L’Adoration des mages

This is one of the earliest surviving paintings by Bruegel, made around 1556, when he was still known mainly as a designer of prints in Antwerp rather than as a painter. It is done in a fragile, old-fashioned way, with glue-based colours brushed onto thin linen cloth, a quick and inexpensive technique that rarely lasts, since the water-soluble paint and the cloth are so easily harmed. That this one survived at all is a small piece of luck. The subject is the Adoration of the Magi, the three kings bringing their gifts, yet Bruegel crowds the sacred moment with ordinary, gawking faces and clumsy soldiers pressing in from the edges. He was in his early thirties, with barely more than a decade of painting still ahead of him.