The visit to the farm

Unusually, there is no extant painting or design by the artist's father, Pieter Bruegel I, from which this composition is taken. Instead, a grisaille by his brother Jan Brueghel I of circa 1597 in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (inv. no. 645), appears to have inspired its design; a second grisaille version by Jan Brueghel I is in the collection of the Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 431). Klaus Ertz records eleven autograph versions of this composition by Pieter Brueghel II.

The scene appears to depict a visit to a tenant farm by local landowners. The landlord and his wife are on the right, distinguished from the farmer and his family by their dark clothes, as favoured by Antwerp’s patricians. The landlord is presenting a gift of a sugar loaf, probably intended to mark the birth of the tenants' youngest child, who the mother is keeping warm by the fire in the foreground at lower left, while the landlord's wife searches in her purse for a coin to give to the eldest.