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Lot Essay
In this small but spectacular landscape on copper, Lucas van Valckenborch employs a dramatic juxtaposition of craggy mountains and lush valley below to create a sweeping vista impressive for its deep space. This type of expansive landscape originated in the mid-sixteenth century with Van Valckenborch's predecessors Pieter Bruegel I and Herri met de Bles. Such works gained significant popularity as they were disseminated throughout Europe, both as paintings and prints produced by prolific Antwerp publishers such as Hieronymus Cock. While Van Valckenborch and his brother Marten followed the tradition established by Bruegel and Herri, they did not merely copy the works of their forerunners. As can be seen in the present painting, Lucas van Valckenborch created original scenes by skillfully integrating the atmospheric drama of the view with highly finished naturalistic elements punctuating the work.
While Van Valckenborch did paint topographical views of identifiable cities, this work is a fantastical scene populated with several bucolic vignettes. At the top of the mountain, goats inhabit the rocky outcroppings. Moving down the rock face, the viewer encounters peasants herding animals and, further on, a mill on the bank of a stream. Figures gather before the mill, while chickens roam in the yard nearby. A traveler transverses the road above, while a dog runs ahead across the bridge. In the far right background, a hermit is visible entering a shrine. Just below, a couple stands together, the man holding a spear pointing towards the dramatic vista beyond. By following these elements through the scene, the eye of the viewer, like the figures and animals depicted, moves through the landscape. Throughout, Van Valckenborch used the contrast of blue sky and brown mountains to intensify the illusion of the view.
Van Valckenborch came from a Flemish family that counted among them fourteen known painters. Born in Leuven in the Southern Netherlands, Van Valckenborch and his family fled for religious reasons and in 1560 he joined the artists' Guild of Saint Luke in Mechelen, where he established a studio by 1564. Subsequently he moved to Liège, Aachen, Antwerp and Linz before eventually settling in Frankfurt. When he created this landscape in 1586, Van Valckenborch was working for the Hapsburg Archduke Matthias in Linz as a court painter, a position he took up in 1579. The court at Linz must have favored such scenes, for a painting similar to the present work and now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna is dated 1580.
While Van Valckenborch did paint topographical views of identifiable cities, this work is a fantastical scene populated with several bucolic vignettes. At the top of the mountain, goats inhabit the rocky outcroppings. Moving down the rock face, the viewer encounters peasants herding animals and, further on, a mill on the bank of a stream. Figures gather before the mill, while chickens roam in the yard nearby. A traveler transverses the road above, while a dog runs ahead across the bridge. In the far right background, a hermit is visible entering a shrine. Just below, a couple stands together, the man holding a spear pointing towards the dramatic vista beyond. By following these elements through the scene, the eye of the viewer, like the figures and animals depicted, moves through the landscape. Throughout, Van Valckenborch used the contrast of blue sky and brown mountains to intensify the illusion of the view.
Van Valckenborch came from a Flemish family that counted among them fourteen known painters. Born in Leuven in the Southern Netherlands, Van Valckenborch and his family fled for religious reasons and in 1560 he joined the artists' Guild of Saint Luke in Mechelen, where he established a studio by 1564. Subsequently he moved to Liège, Aachen, Antwerp and Linz before eventually settling in Frankfurt. When he created this landscape in 1586, Van Valckenborch was working for the Hapsburg Archduke Matthias in Linz as a court painter, a position he took up in 1579. The court at Linz must have favored such scenes, for a painting similar to the present work and now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna is dated 1580.