Village Scene with Figures and Cows

Second son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1520/25–1569), Jan – known as "Velvet" or "Flower" Brueghel – was one of the principal representatives of Flemish painting around 1600.

On a small copper panel, Brueghel portrays in fine detail the everyday life of a rural community. Brueghel's work includes a whole group of such idyllic landscapes, his figures set with a delicate hand in natural surroundings, here once more rendered as a "world landscape". This work shows an extremely rare representation of a peasant's garden in the 16th and 17th centuries.