The Three Kings are here, the Holy Family is here, and almost nobody in the picture notices. Bruegel set the Epiphany in a Flemish village in a heavy snowfall, and the miracle is the easiest thing in it to miss.

Bruegel, Botticelli, Honthorst, Monet, Carl Larsson and more: eight public-domain paintings that make a room feel like Christmas, with advice on scale, rooms and frames.

A man sleeps under a pear tree, his friends eat bread and porridge, and the wheat stands taller than the people who cut it. Bruegel's The Harvesters of 1565 is one of the first paintings to make ordinary work in a landscape its whole subject.

In 1566 Pieter Bruegel the Elder set the Roman census of the Nativity in a snowbound Flemish village at sundown. Mary and Joseph are easy to miss.

Six Adoration of the Magi paintings, from Gentile da Fabriano's gold-leaf procession of 1423 to Bruegel's snowfall of 1563, with what to look for in each.

Three classic paintings that make good art print gifts, who each one suits, and what to check before you choose a size and a wall.

TL;DR: Some paintings are built to be read slowly. Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jan Steen filled their festival scenes with dozens of figures, each caught in a separate small action, so the eye keeps moving and new details keep surfacing. To read a crowded painting, start with the whole composition, find an anchor figure, follow the hands, name the objects, and ask what has just happened. This guide applies that method to three sixteenth and seventeenth century masterpieces.