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''The Suicide of Saul'' is an oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1562. It is currently held and exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. ==Description== The inscription identifies the subject as the rarely represented scene of the suicide of Saul after his defeat by the Philistines. These events are described in 1 Samuel 31, 1-5: Bruegel has chosen the highly dramatic moment of the death of the armourbearer, just as the Philistines are approaching.See 1st detail Saul's death was interpreted as a punishment of pride - it was among the proud that Dante met Saul in the ''Purgatorio'' - and this may account for Bruegel's choice of such an unusual subject.〔Cf. Dante's ''Canto'' XII, vv.40-42: ''O Saul, transfixed by your own sword, how dead / you seemed to lie on Mount Gilboa's plain, / which since that time has known no rain or dew.'' (transl. M. Musa, Penguin Books, 1985). Saul was placed in the 2nd Terrace of Purgatory, with King Nimrod, the subject of another Bruegel painting, ''The Tower of Babel''.〕 As with most of his subjects taken from the Bible, Bruegel treats Saul's suicide as a contemporary event, showing the armies in 16th century armour. In 1529 the German painter Albrecht Altdorfer had shown the clash of the forces of Alexander the Great and Darius at the Battle of the Issus in this way, and in many other respects, too, Bruegel is in Altdorfer's debt, particularly in the representation of the tiny, massed figures of the soldiers and their forests of lances.〔Some of the great battle scenes of ''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy are strongly reminiscent of this composition's battle deployment.〕 Bruegel may also have looked at the battle-scenes of another German painter, Jörg Breu the Younger, and at a now lost battle-scene by the Antwerp landscape painter Joachim Patinir which is mentioned by biographer Karel van Mander. ''The Suicide of Saul'' is an early attempt by Bruegel to reconcile landscape and figure painting. If it is compared with one of his latest works, ''The Magpie on the Gallows'' of 1568, its weaknesses are apparent: the foreground and background are not yet reconciled and the jutting outcrop of rock in the centresee 2nd detail is a mannerist device which one may see again in ''The Procession to Calvary''. However, the distant landscape is seen through a shimmering haze, which seems to have the effect of emphasizing the foreground detail, and this does represent a new stage in the evolution of Bruegel's depiction of naturalistic landscape.〔Cf. Pietro Allegretti, ''Brueghel'', Skira, Milano 2003. ISBN 0-00-001088-X 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Suicide of Saul」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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