Brueghel s Adoration of the Magi in the Snow

Brueghel's Adoration of the Magi in the Snow. Does this picture represent Jesu birth, Jesu Baptism ( hole in the ice) and miracle at Cana ( ceramic vine vessel on the wall) ?



That's an insightful reading of Bruegel's "Adoration of the Magi in the Snow." It's tempting to look for these connections, as Bruegel was a master of embedding multiple layers of meaning in his paintings. While art historians have extensively analyzed the painting, the specific interpretations you suggest are not a part of the mainstream scholarly consensus.

Here's a breakdown of the accepted interpretations and a response to your specific points:

Jesus's Birth: The painting is, at its core, a depiction of the Nativity, specifically the Adoration of the Magi. Bruegel places this biblical scene in a contemporary Flemish village setting, showing the Holy Family in a humble stable on the far left of the composition. The Magi, or "kings," are presenting their gifts, but they are almost lost in the bustling, snowy scene. This "displacement of the main scene away from the center" is a characteristic feature of Bruegel's work, which often makes the religious event just one part of a larger, more realistic, and sometimes indifferent world.



The Hole in the Ice: The hole in the ice is a recurring motif in Bruegel's winter landscapes, and it's generally understood to have two primary meanings:

Everyday life: It represents the mundane reality of daily life in the Low Countries during winter, where people had to cut holes in the ice to get water for drinking, cooking, and other chores. This grounds the religious story in the context of ordinary, human existence.

A sense of unease or danger: In "The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow," a child is depicted cheerfully sledding on the ice, completely unaware that he is heading straight for the hole. This detail introduces a feeling of precariousness and potential danger, a subtle reminder of the hardships of the season and the unpredictable nature of life. While it's a hole in the ice, it's not a direct reference to the Baptism of Jesus, which is a separate biblical event typically set by a river, not on a frozen pond.


The Ceramic Vessel: The "ceramic vine vessel" you mention is likely one of the gifts the Magi are bringing, or a container in the village. While the gifts of the Magi (gold, frankincense, and myrrh) have their own specific symbolism related to Christ's royalty, divinity, and death, there is no known scholarly connection between a ceramic vessel in this painting and the Miracle at Cana (where Jesus turned water into wine). That miracle is a distinct event in the Bible and not typically associated with the Nativity.

In short, Bruegel's "Adoration of the Magi in the Snow" is a complex painting that uses a contemporary setting to retell a sacred story. The various details, including the holes in the ice, are intended to represent the realities of 16th-century life and to add layers of meaning about human indifference, the harshness of winter, and the coexistence of the miraculous with the mundane. While your ideas are creative, they do not align with the established interpretations of the painting's symbolism.

Adoration of the Magi in the Snow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adoration of the Magi in the Snow

Artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Year 1563
Medium oil on oak panel
Dimensions 35 cm ; 55 cm (14 in ; 22 in)
Location Am R;merholz, Winterthur
The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow (or Adoration of the Magi in a Winter Landscape) is a painting in oils on oak panel of 1563, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, now in the Oskar Reinhart Collection Am R;merholz in Winterthur, Switzerland. With two Italian exceptions, it is thought to be the first depiction of falling snow in a Western painting, the snowflakes boldly shown by dots of white across the whole scene,[1] added when the work was otherwise completed.[2]

The very common subject of the Adoration of the Magi, showing the visit of the three Biblical Magi to the baby Jesus and his parents, is given a resolutely down to earth treatment, set in a contemporary Netherlandish village.[3] The weather is dull, the size of the painting relatively small, and the figures all well wrapped-up, making some details more easily seen in the numerous early copies, many by Bruegel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger. These generally show snow on the ground, but not actually falling. It was Bruegel's second painting of the subject.[4]


Copy by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Museo Correr, Venice
At 35 cm ; 55 cm (14 in ; 22 in) it is considerably smaller than most of Bruegel's other examples of "the crowded, high-angle, small-figure compositions of his middle years",[5] mostly with crowds of figures in a village setting. These are mostly over three times higher, at between 110 and 120 cm high. Like many of Bruegel's paintings, it is signed and dated, but the date, in Roman numerals in the bottom left corner, is hard to read, though 1563 is now generally accepted.[6]

Description

Detail of the stable, with Mary, Jesus and Joseph. Two Magi kneel, while the young black one stands at right.
The gloom and snow, together with the small scale and muted colours, mean the scene in the stable "can just be made out" in its "unexpected spot" in the bottom left corner. The diagonal arrangement of the many figures crowding the village street "tends to lead the eye away from the main event".[7] This displacement of the main scene away from the centre is typical of Bruegel's works, seen for example in his earlier Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and later The Census at Bethlehem.[8]

There is the usual baggage train of the Magi, but only mules seem to be used, and all the figures are very well wrapped-up against the weather, stressing "the anonymity of everyone present, their utterly impersonal assimilation into the divine scheme". It is hard to distinguish the visitors from the villagers, and perhaps soldiers from the castle.[9]

In the frozen piece of water across the road from the stable, a hole has been made for getting water, probably by the two men on the bridge grappling with a log. Two other men are now carrying water up the steps in buckets. Behind them, a toddler is cheerfully propelling himself across the ice, sitting in some improvised "kind of sledge" and using sticks like oars.[10] The child is unaware he is heading straight towards the hole in the ice, but his mother on the raised bank above has just noticed this, and is springing into action.[11] Two children play on similar equipment in The Census at Bethlehem.


The stable group in the Museo Correr copy
To the right of the picture, the street is dominated by the ruin of a Romanesque palace, propped up by a large beam,[12] and at the centre rear a castle can dimly be made out; this is much clearer in several copies. Bruegel's winter skies, showing a variety of atmospheric conditions, have been praised by critics and meteorologists alike. Here, the sky is "a featureless veil of nimbostratus".[13]

Re-dating
The date inscribed on the painting was mostly thought to be 1567, written in Roman numerals as "MDLXVII", but is now, after careful re-examination and technical examination before the 2019 Vienna exhibition, thought to be 1563, written in Roman numerals as "MDLXIII".[14] This has the effect of making the painting Bruegel's earliest snow scene, rather than perhaps his last. In the years between the two dates Bruegel painted a number of landscapes under snow: The Hunters in the Snow (1565), Winter Landscape with Ice skaters and Bird trap (1565), Massacre of the Innocents (c.1565–1567), and The Census at Bethlehem (1566).[15]

The painting is now dated before other events that had previously been discussed by some art historians as influences on it.[16] Firstly, "the first landmark winter of the Grindelwald Fluctuation in 1564/65",[17] which is often regarded as the first sign of the most intense phase of the Little Ice Age,[18] and secondly the Beeldenstorm of the summer of 1566, marking the Protestant Reformation taking a violent turn.[19]

Bruegel's other snow paintings
The Hunters in the Snow (1565)
The Hunters in the Snow (1565)
 
Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap (1565)
Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap (1565)

Massacre of the Innocents (c.1565–1567)
Massacre of the Innocents (c.1565–1567)

The Census at Bethlehem (1566)
The Census at Bethlehem (1566)
Provenance
The painting, or a drawing of it, was evidently available in the Brueghel family workshop, and there are an unusually large number of early copies by the Brueghel circle. The RKD records 36, with "about 25" by Pieter Brueghel the Younger; only the Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap has more,[20] at about 127. This is a similar size, with smaller figures spread across a snowy landscape. The original is first recorded in the important collection of the German-born banker Everhard Jabach in Paris in 1696, the year after his death; most of his collection had been sold to Louis XIV and is now in the Louvre.[21]

Nothing is then known until it was owned by Graf Johann Moritz Saurma, of the grand Silesian magnate family, by the early 20th century, before passing through the hands of the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer to be bought by the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart in 1930.[22]

The painting was extensively studied by modern methods in preparation for the major exhibition "Bruegel: Die Hand des Meisters" at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria, from 2 October 2018 to 13 January 2019, marking the 450th anniversary of Bruegel's death in 1569, where it was exhibited (as #65).[23] This was followed by a smaller exhibition back at Winterthur (November 2019 to March 2020), centred on the painting.[24] Both had extensive printed catalogues (see below).

The scene on the frozen water
The scene on the frozen water

Two of the mules, with the castle behind, Museo Correr copy
Two of the mules, with the castle behind, Museo Correr copy

The rear of the Magi's caravan
The rear of the Magi's caravan
See also
List of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Notes
Wied, 156
Cat
Wied, 144
Wied, 156 (as redated)
Altman, 202
Wied, 144 still thought it was 1567, but the museum and most very recent sources say 1563 (RKD, cat: "Recent studies confirm that the barely legible date on the painting is 1563, not 1567 as it was long taken to be")
Wied, 156
Altman, Chapter 6, especially 200-204
Wied, 156
Cat
Wied, 156
Wied, 156-157
Thornes, John E., John Constable's Skies: A Fusion of Art and Science, 160, 1999, University of Birmingham Press, ISBN 978-1-902459-02-8, google books
Cat
Gibson, 148
Muerer, Philipp, in Aesth/ethics in Environmental Change: Hiking Through the Arts, Ecology, Religion and Ethics of the Environment, Eds. Irmgard Blindow, Konrad Ott, Sigurd Bergmann, 159, 173, note 43, 2013, LIT Verlag Munster, ISBN 978-3-643-90292-4, google books
Degroot, Dagomar (2018). The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 254. ISBN 978-1-108-41931-4.
Jones, Jonathan, "Into the White", The Guardian, 18 December 2006
Wied, 144-146
RKD
Wied, 144
Cat
Cat
"Inside Bruegel" page
References
Altman, Rick, A Theory of Narrative, 2008, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-14429-2, google books
"Cat": Bruegel: The Master (Catalogue of the 450th Anniversary exhibition in Vienna), Elke Oberthaler, Sabine P;not, Manfred Sellink and Ron Spronk, with Alice Hoppe-Harnoncourt et a., 2019, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Thames & Hudson (English version). The painting is #65. online text
Gibson, Walter S., Bruegel, 1977, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 978-0-500-20156-5
"RKD": RKD page
Wied, Alexander, Bruegel, 1980, Studio Vista, ISBN 978-0-289-70974-0
Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Adoration of the Kings in the snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
The Miracle in the Snow. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 2019 (exhibition catalogue, Hirmer, Monaco, ISBN 978-3-7774-3498-8, edited by Kerstin Richter, Oskar Reinhart Collection 'Am R;merholz', for the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, with texts by Dominique Allart, Katja Baumhoff, Christina Currie, Volker Dietzel, Pascale Fraiture, Elke Oberthaler, Sabine P;not, Kerstin Richter
van Sprang, Sabine; Meganck Tine (eds.), Bruegel's Winter Scenes: Historians and Art Historians in Dialogue, 2018, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, ISBN 978-0-300-23692-7
Christian Gr;f: Die Winterbilder Pieter Bruegels (in German) d. ;. VDM Verlag Dr. M;ller, Saarbr;cken, ISBN 978-3-639-12775-1, Kapitel "Anbetung im Schnee (1567) – S;kularisierte religi;se Ikonographie und innovative Darstellung von Schneefall", S. 104ff
External links
"In Focus" online feature from Vienna/Winterthur project, with extremely detailed enlargeable "macrophotography"