Travelers on Flooded Road Near a Windmill

Travel by road in the Low Countries meant unpaved tracks across low, wet ground, and after heavy rain a stretch of road could stand under water that carts and riders simply had to wade through. Brueghel painted such a road in 1614, on a copper plate about 23 by 33 centimetres. The Alte Pinakothek places it within a change that came over his landscapes after 1610. He cut the number of motifs down to a few, and he gave up the far-off horizon that the older panoramic landscapes depended on. In this picture the place where the horizon would be is taken by a hill, and on top of the hill stands a mill.