Census at Bethlehem by Pieter Bruegel

The Census at Bethlehem (also called The Numbering at Bethlehem) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566, is an oil and tempera painting of events from the Nativity of Christ, when Augustus Caesar decreed that all should be registered in a census. The carpenter Joseph journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem. In the foreground Joseph leads Mary, expecting child, on a donkey, across the cold snows of the winter landscape. Bruegel replaced the scenery of ancient Judea with the landscape and details of his contemporary Holland. At right of the painting a crowd gathers around the tables of the Roman bureaucrats. Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569) was a Dutch/Flemish painter and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance. Among the first artists to incorporate subject matter from landscape and the life of common people, Bruegel all but invented the art of Dutch genre painting. Bruegel painted a number of religious works but is best known for his lively, allegorical paintings of peasants and witty commentary and on life, sin and virtue. His innovative compositions and carefully observed, realistic details influenced many generations of artists, from Rembrandt through the Realists of the modern era.