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An important thing to note is that both paintings are representative of the era that their respective artist lived in. In the case of Raphael, there was an ongoing debate in regards to the ceremony of the Eucharist, in which believers of Christ partake in the reenactment of the Last Supper by eating a piece of bread and taking a sip of wine. While some read it in Bible purely as a metaphor, there were practicing Catholics who believed that the ceremony consisted of the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. In response, Raphael paints the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, where he attempts to end the debate of the Eucharist by conveying an image in which the Eucharist is being blessed by the divinity above it. Raphael achieves this sense of divinity through the use of three successive circles (a shape that represents life) running vertically in the middle of the image. Raphael solidifies this idea of the Eucharist literally being the body and blood of Christ with the golden dust particles falling onto the Eucharist from the heavens. Already, we see an immediate contrast when compared to The Harvesters. While Raphael is using art to push a religious agenda to try and get his viewers to buy into the idea of a literal Eucharist, Bruegel's painting is more passive. He tells the viewer a story of a typical day in a rural town during the mid-1500s. .
Upon viewing The Harvesters for the first time, the viewer's eye is automatically drawn to the large tree looming over a large crowd of people. The crowd of folk are sat down in the shade eating merrily after a long day of work. To the left of the tree we see a middle-aged man who is asleep, most likely exhausted from the heat. The painting then veers off on two paths: to the top right toward the church, and through the open path towards the hills. As the viewer follows the track of the picture, time seems to flow seemingly and he is able to get a grasp of a typical day in the village.
