# The Wine of Saint Martin's Day > Pieter Bruegel the Elder - c. 1565-1568 (Prado's own catalogue narrows this to 1566-1567; the last digit of the painted date is illegible) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/bruegel-wine-of-saint-martins-day/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Pieter Bruegel the Elder - **Date:** c. 1565-1568 (Prado's own catalogue narrows this to 1566-1567; the last digit of the painted date is illegible) - **Medium:** Glue-size tempera (tuchlein/distemper) on plain-woven linen, painted largely alla prima on an unprimed or only lightly sized ground - **Dimensions:** 148 x 270.5 cm - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Netherlandish, sixteenth century - **Current location:** Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A crowd swarms a cask of new wine outside a city gate while, off to the side and almost unnoticed, a mounted saint cuts his cloak in half for a beggar. For most of its life this canvas was assumed to be a copy or an anonymous imitation, sitting unremarked in a Spanish private collection. In 2010 the Museo Nacional del Prado established it as an autograph, previously unrecorded painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of only a handful of his works painted in distemper on cloth rather than oil on panel, and the largest picture he is known to have made.The attribution rested on a worn signature uncovered during restoration, an X-radiograph showing brushwork the museum's own curators judged unmistakably Bruegel's, and a decade of quiet advocacy that began when a single scholar spotted it in a private house years before the museum ever saw it. The Spanish state paid 7 million euros for a painting some estimates put at fourteen times that on the open market, a gap the country's cultural-property law exists specifically to create.What the picture actually shows remains genuinely contested: a moralising satire on gluttony in the tradition of Bruegel's other vice paintings, or a sympathetic record of an ordinary autumn custom. This record sets out the rediscovery, the technical case, the provenance as far as it can be traced, and the two readings side by side, without deciding between them. ## 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. - **c. 1565-1568-before 1626** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (origin) No commission, patron or early owner is documented for the picture's first six decades. It is not mentioned in any inventory or source contemporary with Bruegel's life. - **before 1626-1627** Possibly the Gonzaga, Dukes of Mantua `[disputed]` (possible early ownership) A 1626-27 inventory of the Gonzaga collection in Mantua lists a painting of 'the feast of Saint Martin with many poor people drinking from a barrel, a work of Bruegel the Elder.' The Prado's own catalogue and the Silva Maroto/Sellink study both flag this as an uncertain identification: the entry could equally describe a different composition or a copy, and no measurement or further description survives to confirm it is this canvas. - **1627-before 1662** Possibly the Muselli collection, Verona `[disputed]` (possible ownership) The Prado's catalogue entry notes a possible link to the Muselli collection of Verona, a family known to have acquired dispersed Gonzaga pictures after the sack of Mantua and the Gonzaga sale to Charles I's agents in the late 1620s. This link is stated by the museum as possible, not established. - **before 1702-1956** Luis Francisco de la Cerda y Aragon, 9th Duke of Medinaceli, and his descendants `[documented]` (purchase and descent) The earliest firm documentary link. The 9th Duke served as Spanish ambassador in Rome (1687-1696) and later as Viceroy of Naples, and is recorded to have acquired the painting in Italy and sent it to Spain before his death; it appears in a Medinaceli inventory as a Brueghel of 'the fiesta of San Martin and his children', valued at 8,000 reales. It descended in the Medinaceli family collections until the death of the 17th Duke in 1956. - **1956-2009** Private collection, Spain (identity not published) `[unknown]` (gap) The painting passed out of documented Medinaceli ownership after 1956 into what press and museum sources describe only as 'an old Spanish collection' or 'a private Spanish collection.' Whether it remained with Medinaceli heirs or passed to an unrelated family, and how it was regarded and treated during this period, is not stated in any source consulted; contemporary accounts of its physical state describe it as neglected, repeatedly relined and retouched by unrecorded hands, and displayed, according to one restoration account, in a passageway. - **2007-2009** Same private Spanish collection; first scholarly notice `[documented]` (attribution proposed) Manfred Sellink, then a CODART board member, director of Musea Brugge and author of the 2007 Bruegel catalogue raisonne, saw the painting in the private collection and judged it 'very close to Bruegel', advising the owner to have it examined. This is the first record of anyone proposing the Bruegel the Elder attribution seriously since Diaz Padron's 1980 publication of it as a copy by the son. - **November 2009-September 2010** Consigned to the Museo Nacional del Prado via Sotheby's Madrid `[documented]` (study and technical examination) The owner consigned the painting through Sotheby's Madrid office; it entered the Prado for study and possible acquisition. A technical campaign followed under the deputy director Gabriele Finaldi and the department of Flemish and Northern School painting led by Pilar Silva Maroto, with restoration carried out by Elisa Mora beginning February 2010. The signature and traces of a date were uncovered during cleaning on or around 6 September 2010; the Prado announced the attribution on 23 September 2010. - **2010-present** Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (Spanish state) `[documented]` (acquisition) The Ministry of Culture announced the rediscovery and attribution on 23 September 2010. The Real Patronato del Prado, presided over by Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, unanimously approved exercising a purchase option at 7 million euros at its plenary meeting on 20 October 2010, with the sum drawn from an extraordinary budget line. Spain's Junta de Calificacion, Valoracion y Exportacion (the state board for classification, valuation and export of artistic heritage) separately declared the painting a bien de interes cultural, a designation that bars permanent export and effectively removed it from the open international market before the Prado's own purchase was completed. Restoration, funded by Fundacion Iberdrola, concluded in time for the painting's first public display from 12 December 2011 to 25 March 2012. ## Open questions - Is the 1626-27 Gonzaga inventory entry for a 'feast of Saint Martin' by Bruegel the Elder actually this canvas? Both the Prado and the Silva Maroto/Sellink study treat this as plausible but unconfirmed; no measurements or fuller description survive in the inventory to test it. - Is the proposed link to the Muselli collection of Verona (before 1662) correct? The Prado's own catalogue states this only as a possibility. - What is the true painted date? The final digit of the Roman-numeral date (MDL[.]) uncovered in restoration is illegible, so the picture cannot be placed more precisely within Bruegel's last four years of activity than the museum's own bracket of 1565-1568 (elsewhere narrowed by the Prado to 1566-1567). - Who owned the painting between the death of the 17th Duke of Medinaceli in 1956 and its consignment to Sotheby's Madrid in 2009? No source consulted names an owner for this roughly fifty-year gap, or explains whether it remained with Medinaceli heirs or passed outside the family. - Was Abraham Brueghel's 1670 engraving made directly from this canvas, from an intermediate copy, or from another version entirely? Abraham misattributed the composition to his grandfather Jan Brueghel the Elder rather than his great-grandfather Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which suggests his own knowledge of its authorship and immediate source was already uncertain a century after it was painted. - Has any scholar published a sustained documentary or ethnographic reading of this specific, individually rediscovered canvas, as opposed to applying the general Alpers/Gibson/Sullivan framework for Bruegel's peasant scenes to it? Nothing found for this record does so; the moralising-satire reading currently stands unopposed in the literature specific to this picture. ## Sources - [1] Museo Nacional del Prado, official collection catalogue entry, 'The Wine of Saint Martin's Day' (P008040), including description, attribution, technique and provenance summary. - [2] Museo Nacional del Prado, 'Studies and Restorations' resource page on The Wine of Saint Martin's Day: technical study, X-radiography, restoration by Elisa Mora, and the discovery of the signature and date. - [3] Museo Nacional del Prado, special-display exhibition page, 'The Wine of Saint Martin's Day by Pieter Bruegel the Elder' (12 December 2011 - 25 March 2012). - [4] Wikipedia (Spanish), 'El vino de la fiesta de san Martin', consolidating the attribution history, Gonzaga and Medinaceli provenance, acquisition process and iconographic reading, citing Silva Maroto/Sellink/Mora 2011 and the Ministry of Culture. Flagged as a tertiary source for replacement with the Silva Maroto/Sellink Burlington Magazine article and the Prado's own bibliography where they could not be directly consulted. - [5] Wikipedia (English), 'The Wine of Saint Martin's Day', for dimensions, medium, subject description and general provenance summary. Flagged as a tertiary source for replacement with the primary Prado and Burlington Magazine material where they could not be directly consulted. - [6] CODART, 'The Museo del Prado identifies an unknown work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder', on Manfred Sellink's role in first proposing the attribution around 2007 and the subsequent technical study. - [7] CODART, 'Museo del Prado exhibits The Wine of Saint Martin's Day by Pieter Bruegel the Elder', on the 2011-2012 exhibition and the significance of the discovery. - [8] hoyesarte.com, 'El vino de la fiesta de San Martin se expone por primera vez en el Prado tras su restauracion', on the purchase price, funding, restoration and exhibition dates. - [9] hoyesarte.com, 'Cultura confirma la adquisicion de la obra de Bruegel el Viejo para el Prado', on the Real Patronato's approval of the purchase, the 7 million euro price and the ministerial announcement. - [10] Artelier Restauracio, 'Bruegel, de un oscuro pasillo a el Museo del Prado', on the painting's condition and neglect before acquisition, the restoration by Elisa Mora and the discovery of the signature on 6 September 2010, the purchase price and the bien de interes cultural declaration. - [11] Pilar Silva Maroto and Manfred Sellink, 'The rediscovery of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Wine of St Martin's Day, acquired for the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CLIII, December 2011. The principal scholarly publication of the attribution case; consulted via secondary reporting of its findings, not the full original article text. - [12] Martin William Walsh, 'Abraham Brueghel's Engraving of The Wine of St. Martin's Day and the Bentvueghels Fraternity in Rome', International Journal of Literature and Arts, vol. 13, no. 2, 31 March 2025, on Abraham Brueghel's 1670 engraving, its dedication to Don Gaspare Altieri, and Abraham's own misattribution of the composition to Jan Brueghel the Elder. - [13] Terrae Antiqvae, 'El Museo del Prado adquiere la obra El vino en la fiesta de San Martin, de Pieter Brueghel El Viejo', on the acquisition and its significance for the Prado's Bruegel holdings. - [14] Byron Breedlove and Anne Schuchat, 'A Masterwork of Art, a Metaphor for Prevention', Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 24, no. 7, July 2018, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: a later, non-art-historical reception of the picture, using Saint Martin's cloak-sharing as a public-health metaphor for vaccination. - [15] The History of Art, 'The Wine of Saint Martin's Day', for a plain-language restatement of the medium (glue-size/distemper on linen) and condition at acquisition. A general-audience secondary source, flagged for replacement with primary Prado technical documentation where possible. - [16] Wikipedia, 'The Blind Leading the Blind', for comparison with another of Bruegel's small number of surviving distemper-on-cloth (tuchlein) paintings. - [17] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569)', department essay, for biography: training under Pieter Coecke van Aelst, guild membership, the Italian journey, and his sons. - [18] Wikipedia, 'Pieter Bruegel the Elder', for biography, including the friendship with Abraham Ortelius, the patron Nicolaes Jonghelinck, work for Hieronymus Cock's Aux Quatre Vents, and Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck (1604) as the earliest biographical source. - [19] Wikipedia, 'Nicolaes Jonghelinck', for Bruegel's principal documented patron and his ownership of sixteen Bruegel paintings including the Months series. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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