How Bruegel Painted The Hunters in the Snow (1565) | Stroke by Stroke

Watch Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565 come together stroke by stroke, from blank canvas to final touch, set to music by Mendelssohn. A strong diagonal divides the panel: a steep slope on the left drops to a vast frozen valley. Three hunters, seen from behind, return with their thin dogs and only a fox, while tiny villagers skate on the ponds below. The jagged mountains do not exist in the Low Countries; they come from Bruegel's trip to Italy. The work belonged to a cycle on the months of the year, painted for the merchant Niclaes Jonghelinck. This is an interpretive animation: a plausible reconstruction of how the canvas may have been painted, not a historical record of the artist's process. Chapters 0:00 The ochre ground 0:30 The strong diagonal 0:57 The snow and the sky 1:53 The village and the mountains 2:56 Hunters and skaters 4:05 Branches and final accents 4:42 The finished work Painting: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (1565). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, GG 1838. Public domain image. Music: Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 4 “Italian”, 2nd movement, Das Orchester Tsumugi, CC BY 3.0. Recording licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... excerpt, with fades. Source: IMSLP. Subtitles available (CC button). Art&Art — Great paintings. Classical music. #Bruegel #HuntersInTheSnow #NorthernRenaissance #Mendelssohn #FineArtMasterclass