Full Description
In
the summer of 1566 an inferno
of political rebellion and image-smashing, the Beeldenstorm, swept
across Flanders and Holland; young Gillis Vervloet,
model and muse to artist Pieter Bruegel, almost didn't survive.
More
than sixty years later, in the Saarland forest, Gil wants only to enter the
monastery of St Bartolomëus and
live out his days in peace, but first he must find their long-lost statue of St
Michael. And to prove he is not a heretic, Gil must also account for his life
with Bruegel, who painted a tense path through the artistic riches,
intellectual ferment and explosive religious politics of the Low Countries. As
he writes of his passionate vocation for the priesthood and impossible love for
Dorothea, his outlaw brother Roeland and radical priest-mentor Pater Paulus,
Gil's hard-won understanding must show him where to seek St Michael, and save
him from the Inquisition.
The
Bruegel Boy is a profound exploration of love,
brotherhood, vocation and the power of art to transform lives but also divide
and even destroy them.
