Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 26 April
If you felt deprived of snow this Christmas, hasten along to The Queen’s Gallery, for there, in a splendid exhibition of Flemish painting from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, is one of the best snow-scenes ever — Bruegel’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ (1565–7). You may think this too grisly a subject for the season of good will, and the Emperor Rudolf II thought so too, for the painting was bowdlerised at his orders in the early 17th century. Rudolf did not approve of Bruegel’s satire, which cast the Flemish townspeople as the innocents and the Imperial troops as their murderers (standing in for Herod’s men in the original Bible story). The panel was overpainted to render the image less inflammatory, and to look like a scene of plunder rather than massacre.
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