1658 · Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Along with Jan Both, Adam Pynacker, Jan Asselyn and Karel Dujardin, Nicolaes Berchem introduced landscapes that instead of depicting the Dutch countryside, featured mountainous landscapes of Italian inspiration, with a staffage of rustic farmers and shepherds, and classical ruins from the Italian Campagna. The subdued palette that was favoured by the older Dutch landscape painters such as Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael now gave way to strong colour contrasts and bright warm lighting. The landscapes of Berchem and other painters of the Italianate landscape are marked by a new monumentality and a sense of pastoral poetry that was to inspire generations of painters well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Show more