From the museum website, 20 July 2010
The great Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel (1525/30-1569) is one of the best-loved painters in Japan. While many of his works illustrate proverbs or portray playing children and ordinary people carousing or enjoying sports, they are at the same time subtle allegories satirizing human weakness and folly. In Bruegel?s world we can see the roots of the culture European populate and this affords the Japanese viewers a glimpse into the heart of a Europe with which they may be less familiar, but which on acquaintance does not perhaps seem all that strange. Thanks to the unstinted cooperation of the Royal Library of Belgium, this exhibition brings together some 150 engravings by Bruegel and his contemporaries, for a new look at and a new appraisal of Bruegel and his world.