The Three Soldiers

Bruegel signed and dated this small panel in 1568, one year before he died, while the Low Countries around him were filling with troops. The Duke of Alba had just marched a Spanish army north to crush Protestant unrest, the opening of a war that would run for eighty years. The three men here are Landsknechte, German mercenary foot soldiers, in their flamboyant slashed sleeves and codpieces. Two of them make music, a fifer and a drummer, while the third wrestles with an oversized banner. Their job was pomp and morale, keeping spirits up through the long grind of soldiering. Bruegel painted it all in grisaille, in shades of grey alone, and it later hung in the collection of Charles I of England.