FLEMISH SCHOOL, LATE 16TH CENTURY

The elevated view-point of this riverscape was inherited from the Weltlandschaft tradition that grew from the work of earlier artists, such as Joachim Patinir, and was then taken up by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Herri met de Bles, amongst others. Though the works of these fifteenth-century artists often included religious or historical staffage, here the world is that of the everyday. At the centre two gentleman stop to reload their rifles before re-entering the lively hunt underway in the middle ground, and to the left travellers on the road stop to converse with a monk.
The crest in the centre of the composition is intriguing. It has been suggested that the two red crowns correspond to the archduke Albert and of Austria and his wife Isabella, who ruled the Spanish Netherlands from 1598 to 1621. The three stars may represent their children Philip, Albrecht and Anna Mauricia, who died in infancy. The red cross is that of Burgundy, used by the Habsburg sovereigns. It became the symbol of the Spanish dependencies throughout the world and of the consolidation of the Habsburg authority. Interestingly, the same coat of arms appears on a large alpine landscape by Tobias Verhaecht in the Prado (inv. no. P003057), which was listed in the royal Spanish collection in the Palacio del Buen Retiro, Madrid, in 1794 on the death of Carlos III.