La visita alla fattoria

Jan Brueghel painted this small scene on copper around 1597, but the design was not his own invention. He was copying a picture by his father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, that has since been lost. The subject is an old one, a landlord paying a visit to the peasants who farmed his land, everyone gathered around a big cauldron over the fire, a woman nursing a baby, children underfoot, food being handed round. What makes it quietly touching is that Jan barely knew the father whose work he is preserving here. Pieter died in 1569, when Jan was about a year old, so he grew up copying and continuing pictures by a man he could not remember.