The world of Pieter Bruegel the Elder - BBC Newsnight

He's one of the greatest figures in art history, hugely influential, much reproduced, but about whom so little is known. And 450 years after his death, this is the greatest show ever assembled of the pictures of Peter Bruegel the Elder. More than three quarters of his surviving works are on display in Vienna this winter. It looks like child's play. There's more to it than meets the eye. What's so extraordinary about Bruegel is there's so much going on, his great works like this team with life in all its joy, exuberance, and virulence. This is a very well-known work, Children's Games, and at first sight, it's about the antics of young people. But look a bit closer at these playfellows. Aren't they getting on a bit? Bruegel's pictures don't travel, as a rule. They're incredibly fragile, painted onto oak panels only a few millimeters thick. This is a side-on view of one of them with its frame removed. The procession to Calvary. Bruegel is the painter of winter, and his great work, Hunters in the Snow, is considered the first winter landscape in Western art. This winter painting has really kind of been in our minds, in our memory of winter, of the depiction of winter from early age on, and he inspired so many other painters in the way of creating this winter landscape, winter scene. For this exhibition, for the first time ever, we have done different technological research, X-ray and other things. We detected that his use of underdrawings, the first one in the middle, in the foreground, that really catches our eye. We detected that this one was not included in the first composition at all, only the two other hunters, and then apparently at the later stage only, he added this big repoussoir figure to bring the viewer into the composition. This is one of the prize loans of the exhibition, the Triumph of Death, painted sometime after 1562, and normally on display at the Prado in Madrid. It never leaves there because it's considered to be too delicate, although this morning it's in robust good health, it seems to me, an advertisement for everything that might lie ahead for all of us. Prado was willing to loan to this show because of the great Bruegel scholarship in Vienna. It also meant the two paintings of the Tower of Babel by the artist could be reunited for the first time in centuries. Bruegel himself's an enigma. This putative self-portrait on the left of picture, next to an art lover, probably isn't him at all. But we do know he was a dab hand with a nativity, as our mantelpieces will soon be confirming. Of course, he deals with religion. He lived during the time of the religious war. He puts it into his own time. He wants to relate to his contemporaries, but also we feel the connection. Bruegel is the master of the extraordinary going on unnoticed. You almost forget that there is a scene, you know, the adoration of the Magi on the very left side of the panel. You almost forget this because you're so taken by this winter scene. Whatever insight you seek into human life, it's already been said 450 years ago, unimprovably by Peter Bruegel. In other words, it's goodnight Vienna.