Saturday, November 13, 2021

Sixteenth-Century Landscapes by Flemish Painters

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Penitent St Jerome in a Landscape
ca. 1530-40
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous Flemish Artist
St Jerome in the Wilderness
ca. 1500-1550
oil on panel
York City Art Gallery

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Landscape with Mercury and Argus
ca. 1570
oil on panel
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous Flemish Artist
River Landscape with Mountains
ca. 1525-50
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Maarten van Heemskerck
Panorama with the Abduction of Helen, amidst the Wonders of the Ancient World
1535
oil on panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Maarten van Heemskerck
Allegory of Geometry in a Landscape
before 1574
oil on panel
private collection

Maarten van Heemskerck
Jonah Under his Gourd Vine
1561
oil on panel
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Procession to Calvary
1564
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
1563
oil on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Pieter Brueghel the Elder
The Harvesters
1565
oil on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joachim Patinir
Crossing the River Styx
ca. 1520-24
oil on panel
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Joachim Patinir
Landscape with St Christopher
1522
oil on panel
Monasterio El Escorial

Joachim Patinir
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1518-24
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Joachim Patinir
Landscape with St Jerome
1516-17
oil on panel
Museo del Prado, Madrid

follower of Joachim Patinir
Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
ca. 1510-30
oil on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Flemish landscapes of the sixteenth century are generous with details, often panoramic in viewpoint, full of light and air, but almost never unpopulated.  The genre did not break free of narrative and/or moralistic purposes until the following century – when techniques of topographic expression invented and popularized by 16th-century pioneers like Patinir, Heemskerck, and the elder Pieter Brueghel could begin to be regarded by both artists and patrons as ends in themselves.