LINDA CIVITELLO: This is a perfect harvest. The wheat in this painting is as high as the men. This is enormous wheat. It's golden, and it's glorious.

NARRATOR: Under the tree in the foreground, we see a midday meal shared by a group of rural laborers.

LINDA CIVITELLO: Who are smiling and happy and eating and enjoying each other’s company. And what are they eating? They're eating bread.

I’m Linda Civitello and I’m a historian who specializes in food.

Bread was the mainstay then. It's not like now, where you go to a restaurant and they say: "Would you like some bread with that?" In the 1500s it was: "Do we have anything to go with the bread?" But these people are blessed, they do have something to go with the bread.

NARRATOR: The woman with the large triangular hat is cutting a slice from a giant wheel of cheese.

LINDA CIVITELLO: There are also people with bowls of porridge, probably a wheaten porridge. These are not skinny people. These are well-fleshed people.

NARRATOR: The people feel true. The scene feels abundant and alive. And yet, Associate Curator Adam Eaker points out...

ADAM EAKER: It’s important to remember that this is not a real landscape. Bruegel is at the forefront of what we might call the emergence of the secular or the independent landscape. Prior to this point, landscapes had almost always served as backdrops. There would be a religious narrative in the foreground. But here, that pretext has fallen away and instead, Bruegel is observing the rituals, the rhythms of the agricultural calendar, of peasant life in the landscape.

If you were to travel to Flanders today, where Bruegel lived, you’d know it’s a very flat landscape. So he’s created a real fantasy of visibility. But onto that fantastic construction, he’s mapped a lot of very real details from everyday life.