| Artist | Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1565–1568 |
| Type | Tempera on linen |
| Dimensions | 148 cm × 270.5 cm (4ft 10 in × 8ft 10 in) |
| Location | Museo del Prado, Madrid |
The Wine of Saint Martin's Day is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting depicts peasants celebrating a festival known as St. Martin's Day, which involves drinking the first wine of the season.
Dated between 1565 and 1568, the work was long presumed lost until its discovery in 2010 at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where it had been brought for restoration. A study of the surface using X-rays revealed fragments of Bruegel's signature, thereby confirming his authorship.
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The Wine of Saint Martin's Day is the largest surviving work by Bruegel. It is one of several works by this artist executed in tempera on linen.
Although the picture depicts a popular festival, and thus is not a religious painting as such, among the many figures is a group which alludes to the story of St Martin of Tours dividing his cloak. This scene is replicated in a painting in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, which is believed to be a copy by another member of the Bruegel family.[1]
The Wine of Saint Martin's Day matches the description of a painting which was inventoried in the collection of the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua in the early seventeenth century. However, the earliest documentary evidence which definitely relates to the work now in the Prado Museum is an inventory of the collection of a Spanish aristocrat, Luis Francisco de la Cerda, the ninth duke of Medinaceli. The duke is assumed to have acquired the painting in Italy around the end of the seventeenth century.[2] By the twenty-first century, the painting was not in a good state of conservation, and its owners, unidentified Spanish collectors, were unaware it was a Bruegel when they took it to the Prado.[3] It was subsequently acquired by the Prado for less than its value on the open market.[4]