Pieter Bruegel was born in Belgium around the year 1525. In 1551 he traveled to Italy to study the works of the great artists there. There he was able to see the Alps and he sketched many pictures of these mountains. One biographer said Bruegel “swallowed the mountains on his Italian trip so he could spit them out in his studio”. He became Pieter Coeck Van Aelst’s apprentice. He married his daughter Maiken and they moved back to Belgium when they married. He is sometimes called Pieter the Elder because he had two sons who also became to be famous painters. The eldest was named after his father Pieter and the youngest was named Jan. His Grandsons also became artists so you could say he had a very artistic family.