
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565
Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted this Hunters in the Snow in 1565, one of a series depicting the months or seasons. Three hunters trudge home through deep snow, their dogs exhausted, game scarce. A single fox dangles from one man's belt. Below them, villagers skate on frozen ponds while birds perch in bare branches.
The painting captures what historians call the "Little Ice Age," a period of harsh European winters. Bruegel set the scene in an imaginary alpine village, combining Flemish lowland details with mountainous terrain he'd observed traveling through the Alps. The result feels both specific and universal.
An Antwerp banker named Niclaes Jongelinck commissioned the series. In 1594, the city of Brussels gave this panel to Archduke Ernst as a diplomatic gift. It eventually reached the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where it hangs today. The oak panel measures 117 by 162 centimeters. Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky featured it prominently in Solaris and The Mirror, drawn to its melancholy beauty and sense of landscape as psychological space.

Rogier van der Weyden
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lorenzo Lotto
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Parmigianino
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Hieronymus Bosch
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Other masterpieces from the Renaissance movement

Raphael, 1512
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Dresden

Sandro Botticelli, 1485
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Raphael, 1511
Vatican Museums, Vatican City

Raphael, 1510
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Titian, 1538
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Florence

Titian, 1555
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

El Greco, 1614
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Sandro Botticelli, 1482
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Florence
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