# The Suicide of Saul \(detail\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on panel ## Commentary As with most of his subjects taken from the Bible, Bruegel treats Saul's suicide as a contemporary event, showing the armies in sixteenth-century armour. In 1529 the German painter Albrecht Altdorfer had shown the clash of the forces of Alexander the Great and Darius at the <A onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/a/altdorfe/1/5battle.html'\)" HREF="/html/a/altdorfe/1/5battle.html">Battle of the Issus</A> in this way, and in many other respects, too, Bruegel is in Altdorfer's debt, particularly in the representation of the tiny, massed figures of the soldiers and their forests of lances. The Suicide of Saul is an early attempt by Bruegel to reconcile landscape and figure painting. ## Related artworks - [Adoration of the Kings in the Snow \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Kings in the Snow]() - [Big Fishes Eat Little Fishes]() - [Big Fishes Eat Little Fishes]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() - [Children's Games \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()