.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This remarkable jewel-like panel is perhaps the earliest surviving painting by Lucas van Valckenborch, one of the leading Flemish landscape painters in the second half of the sixteenth century. The work bears the artist’s monogram ‘VV / L’, the ‘L’ placed between and below the other two letters, a signature exclusively found on dated paintings between 1567 (see, for example, the View of Lüttich in the Musée Saint-Denis, Reims) and 1570, at which point the artist signed with the ‘L’ above the other letters. Moreover, as Dr. Alexander Weid has noted in his catalogue raisonné (op. cit., 1990), the present painting is unique in that it is the only known vertically oriented landscape by the artist.
Van Valckenborch’s paintings suggest the decisive influence of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose compositions the younger artist no doubt encountered while working in Mechelen, where Bruegel was active in the early years of the 1550s. The arrangement of this painting – its large central tree flanked on either side by views into the background with a pond and fisherman in the foreground – appears to draw inspiration from works such as Bruegel’s drawing of a Pond with angler (Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I), but is interpreted through van Valckenborch’s distinctive craftsmanship and brilliant technique.
The present painting is an exceptionally early example of a pure landscape, devoid of allegorical or narrative detail. While its somewhat elevated vantage point is entirely consistent with the so-called Weltlandschaft (world landscape) favoured by sixteenth-century Flemish landscape painters, the minutely rendered foreground foliage, architectural detail and atmospheric clouds are all suggestive of van Valckenborch’s heightened attention to the natural world. Indeed, in his biography on the artist, the artist and historian Karel van Mander explicitly mentioned the artist’s particular penchant for producing landscapes ‘nae t’leven’ (‘from life’; see K. van Mander, Het Schilder- Boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 260r). The various naturalistic details in this painting may well derive from one or more of these sketching trips.
Van Valckenborch’s paintings suggest the decisive influence of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose compositions the younger artist no doubt encountered while working in Mechelen, where Bruegel was active in the early years of the 1550s. The arrangement of this painting – its large central tree flanked on either side by views into the background with a pond and fisherman in the foreground – appears to draw inspiration from works such as Bruegel’s drawing of a Pond with angler (Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I), but is interpreted through van Valckenborch’s distinctive craftsmanship and brilliant technique.
The present painting is an exceptionally early example of a pure landscape, devoid of allegorical or narrative detail. While its somewhat elevated vantage point is entirely consistent with the so-called Weltlandschaft (world landscape) favoured by sixteenth-century Flemish landscape painters, the minutely rendered foreground foliage, architectural detail and atmospheric clouds are all suggestive of van Valckenborch’s heightened attention to the natural world. Indeed, in his biography on the artist, the artist and historian Karel van Mander explicitly mentioned the artist’s particular penchant for producing landscapes ‘nae t’leven’ (‘from life’; see K. van Mander, Het Schilder- Boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 260r). The various naturalistic details in this painting may well derive from one or more of these sketching trips.