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The Year in Six Panels

Antwerp, 1565: a merchant orders a whole year in paint for his country villa, and Bruegel delivers it season by season. Seventy years later Rubens, master of his own country estate, painted the same Flemish autumn from above.

Sources: Wikipedia: Nicolaes JonghelinckKunsthistorisches MuseumWikipedia: Peter Paul Rubens

Each of the 4 paintings in this story is a puzzle. Solve them to reveal the paintings and read how each one leads to the next.

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1

Antwerp, 1565. The merchant banker Niclaes Jongelinck, who would come to own sixteen paintings by Bruegel, wanted a set for his country house outside the city: one picture for each time of the year.

Sources: WikipediaKunsthistorisches Museum
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2

The set probably hung around one room of Jongelinck's villa, with statues of the planets between the panels, turning the room into a model of the turning year.

Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum
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Companion pieces

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3

Years earlier, on his way to Italy, Bruegel had crossed the Alps. The mountain country he saw there kept turning up in the flat Flemish world he painted for the rest of his life.

Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum
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Companion pieces

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4

In 1635, five years before his death, the diplomat and court painter Rubens bought a country estate with a manor house outside Antwerp. In his last years he turned more and more to the landscape around it.

Source: Wikipedia
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The same subject

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