Euntes in Emmaus (The Way to Emmaus), from: The Large Landscapes

Pieter Bruegel created only one print himself, his very rare etching of a Rabbit Hunt of 1560. He did however work very closely with the great print publisher Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp, cooperated closely with a number of gifted printmakers, including the Doetecum brothers, and provided them with a considerable number of very detailed model sketches. The preparatory drawing for the present print, which is one of a series of twelve large landscapes, is in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (inv. n. T.50985). As in many of Bruegel's most memorable paintings - such as the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus celebrated in a poem by William Carlos Williams - the mythological or biblical content of several of these prints is reduced to a small background detail. Without the inscription in the border below, the viewer would certainly not associate this pastoral scene with three travelers with the Road to Emmaus. Clearly, Bruegel's interest here lies with the landscape itself and the composition is in fact very reminiscent of his most famous, 'pure' landscape painting, The Hunters in the Snow, now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (see ill.).