Pieter Bruegel the Elder was astonishingly independent of the dominant artistic interests during his time, despite his taking the requisite journey to Italy for purposes of study. He deliberately revived the late Gothic style of Hieronymus Bosch as the point of departure from Italian mannerism for his own highly complex and original art.

According to Karl van Mander, a Dutch biographer, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, an Antwerp painter, served as the master to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It was the daughter of Pieter Coecke that Pieter Bruegel later on married in 1563.

By way of the Alps, Pieter Bruegel the Elder returned to Antwerp around 1555. This return resulted to a number of exquisite drawings of mountain landscapes. Forming the basis for many of his later paintings, these sketches were not records of actual places but composites made for the investigation of the organic life in forms of nature.

There is evidence to suggest that Pieter Bruegel the Elder was attempting to substitute a new and moral eschatology for the traditional view of the Christian cosmos of Bosch in his series of engravings, Seven Deadly Sins. This was despite of efforts to dismiss the engravings as fascinating drolleries.

Forming the body of the early encyclopedic works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder were the 1559 painting of the Netherlandish Proverbs and the 1560 highly involved artwork of Children's Games. They have been considered as allegories of a foolish and sinful world, despite their superficial gaiety.

The 1562 painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder entitled the Triumph of Death, was interpreted as a reference to the outbreak of religious persecutions in the Netherlands at the time. Meanwhile, the 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel was intended to symbolize the futility of human ambitions and to criticize the spirit of commercialism then reigning in Antwerp.