The busiest room in the picture gallery is always the one that holds an incomparable series of paintings by the great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, truly extraordinary for their rich detail, enchanting nature, and above all their disenchanted realism toward the world and people. Works such as the Tower of Babel or The Peasant Wedding are rightly considered among the world's most famous paintings.
A true winter enchantment is the scene entitled Hunters in the Snow, originally part of a cycle of paintings dedicated to different times of the year, dating to around 1565. Having entered the collections of Emperor Rudolf II, the cycle was split up following the sacking of Prague during the Thirty Years' War, and was only partially reconstructed thereafter. It probably included six paintings, each one dedicated to two months with similar weather, because in the Flemish tradition, it was customary to include two intermediate periods when depicting the seasons: early spring and late autumn. Five scenes remain today: The Harvesters, in the Metropolitan Museum in New York; The Haymaking, recently returned to a private collection in the Czech Republic; and the three panels in the Kunsthistorisches Museum: The Gloomy Day, the Hunters in the Snow, and the Return of the Herd. The subjects are all related to work in the fields, and were painted with an acute sensitivity to authentic everyday life. The solemn settings mark a fundamental stage in the development of landscape painting.
The famous scene with the Hunters in the Snow, with the contrast between the white of the snow and the black silhouettes of the characters among the trees, projects the observer right into the frost and silence of winter. Few other works of art are able to transmit such a sense of the icy, almost crystallized air surrounding the lofty, jagged peaks. Down below, on the valley floor, in the tiny village huddled at the foot of the towering mountains, children playing on the frozen pond offer a delightfully cheerful note.
An interesting fact: During a trip to Italy, the lofty peaks of the Alps made a striking impression on Bruegel, who lived in the plains between Antwerp and Brussels. Inspired by that experience, the painting still conveys the evocative memory of those mountains to this day.
