The 70 faces of Bruegel
The Mariano Moret Collection holds an almost complete series (35 of 36 plates) of the third state of the Toonneel des Wereldts Ontdeckende De Ongestuymigheden in Ydelheden, published in Amsterdam by Claes Jansz Visscher in 1658. This volume is a compilation of the Tronies or caricatured portraits of human characters engraved by Doetechum after lost drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This rare series, unmatched in any other Spanish collection, is an extraordinary testimony to the genius of Bruegel, a pioneer artist in genre painting who, instead of portraying the rich and powerful, turned peasants, drunkards, beggars and other marginalized people into protagonists of their paintings. This series of paired portraits has as an antecedent on Leonardo da Vinci's numerous Teste grottesche, deformed faces that denote Leonardo's interest in physiognomy and in the representation of the passions that disturb the physical aspect as well as of the old age and its physical degenerations.