# The Harvesters > Pieter Bruegel the Elder - 1565 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/bruegel-the-harvesters/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-07 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Pieter Bruegel the Elder - **Date:** 1565 - **Medium:** Oil on oak - **Dimensions:** Overall, including added strips at top, bottom and right, 119 x 162 cm (46 7/8 x 63 3/4 in.); original painted surface 116.5 x 159.5 cm (45 7/8 x 62 7/8 in.) - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Netherlandish, sixteenth century - **Current location:** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary One panel of the most famous broken set in European painting. Bruegel painted a cycle of landscapes through the year in 1565 for the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck; within a year the whole of Jongelinck's collection had been pledged to the city of Antwerp as security for somebody else's tax debt, and the document that records the pledge is the earliest thing anyone knows about these pictures. Three of the survivors are in Vienna, one is in Prague and this one is in New York.Its route there runs through an archduke, an emperor, a Napoleonic general and a Paris couturier. In 1816 it was sold in Paris as the work of an unnamed master of the old German school, dated 1546, for ninety francs and eleven centimes. In 1919 the Metropolitan Museum bought it in a market flattened by the war, under dirt and varnish, and found the signature when it cleaned it. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1565-1566** Niclaes Jongelinck, Antwerp `[documented]` (commission) The cycle was made for Jongelinck, probably for his suburban house outside Antwerp, and possibly as part of a decorative programme that also included Frans Floris's Seven Liberal Arts and Labours of Hercules and Jacques Jonghelinck's Seven Planets. On 21 February 1565 by the old calendar, that is 1566 by the new, a document in the Antwerp city archives records that Jongelinck's art collection was pledged as collateral for the tax arrears owed to the city by Daniel de Bruyne. It names sixteen pieces by Bruegel and singles out the Tower of Babel, the Carrying of the Cross and the Twelve Months. Bruegel had signed the panels in 1565; within a year they had been pledged against another man's debt. - **1566-1594** Unclear; the pledge and the city's later possession are not bridged by a document consulted here `[unknown]` (gap) The city of Antwerp held the collateral, and by 1594 the paintings were on the market with a dealer named Hane van Wijke. What happened in between, and whether de Bruyne's debt was ever settled, is not established in the sources consulted. - **1594** Hane von Wijke, Antwerp `[documented]` (trade stock) An Antwerp city archive document of 1594 records the purchase of six paintings from Hane van Wijke for 1,400 florins, together with tapestries from the Brussels weaver Merten Reynbouts for 8,550 florins, to be presented as a gift. The tapestries cost six times the Bruegels. - **1594-1595** Archduke Ernst, governor of the Netherlands, Brussels `[documented]` (gift) Blasius Huetter, the archduke's secretary, entered in the account book on 5 July 1594 that the Antwerp city fathers presented Ernst with eight tapestries and six paintings representing the twelve months. Ernst died the following year; the posthumous inventory of 17 July 1595 lists the pictures as nos. 7 to 12, six panels of the twelve months of the year by Bruegel. This is the last document in which six of them are together. - **1595-1612** Emperor Rudolf II, Prague `[documented]` (inheritance) The panels passed to Rudolf II and were in Prague until his death in 1612. - **1612-1662** Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Netherlands, Brussels and Vienna `[documented]` (ownership) His inventory of 1659 lists them as nos. 582 to 586: five large pieces showing the times of the year, in oils on wood, originals by the old Bruegel. Five, not six. One panel disappears between 1595 and 1659 and has never been identified. - **1662-1809** Emperor Leopold I and the Imperial collection, Vienna `[documented]` (inheritance) In the imperial collection in Vienna until 1809. The other survivors are in Vienna still. - **1809-1816** Comte Antoine-Francois Andreossy, Vienna and Paris `[documented]` (acquisition) Andreossy was a French general and diplomat who was in Vienna in 1809, the year Napoleon occupied the city. The Met records only that the panel was his from 1809. How a picture left the imperial collection in the year of the occupation, and under what authority, is not stated in the sources consulted, and this record does not fill the gap with a plausible sentence. - **1816-before 1912** Unrecorded, then Jacques Doucet, Paris `[disputed]` (purchase at auction) Sold at the Andreossy sale, Perignon, Paris, 11 March 1816, lot 1, for 90 francs 11 centimes, catalogued as by a master of the old German school and dated 1546. The buyer at that sale is not named in the Met's provenance. The panel is next recorded with the couturier and collector Jacques Doucet in Paris, who sold it to Cels shortly before 1912. Whether Doucet bought it at the 1816 sale is impossible, and who held it in the intervening ninety-odd years is unrecorded. - **before 1912-1919** Paul Jean Cels, Brussels `[documented]` (purchase) Bought from Doucet and sold to the Metropolitan Museum in 1919. - **1919-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Rogers Fund, accession 19.164. The Met's own catalogue entry describes the sale price as extraordinarily low, and attributes that partly to an art market that had virtually collapsed during the First World War and partly to the state of the panel, which was hidden beneath accumulated dirt, discoloured varnish and unsightly restorations along the cracks at the joins. The museum records that the work may not be lent. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1816-03-11** Perignon, Paris, The Andreossy sale, lot 1 - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted - Hammer: FRF 90.11 (ninety francs eleven centimes) - With premium: None. No buyer's premium existed at a Paris auction in 1816; the figure is the price. - The catalogue described the lot as by a master of the old German school, a landscape of the greatest detail showing the labours of the harvest, 58 by 44 pouces, and dated 1546. Every element of that description except the subject is wrong: the painter was Netherlandish, he was one of the most famous names of the previous century, and the date on the panel is 1565. This is the cheapest documented price in the object's history and it is cheap because nobody in the room knew what it was. - **** , - The two other transactions in this object's history were private and carry no hammer price: the sale by Jacques Doucet to Paul Jean Cels shortly before 1912, and the sale by Cels to the Metropolitan Museum in 1919. The Met describes the 1919 price as extraordinarily low but does not publish it. Separately, two later versions of this composition by Pieter Bruegel the Younger have appeared at Christie's in London, one in 1981 and one in 2012; neither is by the elder Bruegel, and prices for them are prices for the son. Anyone valuing this panel from database comparables will be pricing the wrong painter. ## Open questions - Did the cycle consist of six panels or twelve? The Antwerp document of 1565-66 says the twelve months; the 1594 and 1595 records say six paintings of the twelve months; scholarship has changed sides repeatedly since 1932. - What became of the sixth panel? It is present in the 1595 inventory of Archduke Ernst and absent from the 1659 inventory of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, and no candidate, copy or derivative has ever surfaced. - Which two months does the Met's panel represent? Tolnay says August and September, Gluck says July and August, and a Berlin drawing after it is inscribed for July alone. - How did the panel leave the imperial collection in Vienna in 1809, the year of the French occupation, and reach comte Andreossy? The Met's provenance records the change of ownership without a mechanism. - Who bought lot 1 at the Perignon sale of 11 March 1816, and where was the panel between then and Jacques Doucet? Nearly a century is unaccounted for. - What did the Metropolitan Museum pay Paul Jean Cels in 1919? The museum's own entry calls the price extraordinarily low but does not give it. - What is the blue sphere at the upper left? The Met has ruled out the harvest moon and a solar eclipse and states that it remains an enigma. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object record 435809, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, accession 19.164. Consulted for the tombstone, the catalogue entry by Maryan W. Ainsworth (2023), the technical notes, the full provenance, the exhibition history, the notes and the bibliography, which supplies the Antwerp Tresorij document of 1565-66, Huetter's account-book entry of 5 July 1594, the 1595 and 1659 inventories, the Perignon catalogue of 1816, Hulin de Loo 1907, Gluck 1932 and 1936, Tolnay 1934, Novotny 1948, Held 1949, Ross's New Yorker profile of 1950, Grossman 1955, Van Miegroet 1986, Buchanan 1990, Falkenburg 2017 and Borchert, Sellinck and Meganck 2019. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object 435809. Consulted for isPublicDomain, primaryImage, the count of additional images, medium, dimensions, artist dates, accession number and credit line. - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object 437261, Joachim Patinir, The Penitence of Saint Jerome, and object 435810, Jan Brueghel the Elder, A Woodland Road with Travelers. Consulted to verify open-access status and the tombstones of the two comparison plates. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.