This panel is part of a series showing the seasons or times of the year, commissioned from Bruegel by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. The series included six works, five of which survive. The other four are: "The Gloomy Day," "Hunters in the Snow," and "The Return of the Herd" (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and "Haymaking" (National Gallery, Prague). This remarkable group of pictures is a watershed in the history of Western art. The religious pretext for landscape painting has been suppressed in favour of a new humanism, and Bruegel''s unidealised observation of the local scene is unified by his profound understanding of Italian Renaissance compositional principles.
[Oil on wood, original painted surface 116.5 x 159.5 cm]
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