Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters

Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain:  Fol. 2v, January - Snow Landscape

The Adoration of the Magi

View of Toledo

Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players

Winter Landscape

Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast

Wintry mountains

The Dutch Whaling Fleet

The Eruption of Vesuvius

Frost Fair on a Frozen River with Ships

Dijkdoorbraak bij Gouda, 1776

Winter Scene

IJsberg te Ochten, 24 januari 1789

IJsschotsen op de Maas, januari 1809

After the Storm

Ruïne van een boerderij in Friesland, 1825

Santa Trinità dei Monti in the Snow

Buffalo Chase in Snowdrifts, Indians Pursuing on Snowshoes

Morning after the Snow at Koishikawa in Edo (Koishikawa yuki no ashita),  from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)

Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm

Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake (Ōhashi Atake no yūdachi), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)

Mer de Glace, gezien vanaf la Flagère, Savoye, Franse Alpen

Race Horses

From the beginning of the 14th century to the second half of the 19th century, many parts of the Earth experienced a colder climate and, more generally, increased variability in temperature and precipitation. This so-called Little Ice Age1 was primarily triggered by frequent explosive volcanic eruptions.2 The sulfur dioxide released by volcanoes forms droplets of sulfuric acid that partially shield the Earth's surface from sunlight, influencing the global atmospheric circulation for up to three years.3 Other factors, such as periods of reduced solar radiation4 and changes in ocean currents,5 also contributed. In some regions, winter temperatures declined and glaciers expanded, but rather than being defined by ice, this age was characterized by widespread instability. Droughts or heavy rainfall caused crop failures, leading to famine, then to social unrest and wars.6 The Norse settlement in Greenland disappeared,7 the Chinese Ming dynasty fell,8 and some Native American cultures shifted their focus from agriculture toward hunting and trading.9 With the Little Ice Age, humankind began to see climate not as eternally stable or merely passive, but as an agent within human history. Climate and its changes claimed our attention. Art recorded the events of the Little Ice Age and turned them into secular visual tropes appreciated by the emergent bourgeois class10: clouded skies,11 snowfalls and sudden rains, floods and frozen rivers,12 storms and shipwrecks, icebergs and glaciers, volcanic eruptions, and red skies due to the optical effects of volcanic aerosols in the atmosphere.13 This era also produced the earliest known representations of snowy winters in Western art,14 first in Books of Hours,15 then in the still-allegorical works16 by Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569) and their copies (often made by Bruegel’s first son),17 and finally in the realistic landscape paintings of the Dutch Golden Age (1588–1672).18 This collection explores the impact of climate on visual art, both in the West and in Asia, throughout the Little Ice Age. It also highlights how the development of landscape painting as an autonomous genre in Western art ran in parallel with our first encounters with climate change and with our understanding of climate as something endowed with its own agency. — 1. Collet, Dominik, et al. “The Little Ice Age: The History and Future of a Traveling Concept.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 16, no. 5, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.70023. Accessed 1 August 2026. 2. Miller, Gifford H., et al. “Abrupt Onset of the Little Ice Age Triggered by Volcanism and Sustained by Sea-Ice/Ocean Feedbacks.” Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 39, no. 2, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050168. Accessed 31 July 2026. 3. Wolfe, Jason. “Volcanos and Climate Change.” NASA Science, 5 September 2000, https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/volcanos-and-climate-change/. Accessed 5 August 2026. 4. Owens, Mathew J. “The Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age: An Update From Recent Reconstructions and Climate Simulations.” Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate, vol. 7, no. 1, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2017034. Accessed 2 August 2026. 5. Broecker, Wallace S. “Was a Change in Thermohaline Circulation Responsible for the Little Ice Age?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 97, no. 4, 2000, pp. 1339–1342. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.97.4.1339. Accessed 4 August 2026. 6. Kaniewski, David. “A Climate of Conflict: How the Little Ice Age Sparked Rebellions and Revolutions Across Europe.” Global and Planetary Change, vol. 254, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.105038. Accessed 5 August 2026. 7. Jackson, Rowan, and Andrew Dugmore, “Interpreting Collapse in Norse Greenland: Why Similar Data Produces Different Conclusions.” Heritage, vol. 8, no. 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8080293. Accessed 1 August 2026. 8. Brook, Timothy. The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China. Princeton University Press, 2023. 9. Drass, Richard R. “Corn, Beans and Bison: Cultivated Plants and Changing Economies of the Late Prehistoric Villagers on the Plains of Oklahoma and Northwest Texas.” Plains Anthropologist, vol. 53, no. 205, 2008, pp, 7–31. https://doi.org/10.1179/pan.2008.003. Accessed 27 August 2026. 10. Metzger, Alexis. “Enjoying the Ice. Dutch Winter Landscapes, Weather and Climate in the Golden Age, 17th Century.” Climate of the Past Discussions [pre-print]. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2020-81. Accessed 4 August 2026. 11. Neuberger, Hans. “Climate in Art.” Weather, vol. 25, no. 2, 1970, pp. 46–56, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1970.tb03232.x. Accessed 20 May 2026. 12. Lockwood, Mike, et al. “Frost Fairs, Sunspots and the Little Ice Age.” Astronomy &amp; Geophysics, vol. 58, no. 2, 2017, pp. 17–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/astrogeo/atx057. Accessed 30 July 2026. 13. Zerefos, C. S. “Atmospheric Effects of Volcanic Eruptions as Seen by Famous Artists and Depicted in Their Paintings.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol. 7, no. 15, 2007, pp. 4027–4042. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-4027-2007. Accessed 5 August 2026. 14. Robinson, Peter J. “Ice and Snow in Paintings of Little Ice Age Winters.” Weather, vol. 60, no. 2, 2005, pp. 37–41. https://doi.org/10.1256/wea.164.03. Accessed 6 May 2026. 15. Metzger, Alexis. “Premières neiges : le paysage d’hiver dans les enluminures.” Projets de paysage : revue scientifique sur la conception et l'aménagement de l'espace, vol. 8, no. 1, 2012. https://doi.org/10.4000/paysage.15796. Accessed 30 July 2026. 16. Bauer, Linda, and George Bauer. “The Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.” The Art Bulletin, vol. 66, no. 1, 1984, pp. 145–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.1984.10788142. Accessed 3 August 2026. 17. Oberthaler, Elke, et al. Bruegel. London, Thames &amp; Hudson, 2018. 18. Burroughs, W.J. “Winter Landscapes and Climate Change.” Weather, vol. 36, no. 12, 1981, pp. 352–357. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1981.tb05362.x. Accessed 16 June 2026.

When Art Met Climate Change: The Little Ice Age

When Art Met Climate Change: The Little Ice Age

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