Joos de Momper II (Antwerp 1564-1635)

This rediscovered painting is a fine example of De Momper's fame as a painter of panoramic views of mountainous landscapes. This type of landscapes earned him the sobriquet pictor montium inscribed beneath his portrait in Van Dyck's Iconography. His panoramic views follow the conventional colour scheme of late Mannerist landscape painting, with tones of brown used for the foreground, green for the middle ground and blue for the background. The artist's technique, clearly evident in this well-preserved work, is characterized by rapid, flowing brushstrokes that sharply define the contours of the foreground. Also typical are the tiny dots of impasto used to create the aerial perspective in the background and the modelling of the middle ground.