The Four Seasons: Winter

The frozen canals in this little panel were not a fantasy. Northern Europe in these decades was living through what we now call the Little Ice Age, a long cold spell when winters clamped down hard and the waterways of the Low Countries really did freeze solid enough to hold a crowd. Pieter Brueghel the Younger ran a busy workshop he had inherited from his famous father, and he turned out sets like this Four Seasons for a growing market of buyers. Winter gathers everyone onto the ice regardless of rank, skating, slipping, breaking through, then thawing out in the tavern. Look for the figures who have gone down on the slick surface and the ones warming up by the inn. All four seasons of the set survive together on permanent display in the National Museum of Art of Romania.