The Hay Harvest (early summer June/July)

Bruegel's Hay Harvest from 1565 is one of the surviving panels from his series of the Months — a cycle of paintings commissioned by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck depicting human activity throughout the agricultural year. Representing June and July, the Hay Harvest shows peasants making and loading hay in the warm summer landscape, the warm greens and yellows of a prosperous Flemish summer rendered with extraordinary naturalistic freshness. The series, of which five panels survive, transformed the calendar illustration tradition of medieval illuminated manuscripts into monumental panel painting, giving agricultural labor the dignity and pictorial ambition previously reserved for religious subjects.

Bruegel's palette captures the fresh greens and warm yellows of early summer with remarkable atmospheric accuracy. The composition uses a sweeping diagonal path to lead the eye from the foreground workers through the middle ground and into the distant valley.