Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Landscapes - Sparsely or Scarcely Populated

Palma il Vecchio
Young Faun with Pipes
ca. 1513-15
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Anonymous Italian Artist
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1520
oil on canvas
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

Girolamo Muziano
Landscape with St Jerome
before 1592
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Orazio Gentileschi
St Christopher carrying the Christ Child
ca. 1610-12
oil on copper
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Pietro Testa
Landscape with Boats on a River
before 1650
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Herman van Swanevelt
Rocky Landscape with The Good Samaritan
before 1655
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Monk praying in a Landscape
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Landscape with Hunters
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Hubert Robert
Artist drawing Ancient Fragments in the Farnese Gardens
with a Distant View of Rome

ca. 1763-64
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Pierre Hoüel
Fountain of Arethusa, Syracuse
ca. 1776
gouache on paper
Musée du Louvre

Egbert van Drielst
Farms on the Fringe of a Wood
1812
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jean-Charles-Joseph Rémond
Village and Bridge of Crevola
on the Road from Simplon to Domodossola

1832
oil on canvas
Musée d'Arts de Nantes

David Cox
A Windy Day
1850
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

George Adolphus Storey
Contemplation
1859
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield, Yorkshire

Edvard Munch
Bay with Boat and House
1881
oil on cardboard
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Camille Pissarro
Hill near Auvers
1882
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

"Let us now see how far it is possible to allegorize with landscape.  Allegorical paintings are those which present perceptible objects in the picture under such conditions as we are not accustomed to see such objects in everyday life or in the story or fable presented in the picture itself.  This strange relationship between perceptible objects and their presentation in the picture under circumstances different from more usual ones is precisely what alerts us to the hidden meaning that is the basis of allegory and the key to its interpretation.  How then is it possible in a landscape to transform the visible and familiar conditions of objects into one so strange that we tell ourselves: this is allegory?  One could of course locate the earth at the top and the sky below, one could paint pastry on the trees in place of foliage, etc.  But this would simply destroy nature itself.  . . .  It is undeniable: he who would deviate from nature, as we generally see her every day, in the domain of landscape either creates the impression of an erroneous imitation or that of some alien scene in a distant and remote part of the world, and the latter in turn also involves expression.  One will therefore never be able to allegorize with any properly composed landscape.  It is quite true that the figures in such a landscape could express an allegorical event.  But if they are subordinated to the landscape itself, they remain a secondary feature, a symbol or attribute of the latter.  If they are the principal subject on the other hand, the landscape merely presents the scene for the event and belongs in the expressive domain of history painting.  . . . "  

– Friedrich Ramdohr, from Remarks upon a Landscape Painting intended as an Altarpiece by Herr Friedrich in Dresden, and upon Landscape Painting, Allegory and Mysticism in General (1809), translated by Nicholas Walker (2000)