Hunters in the Snow, 1565
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Oil paint on panel · 117 x 162 cm
Weary hunters trudge home over a village frozen into stillness below.
Weary hunters and their dogs trudge home over a snowy ridge above skaters on frozen ponds. Bruegel's 1565 winter scene, with its cold green sky and sweeping view, is one of the founding images of Western landscape — and of Christmas itself.
What you're looking at
It is one of a series of the months — six were painted, five survive, and this is the deep-winter one. The detail is where it lives: the inn sign hanging crooked, the fire outside it where they are singeing a pig, a magpie on a branch, skaters and a curling game on the ponds far below, a bird trap. The sky is a cold green nobody else would have used.
On a Frame TV
About 1.41:1, so the clean crop trims top and bottom and keeps the ridge and the valley. This one wants a large panel — the whole reward is in figures a few pixels across, and on a small screen they are simply gone.
Kunsthistorisches Museum · Visit it in Vienna →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
