Wallace Collection Online - Italian Landscape

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Jan Both (c. 1618 - 1652) Italian Landscape Netherlands: Date: probably c.1645–52

Object Type: Painting

Medium: Oil on canvas

Image size: 81.2 x 104.7 cm

Inv: P28

Location: East Galleries III

Jan Both worked in Rome with his brother Andries between 1638–41. While there, he collaborated with the landscape painter Claude, from whom he adopted the method of arranging his compositions along diagonal lines to achieve greater recession into depth and that of unifying his landscapes with a golden light. Both’s great attention to naturalistic detail led one contemporary to state that Jan "endeavored to approach nature as closely as possible". He was extremely prolific and his decorative landscapes were popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This present picture is painted on a brownish ground, typical of Both's landscapes produced shortly after his return from Italy in 1641. It represents a mountainous country, divided by a winding road, on which two travellers halt to speak to a peasant. On the left is a herdsman with two goats. It may be compared with an earlier version of a similar subject, Landscape with a Wooden Bridge today in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

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