A rocky landscape with rustic buildings

Only a small number of landscapes by the short-lived Pieter Dircksz. van Santvoort have come down to us. The three works in the Feldstein Collection, two of which have recently been secured for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, constitute the largest assemblage of his paintings anywhere in the world. The present painting is an early work which demonstrates Santvoort's transition from a landscape formula based on Flemish prototypes to the more naturalistic tonal landscapes of artists like Molijn and van Goyen.