Kaninjagt 1560

Pieter Bruegel the Elder created this print, titled "Kaninjagt," or "Rabbit Hunt," in the mid-16th century. The image depicts a sweeping landscape, a high vantage point down to a valley, in which a group of hunters is poised to flush rabbits out of their burrows. Prints like this one were made in Antwerp at the time. They were both art objects in their own right and a popular means of circulating landscape imagery to a growing art market. Bruegel was interested in the clash between the natural world and human society, as you can see here in the contrast between the serene, panoramic vista and the small figures of the hunters in the foreground. He lived in a time of great social and religious upheaval in the Netherlands, when questions of land ownership and resource management were deeply contested. This print is a kind of social document, a depiction of a particular way of life that was already under threat from the forces of modernization. To learn more about Bruegel's world, look to historical archives, early maps, and literature.