Original subtitles

Hello, my name is James Payne. I've spent years telling you about the stories behind great art.

And now my book, Great Art Explained, takes that further and deeper. It is a book that is

a gift for the curious. An invitation to see art with fresh eyes. Available worldwide. Thank you!

Pieter Bruegel the Elder brought art to the people and he brought the people into art. He made his

money from printmaking, from reproducing his own paintings so that they could reach a much

wider audience. In a sense, he was one of the first artists to understand mass communication

through images. He would probably be delighted to know that 'Hunters in the Snow' has become one of

the biggests selling Christmas cards in history. But of course, it's far more than a festive card.

It is an image that not only reflects a radical change in what artists put on the canvas,

ordinary people, and the world they inhabit, but also reflects a mini ice age. A winter that

was so extreme that thousands died of cold and hunger, birds fell dead from the sky,

and people thought it was the end of the world. To modern eyes, Hunters in the Snow might evoke

a picture perfect winter's day, full of charm and nostalgia. That is both familiar and influential.

But for Bruegel and his contemporaries, winter was not picturesque. It was harsh, dangerous,

and often deadly. In that sense, the painting's beauty is inseparable from its melancholy.

It is not a celebration of winter, but a recognition of it. An honest,

empathetic portrayal of human beings enduring and coexisting with the overwhelming forces

of nature. It is that bittersweet tension that makes Hunters in the Snow such a powerful image.

We don't know exactly when or where Pieter Bruegel was born, but it was probably around 1525 in or near

the town of Breda in the Netherlands. As a young man, he moved to the prosperous city of Antwerp.

At the time, it was the economic center of the Western world, a global hub of trade and finance.

This newfound wealth attracted merchants and artists from across Europe. Hunters in the

snow would be painted in 1565 at the onset of the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling

defined by long, bleak winters, short summers, and failed harvests. In January of that year,

the cold was so harsh that an iceberg crashed into the port of Rotterdam.

But while people endured extreme weather, they were also living through deep political and

religious upheaval. The Low Countries, what we now know as Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands,

were then part of the Spanish Hapsburg Empire, ruled first by Charles V and later Philip II

of Spain. But across the region, Protestant reformers were challenging Catholic authority.

Calvinism, with its rejection of religious imagery and lavish ritual was spreading fast.

Bruegel lived at a time when the printing press had done to Europe what the internet has done to us.

It transformed access to information, destroyed old hierarchies, and created a completely new

kind of audience. And he was one of the first generation of artists to come of age at a time

when sacred imagery was losing its dominance as the central focus of art. Then in 1566,

just a year after Bgal painted Hunters in the snow, tensions broke fully. Mobs of Calvinists

raged through towns and cities, destroying statues, paintings, and church decorations

in a wave of iconoclasm which became known as the 'Beeldenstorm' or 'breaking of the statues'. For them,

such images were idolatrous. This destruction not only fueled the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule,

but it also reshaped the course of art itself. Churches stopped commissioning religious works,

so artists began creating more everyday and secular scenes for the growing middleclass

audience. It was a period defined by extremes, brutal winters, poor harvests, and hunger in

the countryside, alongside immense wealth built on global trade and a rising middle class. So

while the beauty of hunters in the snow continues to speak to us today, it is equally a document of

its time, revealing the physical and economic hardships of rural life in Bruegel's Flanders.

Unlike the leading artists of Italy or Spain, Bruegel never worked as a court painter. He didn't create

portraits of kings, queens or nobles like Titian in the court of Charles V or Sofonisba Anguissola

for Philip II. His focus was on genre paintings populated by peasants - and the landscape and world

they inhabited. Bruegel did paint religious works for private commissions, but he became known for his

landscapes and peasant scenes, and he would go on to paint workers his whole life. In this respect,

he was a pioneer as this was a rare form of art in his day. We have to remember that Bgel himself

at the time was considered a mere artisan on a level with a carpenter or weaver. He started his

career as a draftsman for a printer in Antwerp, then one of the richest cities in Europe and the

centre of printing. Prints are relatively cheap and both ideological and artistic ideas could be

disseminated widely and easily. Printmaking taught Bruegel how to communicate ideas, how to

reach a mass audience, and how to tell complex stories compactly. He was however also schooled

in the traditions of fine art. And like many educated young artists of his time, he traveled

to Italy to study. But it wasn't the classical sculptures, the architecture, or lavish religious

paintings that impressed him. It was the Alps that he had seen on his journey. A print of the Alps,

created from a painting he made on his travels became a bestseller in the notoriously flat Low

Countries. The Northern Renaissance in the Low Countries was obviously influenced by what was

happening in Italy. But although earlier artists like Albrecht Dürer looked to Italian Renaissance

ideas, Bruegel was interested in ideas closer to home - Netherlandish people and their customs.

What made Bruegel truly groundbreaking was not what he painted, but how he painted it.

The tradition of painting peasants had evolved slowly from the margins of manuscripts to the

walls of great houses. And Bruegel is the moment where it stops being background and becomes

the story. Peasants in this period were often portrayed as buffoons or figures of ridicule.

But Bruegel didn't share this crude approach. He paints them with a quiet dignity, as real human

beings, rather than caricatures. His "Peasant Wedding" and "Peasant Dance" may contain humour,

but it is humour laced with warmth and understanding. He gives these men and

women 'weight', individuality and presence, turning their daily rituals into something monumental.

Bruegel's art is the product of many influences spanning Netherlandish manuscript illumination,

Boschian allegory, Italian compositional theory, and the humanist culture of mid-16th

century Antwerp. An important figure who is rarely discussed when it comes to Bruegel is Simon

Bening from Ghent who portrayed peasants with dignity. Bening's calendars and "Books of Hours"

also pioneered techniques that Bruegel perfected such as high viewpoints, sweeping panoramas

and seasonal cycles. An important source of inspiration was the work of Hieronymus Bosch,

who although active nearly a century earlier, was still hugely popular when Bruegel began his career.

Publishers even commissioned Bruegel to design works "in the manner of Bosch". Apart from the

most obvious similarity of the crowded and busy canvases, Bruegel's early works such as "The Fall of

the Rebel Angels" and "The Triumph of Death", clearly echo Bosch's moral allegorories. We could say that

Bruegel inherited Bosch's moral imagination, but stripped it of demons and miracles,

translating it into real life. It's possible that we are still fascinated today by Bruegel because

really he painted "us" - not kings or saints but ordinary people trudging through snow, working,

eating, celebrating or just enduring. He turned everyday life into something

monumental. Finding poetry in the routines and struggles that most artists ignored.

'Hunters in the snow' was part of a series of six paintings representing the seasons.

The commission came from a wealthy merchant in Antwerp, Nicolaes Jonghelinck. Unlike Bruegel's prints,

which were widely distributed, this series of expensive oil paintings wouldn't have

been seen by ordinary people, only those in Jonghelinck's circle. Each painting was quite large,

and they hung together in his dining room. The paintings would have surrounded visitors

while they were dining in the Jonghelinck residence, and the richness of detail and

flow of storytelling through the seasons would have made it an immersive experience. Back then,

people didn't think in terms of four equal seasons, but rather six unequal ones. And the

cycle included "Gloomy day" representing early spring, "Spring" now sadly missing, "Haymaking"

showing early summer, "Harvesters" depicting late summer, "The return of the Herd" for autumn,

and Hunters in the snow, our familiar winter scene. All six paintings share a compositional

device known as the "balcony motif". We view each scene from a hill in the foreground like

a balcony, watching the landscape unfurl beneath us. Bruegel is observing humanity from above. A

bird's eye view - detached but fascinated. While all six panels were revolutionary,

the winter scene has become iconic. Maybe because it's Bruegel's philosophy in a single image.

Bruegel was fascinated with winter scenes, and at the time of the mini ice age, he naturally

produced many of them, but none of them captured the raw power of winter as vividly as Hunters in

the snow. A painting that chills you to the bone. As we enter the scene, we see three men trudging

through ankle deep snow, returning home from the hunt. It hasn't gone well. Their heads hang low,

their dogs are thin and weary, and the day's catch amounts to just one scrawny fox slung

over a shoulder. Tiny tracks in the snow hint at a creature that escaped them, a reminder that hunger

is never really far away. The vertical lines of the bare trees lead us on a descending slope

into the far distance. As is usual with Bgal, his paintings have a multitude of details occurring

at the same time on different planes. Here, a man way in the distance is himself hunting,

and we see a burst of gunshot. Over here, we see that a chimney fire is raging, and men climb the

roof, perhaps to contain it? As another rushes to bring a ladder. Here, people gather around a fire

outside an inn. They're preparing to roast a pig in a ritual known as "the singeing of the swine",

though the animal itself is nowhere to be seen. The inn sign shows St. Hubert, the patron saint of

hunters. It shows the scene of Hubert's conversion to Christianity. He was hunting on Good Friday

when he saw a crucifix appear between the antlers of a deer. The sign hangs precariously over the

head of the villagers, and the heavy snow and wind could bring this crashing down at any moment,

emphasising the inherent danger of winter months, or perhaps the precarious nature of the hunt.

The text on the sign translates as "To the deer". Another hunting reference. Further down the slope,

an empty bird trap reinforces the message, food is limited. Crows and magpies add a quiet sense

of foreboding. In Flemish folklore, these were birds associated with death or bad weather,

reminding us that beauty and menace share the same sky. It is a scene of high contrasts, both

visually and metaphorically. The colour palette is cool and pale, the snow dominating the scene,

while the trees, figures, and animals stand out in sober dark shades, almost silhouettes.

This is the beginning of the so-called little ice age, and people are unaware of the even

more extreme temperatures to come, represented by the hunters entering the frame after their dismal

performance. The harsh reality of the unsuccessful hunt is balanced by the broader themes of human

resilience. In the bottom right, we see one woman pulling another on a sled. Beyond the bridge,

we can see people playing games such as "Kolf", a medieval ancestor of ice hockey,

and what seems to be an early form of curling. Someone has fallen over and their hat has come

off. Children and adults play together. Even a dog joins the fun. Yet, even among the jolity on

the ice, the signs of hardship remain. The mill wheel is frozen solid. No grain can be ground.

And look at what rises out of the Netherlandish landscape in the distance. Inongruous mountains,

vast and snowcovered. These mountains are not real. They are Bruegel's memories of the Alpine

landscape from his earlier travels. Completely unlike anything you'd find in the Low Countries.

The alpine motif, which had been his best-selling print, makes a dramatic cameo to give the painting

a sense of fantasy and storytelling to exaggerate the sense of harshness and

extreme weather the hunters had endured. From our high vantage point, we can see both the

joy and the struggle of life. Bruegel reminds us that happiness and hardship exist alongside each other.

Pieter Bruegel died young, in his 40s, leaving behind only around 45 paintings, 60 drawings,

and 80 prints. His focus on everyday life and his relatable subject matter would shape art in the

Netherlands for generations. From him, we can draw a line directly to the Dutch Golden Age a century

later. Yet strangely, he was forgotten about by the general public for centuries and considered

old-fashioned. He had to wait until the 20th century to be rediscovered as one of the greatest

visual storytellers. Bruegel painted in a world where power and faith were shifting, where global trade

brought new wealth, and where art began to serve a broader public beyond the church. He put the focus

on ordinary people, the importance of community, and the ongoing connection to the land. He made

sure the ordinary and the everyday were worthy of artistic attention. In a world increasingly

fractured and individualistic, Bruegel reminds us of our shared condition, our shared responsibility.

His paintings are vast human tapestries showing that history isn't made by heroes alone,

but by countless unnamed people whose lives, like ours, unfold in the shadow of something bigger.