The year of the Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565, also produced The Hunters in the Snow, the most famous of the group, part of a series showing the months or seasons.

People are going about their daily business in the cold, children are shown playing with toys on the ice and having snowball fights.

In the background, men drink at a makeshift bar, and in the distance are a well-kept church and a crumbling castle.

And once again, reference to particular political events has been adduced - in this case, the severity of the Spanish administration in the southern Netherlands.

The events depicted are described in Luke 2, 1-5: And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered...

Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.Pieter Brueghel the Younger and his studio made dozens of copies of the painting after his father's death, one of which was sold at auction for $10 million in 2013.