The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicts an episode from the Passion of Christ

Over 500 human figures populate the landscape, the majority of whom are progressing from the left toward the upper right where Jesus Christ is to be crucified

Christ is depicted at the exact center of the canvas, but Bruegel painted him so small that he is hardly recognizable. A line of soldiers clad in red coats (members of a Spanish army unit then serving in today’s Belgium) are visible to the left and right of Jesus, led by a guy carrying a pink banner with a faint emblem of the double-headed eagle of the Habsburg Dynasty

Thus this painting is said to carry a double meaning: That of the Passion of Christ, and also an allusion to the brutal political and religious repression in the Netherlands during the time of Bruegel

In the lower right is Mary in agony. And further right is an animal skull, signifying the meaning of Calvary as the "mount of skulls"

During the lifetime of Bruegel, Protestantism was spreading into the Low Countries which was under the hard-fisted rule of the Catholic Spanish-Habsburg Monarchy. Public executions were prevalent and regarded as spectacles attended by the masses