Hunters in the Snow (by Pieter Bruegel the Elder) Stone Coaster

This design features an oil-on-wood painting by the 16th-century artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/1530–1569), who was one of the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. It shows a scene of the winter season in which three hunters can be seen returning from an expedition accompanied by their dogs. The hunters have not been very successful and their dogs appear weary and tired. It is a scene of great pathos. However, one of the men is carrying the slender body of a dead fox. At a nearby inn, some adults and a child prepare food over an open fire. Birds such as crows and magpies are sitting in the bare trees; some critics have seen them symbolically as bad omens. The landscape is a flat-bottomed valley covered with white snow, and there is a river meandering through it; people are also playing hockey or ice skating on frozen lakes. There are wild mountain peaks in the background, despite the fact that such summits do not exist in the Low Countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The painting is sometimes also titled "The Return of the Hunters"; its original Dutch title is "Jagers in de sneeuw" [Hunters in the Snow]. The original work was completed in 1565, and it is now housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum [Museum of Fine Arts], Vienna, Austria.