Le Grand Marché aux poissons

This harbour never existed. Jan Brueghel built it out of pieces, the way he built most of his big panoramas, working up drawings he had gathered on the road. He had spent the early 1590s in Italy, and bits of it surface here: the round bulk of Naples' seafront castle in the middle distance, the dome of St Peter's in Rome off to the right, both dropped into a busy Flemish-looking port. Up front is the reason for the title, a fish market in full swing, with vendors, baskets and buyers crowded along the water. Brueghel was known for painting very small and very precisely, and if you lean in you can pick out individual faces and the day's catch laid out on the ground.