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 60 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 by Emma Darwin is published on 6 November, 2025.
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