book (Phaidon) of Bruegel at home with big color plates, which really complemented the text of this book. I love the feeling of delving into the past, but with good friends, which is how I think of Bruegel now that I've read this book.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painless History, February 21, 2003

By A Customer

Not only is this book well-researched and documented but it is an easy read. The times of Europe in the l6th century are colorfully presented and the characterizations are believable. It's easy to get caught up in the intrigues. I'll now view Peter Bruegel's works in a new light. Well-worth a read!