4th
I went to the Met museum yesterday, and spent a few hours in the Netherlandish painting galleries. I have always been drawn to the strange background landscapes of Renaissance paintings (ie, Madonna of the Rocks by Da Vinci) but I didn’t know there was a Flemish tradition of “imaginary mountain scenery that descended from Joachim Patinir and Herri met de Bles to Pieter Bruegel the Elder and such younger artists as Joos de Momper the Younger.”
This painting is A Mountainous Landscape with Waterfall by Kerstiaen de Keuninck. From the Met: “This large panel is a fine example of de Keuninck’s work; it illustrates his concern with contrasting pictorial effects. It probably dates from about 1600.”
I’m really into imaginary landscape painting. Not the whole Caspar-David-Friedrich- romantic-landscape school of painting, but the older, weirder stuff, paintings with shifting perspective and, as the met states above, contrasting pictorial effects.
The image above is from the Met. You can search their entire collection online!!!
