As Above, So Below

Summary: Peter Bruegels paintingsa peasant wedding in a barn, hunters in the snow, a rollicking street festival, and many othershave long defined our idea of everyday life in 16th century Europe. They are classic icons of a time and place in much the same way as Norman Rockwells depictions of 20th century America. We know relatively little about Bruegel, but after years of research, novelist Rudy Rucker has found a way to tel...l us the story of this young old master. In sixteen chapters, each headed by one of the artists famous works, Rucker brings Bruegels painters progress and his colorful world to vibrant life, doing for Bruegel what the bestselling Girl With A Pearl Earring did for Vermeer. We follow the artist from the winding streets of Antwerp and Brussels to the glowing skies and decaying monuments of Rome. Bruegel and his friends, the cartographer Ortelius and Williblad Cheroo, an American Indian, are as vivid on the page as the multifarious denizens of Bruegels unforgettable canvases. Here is a world of conflict, change, and discovery, a world where Carnival battles Lent every day, the world preserved for us in paint by the enigmatic and engaging genius readers will meet in the pages of As Above, So Below. [read more]