This picture can, however, be seen differently: not as a folkloristic inventory, but as a warning to adults not to fritter their life away as if it were a childlike game. One factor supporting this second interpretation is the absence of childlike elements in the faces of most of the children. The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, however. If this picture is of interest for us today, then it is not because of its possible moral or innovative technique, but Bruegel's skilled mastery of colour and form. The work fascinates, yet it also disturbs, for reasons both of content and of form. There is no ideal vantage point from which the picture should be viewed, for example. The observer is required simultaneously to come close up to the work and to remain at a certain remove from it: only at a distance can he maintain the necessary overall view, yet only in close-up do the many little activities, figures and faces really come to life. The perspective causes additional problems; we customarily take up a position in front of the centre of a picture, assuming that the painter is showing us his world from this position. Bruegel does not.