Wandering in Pictures · 20 of 24

The Road Past the Windmills

Carts, horses and walkers take their time on a country road below two windmills.

Painting · Jan Brueghel the Elder, early 1600s

A Flemish country road with horse-drawn carts, walkers and pigs, a large wooden windmill on a hill and a wide plain with a distant town beyond.
Jan Brueghel the Elder · Public domain

Let your eyes wander

  1. Begin with the big wooden windmill standing on its hill.
  2. On the road below, a woman sits with a basket while two friends stop to talk.
  3. A pig and her small piglets wander along the edge of the road.
  4. On the left, a horse pulls a cart, and a little dog trots behind it.
  5. Up the slope, a man carries a heavy sack toward the mill.
  6. In the doorway of the thatched cottage, a woman sits with a child.
  7. A thin line of smoke rises from the cottage chimney.
  8. Far across the plain, a whole town waits, with more windmills and a church tower.

There is no last thing to find. Look again wherever your eyes would like to rest, or close them and keep the picture.

Keep going

Nothing here needs finishing. Every door leads somewhere, and the last one is always darker than this.