In Mannerism, art history's name for the sixteenth century, acrid colors and even harsher drawing create separate objects for the elite and for the masses. Think of the gap today between commercial blandness and the excesses of alternative radio. Like these, Mannerism gives a lot of room for sheer ineptitude, but it also permits fresh emotion, as in Adraen Isenbrant's dark Christ crowned with thorns. The show ends as neatly as some of those Biblical stories, with a return to landscape and a resurrection. Newly cleaned, Pieter Bruegel's Harvesters has a calm I had never experienced.
Faces glow with the ruddy tone of men and women after strong drink and a long day in the sun.
The gray sky has a softer light, signaling a new connection between humanity and the landscape. I used to think of the painting only as one part of Bruegel's cycle of the seasons. Now I sense the cyclic motion within it, a steady, quiet arc encompassing labor, play, and rest. Bruegel's flat way of painting faces and his wild, ironic stories derive from Hieronymus Bosch decades before. But when Bosch depicts worldly terror and the constant threat of evil, he has in mind a parable for moral decisions.