Mountain Road with Travelers
c. 1615
Medium
Oil on cradled panel
Dimensions
50.2 × 80 cm (19 1/2 × 31 1/2 in.); Framed: 76.8 × 106.1 × 7.6 cm (30 1/4 × 41 3/4 × 3 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
16340
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The landscape specialist Josse de Momper the Younger painted dramatic panoramas that framed the wildness of nature against grand vistas. On the right, adventurous travelers pause along a road winding through the hilly landscape, which would have been understood by contemporary viewers as a visual metaphor for the journey of life. Similar compositions can be found in earlier Northern landscapes, but De Momper populated his scenes with more figures, especially peasants, than his predecessors—a ref...