Winter Landscape - Adoration of the Magi by Pieter Bruegel

Adoration of the Kings (1567) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Adoration of the Three Wise Men in the snow
Pieter Bruegel the Younger

Two paintings of the same scene by father and son of the same name - Pieter Bruegel - Elder and Younger.  Pieter Bruegel the Elder is the superior painter. 

Making the life and manners of peasants the main focus of a work was rare in painting in Brueghel's time, and he was a pioneer of the Netherlandish genre painting. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life
Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Wikipedia

What I love about the landscape/townscape paintings of Piter Breugel the Elder is the attention to the detail in every part of the painting.  Not so much in terms of the realism of the painting but in terms of observation of the reality of a winter landscape (eg extracting water from an icy pond) and the tasks and activities of daily life which go on irrespective of the the momentous event portrayed or the fact it's being painted.

I always feel as if I'm sat up in a nearby tree looking down on what's going on.

There's a bit of a sense of 'painting by numbers' in the paintings of his son.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger also copied the works his father had created by using a technique called pouncing.

Links: 

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder on wikipedia
• Pieter Bruegel the Younger  on wikipedia

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a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year