The work of Peter Bruegel the Elder (1525-69) is full of everyday drama and grand human pathos; his canvases of peasants in the fields and squares of Flanders reveal the spirit of their age with a keenness worthy of Rabelais. In this book, Edward Snow, whose A Study of Vermeer is already a classic, undertakes an inquiry into a single Bruegel painting - the kaleidoscopic Children's Games - in order to unlock the secrets of this great painter's art.

Children's Games depicts a lively, chaotic gathering of boys and girls at play: they spin tops, roll hoops, climb trees, turn flips, ride fences, shout into barrels, and play leapfrog and tug-of-war. And as they do so they enter into Bruegel's own complex designs, which bring into play a whole array of issues: the innocence of children, the imperatives of culture, the body's urges, the reasons for play, the affect in images - even the nature of one's own perception.

Through his own close reading of the details of the painting (which are presented in dozens of illustrations), Snow reveals in Children's Games an "arcane alphabet" for experience at its most densely nuanced.