Like much of Bruegel's work it depicts peasant life, in this case a festival known as St. Martin's Day, which involves drinking the first wine of the season.

There is a roadside cross, which the peasants seemingly ignore, and among the many figures is a group which alludes to the legend of St Martin of Tours dividing his cloak to share it with a beggar.

This idea of having an important theme relegated to the side of the painting is paralleled in, for example, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, which also highlights ordinary events.

[2] The Wine of Saint Martin's Day matches the description of a painting which was inventoried in the collection of the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua in the early seventeenth century.

[3] The earliest documentary evidence which definitely relates to the work now in the Prado Museum is an inventory of the collection of a Spanish aristocrat, Luis Francisco de la Cerda, the ninth duke of Medinaceli.