With two Italian exceptions, it is thought to be the first depiction of falling snow in a Western painting, the snowflakes boldly shown by dots of white across the whole scene,[1] added when the work was otherwise completed.

[3] The weather is dull, the size of the painting relatively small, and the figures all well wrapped-up, making some details more easily seen in the numerous early copies, many by Bruegel's son Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

[6] The gloom and snow, together with the small scale and muted colours, mean the scene in the stable "can just be made out" in its "unexpected spot" in the bottom left corner.

[7] This displacement of the main scene away from the centre is typical of Bruegel's works, seen for example in his earlier Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and later The Census at Bethlehem.

[8] There is the usual baggage train of the Magi, but only mules seem to be used, and all the figures are very well wrapped-up against the weather, stressing "the anonymity of everyone present, their utterly impersonal assimilation into the divine scheme".

To the right of the picture, the street is dominated by the ruin of a Romanesque palace, propped up by a large beam,[12] and at the centre rear a castle can dimly be made out; this is much clearer in several copies.

[21] Nothing is then known until it was owned by Graf Johann Moritz Saurma, of the grand Silesian magnate family, by the early 20th century, before passing through the hands of the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer to be bought by the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart in 1930.