Why it matters
Children take over an entire town square, playing more than 80 different games: rolling hoops, walking on stilts, playing leapfrog and blind man's bluff. Bruegel shows them absorbed with the seriousness adults bring to their supposedly more important pursuits.
Did you know?
- It was painted in 1560.
- Archduke Ernest of Austria acquired it in 1594.
- It may have been meant as the first of a series on the Ages of Man.
- Even in the landscape at the top left, children are bathing and playing.
Based on the Wikipedia article Children's Games (Bruegel) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
