An Italianate river landscape with a shepherd giving a maid a bouquet of flowers

The handful of known biographical details indicate that Jan Linsen, a rare and short-lived follower of Cornelis van Poelenburch and Bartholomeus Breenbergh, led a remarkably interesting life. After traveling through France and Italy, where in Rome he joined the Bentvueghels, a society of mostly Dutch and Flemish painters active in the Eternal City, Linsen was captured, robbed and left naked on the North African coast by Moorish pirates. He returned to his native Hoorn in 1626 – the year of his earliest dated painting – and, on 26 May 1635, was fatally stabbed in his stomach following a dispute during a game of cards.