Bruegel the Elder meets Google

I’m tempted to say that the best place to see Bruegel: Unseen Masterpieces is on the internet rather than at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. But then something would be missing.

“Nothing corresponds to experiencing the original works,” says Isabelle Vanhoonacker, head of public services at the museum. “But the technology permits us to have a new dialogue with the work, and to see other things in the paintings.”

This new digital approach to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder begins with high-resolution digital photographs of his paintings, such as the museum’s own “Fall of the Rebel Angels” and “Census at Bethlehem”. These images, embedded in narratives about the 16th-century painter’s life and work, can be explored on large touchscreens throughout the museum’s Old Masters section.

This ability to present more detail is one of the museum’s main goals. “Through the technology, we can offer more information than we could ever fit on the little label next to the painting,” says Vanhoonacker.

It also speaks to the increasing number of digital natives in the museum’s public. “It’s important to bring them to the original work through technology they know.”

The narratives are very informative, such as explaining that Bruegel’s imagery in “The Rebel Angels” was not simply the product of a fervid imagination but reflected recent discoveries from the Americas. Plumes and butterfly wings sported by his demons are exact copies from contemporary cabinets of curiosity.

Total immersion

But there is also a great deal of pleasure to be had from simply zooming into the digital images and looking at the extraordinary detail of the paintings, down to individual brush strokes.

Three of the digital images are also projected on to the walls of a room – dubbed the Bruegel Box – so that standing in the middle plunges you into the paintings. In addition to “The Rebel Angels”, the box covers “Netherlandish Proverbs” and “The Sermon of John the Baptist” from museums in Berlin and Budapest, respectively.

A further version of this immersive experience comes via Google Cardboard (pictured), a box that turns your smartphone into a virtual reality headset. Currently on offer only to guided tours, the boxes will arrive in the museum shop in the coming months. Expect to part with €10 for the privilege.

If you have your own Cardboard you can enjoy the experience at home, and the digital images and narratives are all online thanks to a collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute. Importantly for the museum, this means the material is freely available to schools and other educational institutions.

In the longer term, the project is a test case for the Bruegel House, a building in Brussels’ Marolles neighbourhood where the painter is thought to have lived, and which the museum is developing into an attraction. Bruegel’s paintings are too fragile to move, so proxies have to be considered.

“It’s interesting to see how you can give a very vivid representation of the work without transporting it,” says Vanhoonacker.

Until 2020, Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, Rue de la Régence 3, Brussels. Photo courtesy D-Sidegroup, 2016