The Four Seasons

In 1565 Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his publisher Hieronymus Cock embarked upon a project to produce a series of The Four Seasons, to be engraved by Pieter van der Heyden. Bruegel executed his pen and ink drawing for Spring in the same year but his drawing for Summer was not produced until 1568. Cock subsequently commissioned Hans Bol to complete the designs of Autumn and Winter for the series which was finally engraved by van der Heyden in 1570, a year after Bruegel’s death. The drawings by Pieter Bruegel upon which the engravings of Spring and Summer are based are now housed in the Albertina, Vienna and the Kuperstichkabinett, Hamburg respectively.

A painted version of The Four Seasons by Pieter Brueghel the Younger after the engraved compositions was sold at Christie's London in July 2016 for £6,466,500 ($8,380,584).