Hunters in the Snow is a winter scene Pieter Bruegel the Elder completed in 1565. The Flemish artist is best known for his crowded scenes of village life. Here, three hunters and their dogs come home down a snowy hill. Below them, villagers skate on frozen ponds, and jagged mountains close the horizon.
Bruegel made it for an Antwerp merchant, as the last panel of a set that divided the year into six seasons. It is widely seen as the first great winter landscape in European art, and today it hangs in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Its fame reaches far beyond Vienna. The panel turns up on Christmas cards, in a poem that won a Pulitzer Prize and in films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier and Abbas Kiarostami. A 1981 short story by Tobias Wolff even borrows its title.
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What does Hunters in the Snow mean?
Three hunters reach the brow of the hill with their spears on their shoulders and their dogs trailing behind, and right beside them, the sign of the village inn hangs crooked from a single hook…
What You'll Discover
Why the inn sign makes fun of the hunters
What the prints in the snow give away
Where Bruegel hid his name in the scene
How hard the winter of 1565 really was
Which of the six seasons has vanished
Why a director showed the panel going up in flames