Hunters in the Snow

Hunter in the Snow.jpg Pieter Bruegel the Elder often painted with great simplicity and focused on several themes in his paintings.

The artists often painted with a subtle message in mind and created oil paintings that depicted satires and other situations that revolved around his time. Pieter Bruegel the Elder loved to paint peasants and landscapes and this is more evident with this painting entitled Hunters in the Snow.

This oil painting is styled after Northern Renaissance and categorized as Landscape Paintings. One of the themes that Pieter Bruegel the Elder worked on was the immense cold that occurred during his time that was called the Little Ice age. Taking a look at the larger scene in this painting we can observe the leafless trees as is common during winter time, however the immense amounts of snow multiplies the effect of a typical winter to the magnitude that is felt during the Little Ice Age.

As is common to many of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's oil paintings, we can notice a story unwind as multiple scenes are painted on the larger scene of the painting. Starting from the left, we notice a group huddled with dogs what seems to be men with long sticks and rifles on their backs. There is a scattered group on the ground below and figures are on what seems to be a frozen body of water which could suggest a session of ice skating by the townsfolk.

 Panning towards the upper right of the painting, we notice other elements that represent the Little Ice Age as depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The horizon is powder white and the mountain range is snow covered in its majestic beauty