Winter landscape with skaters ^Sale

Hendrick Avercamp (1608)

Due to its high vantage point, the painting is a sample of human – and animal – activities during a harsh winter. Hundreds of people can be found on the ice; Most of them for entertainment, others are at work out of dire necessity. Avercamp does not shy away from the lurid detail: in the left foreground, crows and a dog feast on the carcass of a horse that has frozen to death.