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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1565–67
A Flemish village in deep snow. A troop of armoured horsemen has closed off the square; soldiers on foot kick in doors and drag people out. Peasants kneel and plead in front of the riders.
Bruegel sets the massacre in his own country and his own time, in a winter that looks like the ones he knew. The picture later came to the emperor Rudolf II, who had the children painted over: they became geese, calves, bundles and jugs, so that the scene now looks like a plundering. Under the overpaint the children are still there.
The horsemen stand in a closed block with raised lances. Nobody gets out of the village.
Where children lay there are now bundles and animals. The gestures of grief have stayed.
