Pieter Brueghel, The Numbering at Bethlehem (1566)
Pieter Breughel, Hunters in the Snow, (1565)
... But flame, nor ice, nor piercing rock,
Nor silence, as of a frozen sea,
Nor that slant inward infinite line
Of signboard, bird, and hill, and tree,
Give more than subtle hint of him
Who squandered here life's mystery.
Nor that slant inward infinite line
Of signboard, bird, and hill, and tree,
Give more than subtle hint of him
Who squandered here life's mystery.
Walter de la Mare, "Brueghel's Winter "
For Breughel, the climate was wintry
even at Bethlehem. Did Breughel's
fascination with wintry scenes, and the
frozen canals he loved to depict, result
from Solar Variability, the Little Ice Age,
and the Maunder Minimum?