Massacre of the Innocents (Bruegel)

The work translates the Biblical account of the Massacre of the Innocents into a winter scene in the Southern Netherlands in the prelude to the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule, also known as the Eighty Years' War.

What is now thought to be the only version by Bruegel the Elder (c.1565-1567) is in the British Royal Collection; for some time at Hampton Court Palace, since 2017 (to late 2024) it has been in Windsor Castle.

It appears that Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor ordered it overpainted to hide images of dead and dying children, which have been replaced by food items and sacks of goods.

The version by Bruegel the Elder in the Royal Collection was acquired by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II and was in Prague by about 1600.

The later overpainting became apparent during conservation work in 1998, and Lorne Campbell identified the painting in the Royal Collection as the original version by Bruegel the Elder.

Moving right, towards the centre of the painting, a lone woman stands grieving over her dead baby lying with blood spilled on the snow (overpainted in the version in the Royal Collection with meats and cheeses), and a couple ask a soldier to take their daughter not their baby son (overpainted in the version in the Royal Collection as a large bird).

Further to the right, a single mounted man is surrounded by a group of protesting villagers: originally he was a herald wearing a tabard decorated with a Habsburg double-headed eagle.

One soldier wields an axe and another has a log to use as a battering ram; three are climbing into an open window, and one with a halberd kicks at a door, shaking off an overhanging icicle which threatens to fall on his head.

One may be intended to be the Duke of Alba, the notoriously harsh commander of the Spanish army in the Netherlands: the resemblance becomes clearer in the later paintings by Brueghel the Younger.