Look Again: European Paintings—The Origins of Landscape

The focus of this thematic gallery is the emergence of landscape as an independent genre from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. So as you know, prior to this point, landscapes are really more seen as backdrops to religious subject matter, but here landscape is starting to emerge as its own protagonist. I think we really see that in the Patinir. We have this just absolutely dazzling vista into the distance. For me, the thing that immediately comes to mind is the vantage point that the artist has taken. He's offering us a true bird's eye view of a landscape, and that's something that changes by and large as time goes on into the later 16th and 17th centuries where artists tend to favor a much lower viewpoint. As if the artist is on the ground and we as viewers are also on the ground, almost like we could just step right into the landscape. Here we have one of the iconic landscapes of our collection, Peter Bruegel, The Elder's Harvesters from the 16th century. This is a work that even if we still have a bit of a bird's eye view, you feel like you can step into it. Of course, this is a kind of watershed in the history of European landscape in the fact that a work of this size, no less, would just show, at least on the surface, a purely quotidian scene. Right. Unlike the Patinir, there's no explicit religious subject matter. There's this tension, right, because what the artist is explicitly showing us is a landscape that is shaped by human labor. When we think about this painting as one made for a particular elite urban viewer, I think it helps us recognize that we're also seeing a social structuring here, right? The very fact that the peasants are depicted for the pleasure of this Antwerp merchant and banker who benefited from their labor itself is a reminder that this isn't necessarily an accurate depiction of what this life was really like.