As Above, So Below A Novel of Peter Bruegel

ONE MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE THE FRENCH - ITALIAN ALPS, MAY 1552 Peter Bruegel was looking at his first mountain, a steep, rounded foothill at the edge of the Alps. He and his friend Martin de Vos had never seen anything like it. "The land swoops right up into the air," said Bruegel. He was a tall young man with a high brow, a big nose, and alert clear gray eyes. "Just like it's supposed to." "Like a great ocean wave," said de Vos. He leaned on his long staff, peering out from under the low brim of his hat. He had a snub nose and a cheerful smile. "It was worth coming all this way from Antwerp." Do you notice how the mountain's flank tilts up towards us?" continued Bruegel. "It's like we're looking down at it from the sky. With everything spread out next to each other. All there for us to see." He stepped off the stony road into the green grass and held out his arms as if to embrace the landscape before him. It was a rain-kissed afternoon in May. Puffy little clouds were scattered across the watery blue sky, some hanging so close to the ground that Bruegel could almost touch them. A small river ran beside the road, lit just now by a patch of sun. Slanting gray streaks of rain caressed the green mountain. Bruegel felt as if his heart were blooming. "I have to draw this," he told de Vos. He shrugged the strap of his satchel from his shoulder, peeled off his skirted jerkin, and sat down cross-legged upon it. He found ink and pen and a bottle of water in his satchel, and pulled a sheet of paper out of a special flap in his jerkin's lining. All the while he was staring at the mountain. "It's quite unlike what we've seen in paintings back in the Low Lands, Martin. Different than what we've been taught. It's less contorted, more like a living thing. It's saying hello to me." De Vos smiled and sat down to watch his friend begin making tiny brown ink marks on his paper. Rather than drawing a scene with long continuous outlines, Bruegel preferred to nibble away at the edges of things with an accumulation of dots and strokes. The progress was steady and surprisingly rapid. Some other travelers passed by, distracting de Vos. This was a busy road, with any number of merchants moving their goods back and forth between Italy and Northern Europe. Beyond the little mountain before them was one of the few passes where a wagon could get through the Alps. "I'll meet you at that monastery by the mountain's base," said de Vos, looking off down the road. "See it? I'll warrant we can find food and lodging there." "Be sure and tell them that we're guild artists," said Bruegel. "Maybe we can make something for them instead of paying cash." "They might want to own the drawing that you're doing right now," suggested de Vos. "It's off to a nice start, I'd say." "The monks won't want a plain nature sketch," said Bruegel. "If I were to offer them this drawing, I'd need to add something Scriptural." "Joseph and Mary on the way to Egypt," suggested de Vos. "The hermit St. Anthony. The repentant Mary Magdalene taking a piss." "I'd like that," said Bruegel, smiling. He was known among his friends for his fondness of sketching people in their private moments. "But the monks are surely beyond such low concerns. I imagine they're educated men. Humanists, perhaps. I could add some ClasRucker, Rudy is the author of 'As Above, So Below A Novel of Peter Bruegel' with ISBN 9780765304049 and ISBN 076530404X.