Harbour Scene with Christ Preaching

Start at the front edge of this harbour and the first people you meet are the poorest in the picture, gathered round a fire to grill two meagre fish. Nearby, men stand deep in business talk, and the market along the shore is in full swing. Only further back, in the middle ground, does the subject of the title appear, Christ preaching with a crowd pressed around him, and the museum notes that you have to look closely to find him at all. The Alte Pinakothek reads that arrangement as a deliberate contrast between the sermon and the worldly traffic in front of it, and also as a way of setting Christ inside the everyday world, among dealers and the hungry. The landscape runs on behind him all the way to the horizon. The museum dates the picture to 1598, and Brueghel painted it on an oak panel almost 80 by 120 centimetres.