When it began in the art to snow

The painting "The adoration of the Magi in the snow" is historically the first panel in the image at all, on the snow flakes painted seen. It measures only 35 by 55 inches and is one of the smaller sizes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569), the last year in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, in a fantastic overall look, as it will probably never exist again, was celebrated.

Compared with Ambrogio Lorenzettis fresco "allegory of winter" in Siena, the earliest snow image (1337-1339) flakes at all, it testifies to a highly pleasing level of realism in the depiction of the landscape. Because as a viewer, one gets the impression as if the white dots and small spots over the whole stage fall-like organized Scenery down, so even in the depth of the image left its mark and not, as in Lorenzetti, only as a curtain to the view of the action obscure.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti: "allegory of winter" (1337-1339).

Because it is undoubtedly so that in the course of the development of Bruegel's paintings can be dated on the basis of a barely legible number on 1563 – the snow flakes came at the end and the last layer of paint present. When you consider that, then it is doubly amazing how downright, of course, the Flaky affects the whole image.

snow flakes with legs

The people in this picture, most of them trudging in a slightly forward flexed posture through the snow, it must be incredibly cold. Again, this gives, in a kind of feedback effect, the snow Threatening. You look so almost in a snowstorm, in which the people are staying just to either quickly move or to do something that appears to them to be urgent. Note the two people who have pulled out of a hole in the ice in the pond with a bucket of water. Or the woman who cuts off the left of the front of the picture of willow rods from a horizontal stem.

childlike joy on the frozen pond. Excerpt from "The adoration of the Magi in the snow".

In most people remains unclear, however, exactly what they are doing. The painter has painted them only dimly, and with a relatively broad brush strokes on a dark body, a slightly lighter, often white shimmering headpiece set, so that the Individual almost like snowflakes with legs look. Can it be, if we consider the clearly-drawn characters on the other images of the elder Bruegel's, randomly. So the child stands out at all so well all appearances, all the more, the on the pond paddling and the only person that makes this freezing winter world, something like Lust and joy.

One is inclined, in view of the many inaccurate-drawn characters, to speak of an anonymous mass, which suffers from the cold weather. The majority of the people on this three kings image, at any rate absolutely no interest in it, to know what to wear wonderful, of course, in that half-ruined barn, the one recognizes, after some Searching, then front left in the picture yet.

Jesus is on the left Two characters left

– you are probably the kings from the East, the golden, the dressed other dark red – kneel before the Holy Mary and her son. The third king is probably at the top of the small line of shivering people waiting in front of the Stall. Mary's face peeped out from under the headscarf. But the Holy child in her Lap remains a sketch. Of Joseph, the shape disappears in the Dark of the Stable, almost, to mention.

The scene in the stable. Excerpt from "The adoration of the Magi in the snow".

There is probably no worship of the image in art history, at the center of the of the Holy events staged in a casual, almost literally on the left of it is left. And as we see in this stable with the naked eye, i.e., without Zoom, and other technical tools, so little, the eye is inevitably, to some extent, by the invisible Hand of the image composition, led by the left front in the center of the image, on the village square, where countless people are bustling, the do anything to court except for the newborn.

From the brightly-lit gate in the picture on the middle right seems to be moving in opposite directions the movement of our eyes by a train of people and animals across the image. Pack donkeys and drivers pushing to the fire behind the barn. A group of Armed stands next to the gate. And almost exactly in the centre of the composition, some of the men seem to steal almost coyly out of the picture.

The danger comes from the future

The search view finally discovered between the two houses, to complete the village square in the middle, behind a wheel of a group of soldiers, the historians of some art with the characters in Bruegel's "Bethlehem martensitic child murder" have been brought in connection. Seen in this way, Bruegel brings a menacing future into the picture. It is as if the Reaver, behind which the outline of a castle-like building appearing on the horizon, were now ready to once the first-born should be massacred.

The soldiers in the Background. Excerpt from "The adoration of the Magi in the snow".

And if you take the building on the right in the view, one can see ruins of a Church without a roof that is in such a bad state that they can't offer protection. The interior is full of rubble and a blanket of Snow, which even by the high above the floor bow window detects. In addition, the wall will keep kept to the village square by a powerful beam, which has the role of the ailing Church – to the pond for a improvised, with only a tent roof that is covered with pub – inspired-before the collapse.

Such a Church are meant to be ruins in the medieval iconography, often metaphorically. Seen in this way, the image turns out to be all of a sudden as a great time - and Church criticism. It tells about Flanders, in the middle of the 16th century. Century: Of a through and through rotten and hollow, which had become the Christian Church. Of the population at the beginning of the Little ice age, which begins around 1550, nothing to care as their most pressing daily business. From a far herger first group of kings, in contrast to the Locals as the child of God to pay their respects. And soldiers, whose presence hangs like a sword of Damocles hanging over this all in all rather unpleasant presence, the sight of which we speak today is literally warm you must wear.

Created: 22.11.2019, 16:50 PM