The Bruegel Boy
The Bruegel Boy is an engrossing read set during the religious conflicts, the Beeldenstorm, in Flanders and Holland during the mid-1560s, and featuring nineteen-year-old Gillis Vervloet, model and muse to artist Pieter Bruegel. The novel is structured so that sixty years later, Gillis wants to achieve his original goal of priesthood and enter the Benedictine monastery of St Bartolomëus in the Saarland forest. To do so, he must make an account of his life, in particular during the religious conflicts, with a clear conscience. He is also presented with a quest by the abbot to recover a statue once possessed by the abbey: a life-sized Archangel Michael casting Lucifer from Heaven. This quest is dramatically and movingly intertwined with Gil’s life story.
Characters inhabiting The Bruegel Boy are exquisitely drawn and complex. Bruegel is portrayed as a respected painter with his own dangerous secrets. We see his home life, his relationship with his wife and servants. The novel is gripping from the early scene when Gil first meets Bruegel. Forthcoming scenes, some comic, are set vividly in Brussels and Antwerp. Emma Darwin draws us into a world where, like Gil, we quake equally at the evangelicals’ destruction of churches and at the Inquisition’s response. Through Gil’s eyes, we observe how the master’s paintings during this period reflect everyday life in the city. Gil is human. He has love to conquer and much jeopardy to face. This is a novel scribed in beautiful prose as finely tuned as one of Bruegel’s paintings. The novel is a profound exploration of humanity, love, brotherhood, vocation, loss and reconciliation. It is undoubtedly an astounding achievement.
