Country Life

This wide view of the Flemish countryside was a two-hand job. Jan Brueghel the Elder painted the small figures, the peasants scattered across the fields at their different chores, while the sweeping landscape behind them was the work of Joos de Momper, an Antwerp colleague he often teamed up with. Around 1620 this kind of division of labor was ordinary in Antwerp workshops. Brueghel came by the subject honestly. His father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, had made the peasant year famous, tying planting and harvest to the turning months, and the son borrows those farming scenes here. The great trees in the middle rise straight up and cut the long flat distance in two.