An extensive imaginary landscape with Italianate buildings by a river, a lake beyond

Otto van Veen was a distinguished and scholarly artist who ran a large workshop in Antwerp that included the young Peter Paul Rubens, who studied with van Veen from 1596 to 1598 and then assisted him for another two years before departing for Italy. Van Veen was born around 1556 in Leiden, where his father was a burgomaster, but the family moved to Antwerp in 1572. The artist, who here signed with his Latinized name ‘Venius’, was the epitome of a pictor doctus, or classically educated humanist artist. Shortly after moving to Antwerp, he studied under the humanist poet and painter Dominicus Lampsonius. In order to complete his classical education, van Veen then traveled to Rome around 1574 or 1575, spending about five years in the Eternal City, where he may have finished his training under Federico Zuccari. After departing Italy, van Veen worked successively for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague; William V, Duke of Bavaria in Munich and Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma and Governor of the Spanish Netherlands in Brussels. He resided in Antwerp from 1594 until 1614, when he returned to Brussels in the employ of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.

This painting is an exceedingly rare example of a pure landscape by van Veen. Insofar as can be determined, his interest in painting landscapes appears to have been constrained to several years in the second half of the 1580s, shortly after he settled in Brussels the first time. A second landscape, depicting a winter scene, evidently signed and dated 1587, was sold Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 14 December 1953, lot 93.