c. 1606

Bohemian Landscape with Couples and Hunters

Although panoramic landscapes seem commonplace today, at the turn of the seventeenth century an oversized landscape without a specific narrative subject was unusual. Roelandt Savery's dramatic composition looks back to the sixteenth-century Flemish tradition in which rocky outcroppings and mountainous scenery are contrasted with broad valleys leading off into vast distances. Secular details such as the lovers at lower left and the huntsmen at right look ahead to the type of landscape painting that flourished in the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century.