Pieter Brueghel the Younger – The Census at Bethlehem c1604. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £5.2 million
The Census at Bethlehem by Pieter Brueghel the Younger places the Holy Family within a bustling Flemish winter landscape. Villagers queue to register for the census, children skate, throw snowballs and drag sledges across the frozen ground and drinkers gather around a makeshift tavern carved into an oak tree. The sacred is blended into the everyday as the Holy Family at the centre pass quietly through the crowd in a moving nod to the Nativity. The c1604 work exemplified Brueghel the Younger’s ability to capture the divine in the rhythms of ordinary life and is one of the largest known depictions of the subject.
The composition derives from a painting of the same name made in 1566 by the artist’s father, Pieter Brueghel the elder now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. It is one of the most revered works of the Northern Renaissance. Brueghel the Younger was only a child at his father’s death and he devoted much of his career to preserving and re-interpreting these masterful inventions with his own acute observation of daily life and meticulous detail. The Nativity has always been a favourite subject for artists and this work sold for an above estimate £5,164,000 (€5,903,300) at Sotheby’s Old Masters and 19th century paintings auction in London this month.