In the painting «Massacre of the Innocents» (ca.1565-67), the artist Pieter Brueghel The Elder is
reimagining a Biblical story and painting a fictional genocide set to a – for Bruegel – contemporary
time in a Dutch/Belgian city.
The dead children and the symbols of the perpetretors is later overpainted. In 1604 the original painting is described as a «massacre», but in 1621, in an inventory recording it is characterized as a «village plundering». Within this time span the painting is subject to alterations that will change how the artwork is interpreted for close to 400 years.
But anyone who had seen the copy made by his son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, would have understood that parts of the original painting had been repainted.