Shop art print and framed art Paysage d'hiver by Pieter Brueghel the Younger

Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap (also Winter Landscape with Skaters on Ice or The Bird Trap) is a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder dated 1565. It shows a village scene with skaters on a frozen river and birds gathering around a trap on the snow-covered ground and in bare trees. It is kept at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. A trebuchet (a bird trap) can be seen at the bottom right of the painting. Pieter Brueghel's Bird Trap is one of the most popular compositions in the Dutch landscape tradition and one of the best-known works by the Brueghel family, existing in over 120 versions. The theme of the winter landscape, and in particular that of ice-skaters, has often been suggested as a way of representing the precariousness of life: indeed, such a theme is even inscribed on an engraving after Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicting a winter landscape with ice-skaters in front of St George's Gate in Antwerp: Lubricitas Vitae Humanae (Insecurity or lechery of human existence). Similar underlying allusions are well documented in the work of Bruegel the Elder. The bird trap, however, is given a poignancy"; beyond the landscape and the mood, by the addition of the symbolic theme: the innocence of the birds in the face of the trap's threat, reflected in the carefree play of the skaters on the fragile ice. This is perhaps a mark of Brueghel's empathy for his subject ;" The painting is mainly painted in white, light beige and bluish. It shows a snowy winter [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the flemish & northern renaissance style.

 

« Paysage d'hiver » is kept at Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France.

 

Find the full description of Paysage d'hiver by Pieter Brueghel the Younger on Wikipedia.