Alive
Painted in 1565. Three hunters come up the hill out of the trees with their dogs, and the whole day has produced one fox. It hangs from a spear on the last man’s shoulder. The dogs walk with their heads down. None of the men looks at the valley below, which is the best thing in the picture. Down there the village is busy. Outside the inn a family has lit a straw fire in the snow to burn the bristles off a pig, because December is the month the pig is killed. The inn sign has come off one of its hooks and hangs crooked. On the pond there are skaters, a sledge, a game played with sticks and a ball, and one person flat on the ice. The hunt failed and nobody down there knows or cares. Bruegel painted this for Niclaes Jonghelinck, an Antwerp banker, as one of a set of 6 for his house outside the city. On 15 February 1566 Jonghelinck put his whole collection up as security for another man’s debt. The writ lists 16 Bruegels. The pictures went to the city of Antwerp and he never got them back. Of the set, 5 survive. The panel is 117 cm by 162 and hangs in Vienna. The mountains behind the valley are Alpine. Flanders has nothing like them. Bruegel had crossed the Alps coming home from Italy about 10 years earlier.
look closer
The pack comes up the hill with its heads down. The day’s whole catch was one fox, small enough to hang off a spear.
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