Friday, April 27, 2018

Idealized Landscape Paintings from the Seventeenth Century

Scarsellino
Landscape with Abraham and Isaac
before 1620
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jacob van Ruisdael
Panoramic view on the Amstel looking toward Amsterdam
before 1682
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Pietro da Cortona
Landscape with Mary Magdalene
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Jan Wijnants
Hilly landscape with hawking party
ca. 1665
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

The Hawk

Call down the hawk from the air –
Let him be hooded or caged
Till the yellow eye has grown mild.
For larder and spit are bare,
The old cook enraged,
The scullion gone wild.

I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.

What tumbling cloud did you cleave,
Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,
Last evening, that I, who had sat
Dumbfounded before a knave
Should give to my friend
A pretence of wit?

– William Butler Yeats (1916)

Adriaen van de Velde
Landscape with figures and livestock
1664
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Pieter Molijn
Landscape with figures
ca. 1655-60
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Pierre Patel
Landscape with classical ruins
ca. 1640-45
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jan van der Heyden
The Stone Bridge, Amsterdam
ca. 1660-72
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam


Jacob van der Ulft
Italian landscape with riders
before 1689
watercolor
Teylers Museum, Haarlem


Anonymous French artist
River scene by moonlight
ca. 1675-1700
oil on panel
(formerly in the Orléans collection, with an attribution to Adam Elsheimer)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

attributed to Sébastien Bourdon
Classical ruins with figures
ca. 1634-37
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Gaspard Dughet
Landscape near Rome
before 1675
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Willem Romeyn
Classical landscape with travelers and livestock
ca. 1650-95
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Jan Asselijn
The breach of the Saint Anthony's Dike near Amsterdam
1651
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam