Peeter Baltens
[2] His career and artistic development and that of the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder were closely intertwined.
[2][4] The early 17th-century Flemish art historian Karel van Mander is the key source on the life of Baltens.
[5] Van Mander further claimed that Baltens visited different countries and made various views from life even though there is no record of such travels.
His interest in the comical side of village life is evident in The performance of the farce of the phony water (c. 1550, Rijksmuseum).
His palette, showing a preference for bright red, which made the figures stand out from the background, was audacious in its time.
[13] His most famous composition is the St Martin's Day Kermis of which there are two versions, one in the Rijksmuseum and the other in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.
[4] The Bruegel painting was believed lost until it showed up at an art auction and was acquired by the Prado Museum.
Entitled Landscape with Peasant Cottage, this small roundel painting with a diameter of 23.5 cm was formally in the Museum Bredius in The Hague from which it was stolen.
balten f./1581' the painting depicts a farmhouse near a body of water and a simple flat landscape with a church tower in the distance.
The painting has been cited in art literature to demonstrate the insufficiently acknowledged influence of Flemish artists on the work of the Dutch painter Esaias van de Velde.
His Christ on the Road to Calvary (Auctioned at Sotheby's on 7 July 2005 in London, lot 7) may have drawn some inspiration of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's treatment of this subject (1564, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), which Baltens likely knew in Antwerp.
Some compositional elements of both works are similar: Christ is placed in the centre of the composition on his knees, a ring of figures surrounds the crucifixion site on a hilltop on the upper right, an officer on a white horse is placed between the viewer and Christ and horsemen in red tunics bring up at the rear the procession of figures.
Whereas the subject of the Tower of Babel is usually interpreted as a critique of human hubris, and in particular on the Roman Catholic Church which at the time was undertaking at great expense large-scale construction projects such as the St. Peter's Basilica, it has also been viewed as a celebration of technical progress, which was heralding a better and more organized world.
[23] Around 1580 Baltens published an illustrated book in Antwerp under the title: Les généalogies et anciennes descentes des forestiers et comtes de Flandre, avec brièves descriptions de leurs vies et gestes; le tout recueilly des plus véritables, approvées croniques et annales qui se trouvent, par Corneille Martin Zélandoys.
et ornées de portraicts figures et habitz selon les façons et guises de leurs temps, ainsi qu’elles ont esté trouvées ès plus anciens tableaux, par Pierre Balthasar, et par lui-mesme mises en lumière (The genealogies of the Foresters and Counts of Flanders, with a brief description of their lives and deeds, as they have been found in the most genuine and approved chronicles and annals by Corneille Martin from Zeeland; and decorated with portraits, figures and dresses according to the fashion of the time, as they have been found in the oldest paintings and highlighted by Pierre Balthazar).
[24] The book contained prints of the 33 counts and countesses of Flanders including their mythical ancestors, the so-called 'forestiers'.
Peeter Baltens drew and engraved the plates, had the book printed and sold it in his publishing house.
For instance, a print of Baltens on the theme of the Land of Cockaigne ('Luilekkerland' in Dutch) was likely the inspiration for Bruegel's treatment of the subject (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).
