Landschaft mit Schlittschuhläufern

A frozen canal, a cold flat sky, and villagers out on the ice, this winter view belonged to a set of the four seasons that Joos de Momper began around 1615. As so often, he painted the landscape and left the small figures to Jan Brueghel the Elder, a specialist in exactly those tiny, busy people. Skating scenes like this were a Flemish speciality, and there was a real reason for them. Europe was passing through a long cold spell, later called the Little Ice Age, when canals and rivers froze hard enough that whole towns took to the ice each winter. Some of the figures here are still working, hauling and carrying. Others have simply come out to glide across the frozen canal for the pleasure of a hard winter's day.