Alive
Painted in 1586. Snow is falling hard enough to hide the far bank. At the front a man and a woman carry a bundle home. Behind them a cart is piled high with sticks, and children carry their own loads under one arm. This is what winter meant in the old Flemish calendars: fetching firewood. Valckenborch is painting the month, not the weather. He had tried falling snow once before, 11 years earlier, on a small panel of Antwerp. Bruegel had done it before either of them, but never this big. Valckenborch left Antwerp with his brother Marten in 1566, when the church riots started. They were probably Protestants. He came back, and by 1579 he was court painter to the young Archduke Matthias, who ran the Spanish Netherlands for Spain. When the Archduke moved to Linz, Valckenborch went with him. So he painted this Flemish village from a long way away. He died in Frankfurt in 1597. The canvas is 117 cm by 198 and hangs in Vienna.
look closer
The couple at the front carry their own load home. Everyone in this picture is either fetching wood or hauling it.
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