The Harvesters—Pieter Bruegel the Elder Right from your first approach The Harvesters invites you in. It does so just from it large size, which greats you as if it were a huge picture window. The Grand view centralizes on the foreground, occupied with harvesters on their break. The painting then leads you down through a warm colored labyrinth of paths cut out of the sweeping wheat fields, which drop down and directs you into the vast mid-ground. The many small paths in the mid-ground swing through the green trees and up and around the hills, and finally bring your eyes to the background with its soft mountainous seascape. This is the basic composition but because of its tremendous view each section of the painting demands a closer look.The scene presented in the painting contains miles of land to view, but the artist chose the foreground as the area of main focus. Off to the right in the foreground, among the bundles wheat, sit a group of people. These are the harvesters relaxing on their break. One man lies against a tree as if rooting it to the ground; his body is sprawled out, limbs extended. I believe the artist portrayed the hard labor of cutting wheat as a cycle. All the way off to the right side of the foreground we are presented with two workers both of them are in the middle of the wheat cutting, their bodies lean into their work as they swing their sickles in the wheat field. Viewing in a clock-words motion we are led to a man emerging from a path in the field. He seems tired as he drags two water urns back to the group. Finally at three o clock as we come to the end of the cycle the viewer rests with the sleeping man who’s passed out against the tree. On the right side of the giant tree sits the group of people; all of them seem content as they sit on the ground or the bundles they cut and chomp on the fruit of their labor. As we move back into the painting we come across some triangular shapes, some of them bei...
