Country Life
1620 - 1622. Oil on canvas.Not on display
A broad view of the Flemish countryside, with diverse scenes of peasants carrying out their respective tasks. This is one of the finest examples of the collaboration between Jan Brueghel “the Elder”, who is thought to have painted the figures, and Joos de Momper, who made the landscape. The scene is formed by accumulating various planes that follow each other toward the back, in perspective. The enormous trees in the center split the composition in two. They are the vertical counterpoint to the horizontal perspective projected into the distance. In painting the figures, Brueghel drew on various agricultural scenes popularized by his father, Pieter Brueghel “the Elder”, (ca. 1525/30-1569), especially those that link different farming activities to the months of the year. This painting was successively attributed to Brueghel and Momper, and is now considered the work of both.
