Hymens

In the foreground, workers are busy sawing wood and hauling large blocks of ice from the river onto the bank. Beyond them, a wide frozen river is filled with figures skating and walking, leading toward a detailed rendering of the Charles Bridge and the city's towers. The sky is filled with heavy clouds, and the leafless trees on the left emphasize the harsh atmosphere of the season.

Produced in Prague, this print belongs to a series of the Four Seasons executed by Aegidius Sadeler, the court engraver to Emperor Rudolf II. These allegories of time were central to the Rudolfine court's intellectual culture, which sought to map the microcosm of human activity against the macrocosm of the natural world and its cycles.