Brueghel carried imitation of Nature so
far that his minutise required a magnifying-glass--it was veritable
miniature work. He introduced fruit and flower painting as a new
feature of art.

Rubens and Brueghel often painted on each other's canvas, Brueghel
supplying landscape backgrounds for Rubens' pictures, and Rubens the
figures for Brueghel's landscapes. Yet Rubens himself was the best
landscapist of the Flemish school. He was more than that. For
Brueghel and his followers, with all their patience and industry,
their blue-green landscape with imaginary trees, boundless distance
and endless detail, were very far from a true grasp of Nature. It was
Rubens and his school who really made landscape a legitimate
independent branch of art. They studied it in all its aspects, quiet
and homely, wild and romantic, some taking one and some the other:
Rubens himself, in his large way, grasping the whole without losing
sight of its parts. They all lifted the veil from Nature and saw her
as she was (Falke).

Brueghel put off the execution of a picture for which he had a
commission from winter to spring, that he might study the flowers for
it from Nature when they came out, and did not grudge a journey to
Brussels now and then to paint flowers not to be had at Antwerp.
There is a characteristic letter which he sent to the Archbishop of
Milan with a picture:

'I send your Reverence the picture with the flowers, which are all
painted from Nature. I have painted in as many as possible. I believe
so many rare and different flowers have never been painted before nor
so industriously. It will give a beautiful effect in winter; some of
the colours almost equal Nature. I have painted an ornament under the
flowers with artistic medallions and curiosities from the sea. I
leave it to your reverence to judge whether the flowers do not far
exceed gold and jewels in colour.'

He also painted landscapes in which people were only accessory, sunny
valleys with leafage, golden cornfields, meadows with rows of dancing
country folk or reapers in the wheat.

Rubens, though he felt the influence of southern light and sunshine
as much as his fellows who had been in Italy, took his backgrounds
from his native land, from parts round Antwerp, Mechlin, and
Brussels. Foliage, water, and undulating ground were indispensable to
him--were, to a certain extent, the actual bearers of the impression
he wished to convey.

Brueghel always kept a childlike a