Hunters in the Snow
1565 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Three hunters come home over the hill with one thin catch while villagers skate below. Bruegel painted it for a series on the months.
★ 9.4
Browse by time · decade
1560s
1560 – 1569
Showing 26 works across all media from the 1560s
The Wedding at Cana (Veronese)
1563 · Louvre, Paris
A hundred and thirty guests feast while Christ works his first miracle almost unnoticed at the table. Napoleon's troops took it to Paris in 1797.
★ 8.2
The Triumph of Death
1562 · El Prado, Madrid
Skeletons herd the living into a coffin-trap while a king clutches his gold and two lovers play music at the corner, not yet looking up.
★ 8.0
The Crucifixion of Christ
1565 · Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice
Twelve meters of wall where the whole business of execution goes on at once, one thief still being hauled upright at the side.
★ 7.8
The Harvesters
1565 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
One man lies flat on his back with his mouth open while the others cut wheat. Late summer, from the same series of months.
★ 7.7
The Tower of Babel
1563 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The tower is already leaning as it goes up, and Bruegel drew the cranes and ramps in enough detail that you could nearly build it.
★ 7.5
The Peasant Wedding
1568 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Two men carry the porridge in on an unhinged door, the bagpiper eyes it hungrily, and the bride sits idle under her paper crown.
★ 7.5
Gargantua and Pantagruel
1564 · 1104 pages
Two giants eat, drink, and study their way across Renaissance France while a monk and a scoundrel debate marriage. Rabelais packed in so much filth and learning that his name became an adjective.
★ 7.4
The Conquest of New Spain
1568 · 412 pages
Fifty years on, writing in Guatemala, one of Cortés's foot soldiers set down the conquest of Mexico as the ranks saw it. He never got over his first sight of Tenochtitlan.
★ 7.3
The Blind Leading the Blind
1568 · Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
Six blind men go down one after another, and Bruegel painted their clouded eyes accurately enough for doctors to diagnose the conditions.
★ 7.0
Children's Games
1560 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Around two hundred children playing some eighty different games, no adults anywhere, and no particular place for the eye to start.
★ 6.7
Haymaking
1566 · Prague Castle, Prague
June or July from the same series of months, with rakes over shoulders and a girl carrying baskets of cherries toward us.
★ 6.7
The Adoration of the Kings
1564 · National Gallery, London
Bruegel gives the holy figures plain faces and surrounds them with gawkers and whisperers, which makes reverence hard to come by.
★ 6.3
The Choice Between Virtue and Vice
1565 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Hercules bolts from Vice toward Virtue and gashes his leg on the thorns of the harder road as he goes.
★ 5.9
Wisdom and Strength
1565 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Divine Wisdom looks up and Hercules looks down at a scatter of crowns and jewels, which is the entire argument of the picture.
★ 5.9
Winter
1563 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
A head made of cracked bark and bare twigs, standing for the dying year and, flatteringly, for a Habsburg dynasty that stays evergreen.
★ 5.7
Summer
1563 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
A cucumber nose, a peach cheek, a garlic-clove ear, and Arcimboldo's own name woven into the collar of plaited straw.
★ 5.2
The Last Supper (de Juanes)
1562 · El Prado, Madrid
Every apostle is named in gold and Judas sits apart with a darkened halo, which makes the panel a teaching aid as much as a picture.
★ 4.8
Missa Papae Marcelli
1562
The legend that it saved church polyphony from being banned is probably untrue, but the words really do stay audible through six voices.
★ 3.4