From the Bonnefantenmuseum website, 12 January 2009
Copying popular paintings was a general and accepted practice in the Netherlands from the end of the fifteenth century. From the mid-sixteenth century, the serial production of paintings really took off and several painters, particularly in Antwerp, devoted themselves solely to this practice. The oeuvre of Pieter Brueghel the Younger is a model example of large-scale atelier production, in which many of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s compositions were copied. Over the Christmas period, some versions of two appropriate compositions – the Census at Bethlehem and the small Adoration in the snow – will be shown by the Bonnefantenmuseum in Rijksmuseum op Schiphol.