Joos II de Momper (1564-1635)

(workshop) Mountain landscape with travellers. Panel (cradle). Provenance and certificate: Gallery Florence de Voldère, Paris, 19.04.2007 as Joos de Momper II Joos de Momper II is one of the finest Flemish landscape painters of the first decades of the 17th century. He designed his landscapes using various compositions/models that he repeated in many paintings with slight variations. The present panel illustrates an important composition De Momper revisited several times introducing slight variations. In a large-format landscape with a broad horizon, figures in the foreground carry out everyday activities. Here the figures are travellers along with their heavily packed horses pursuing their way through the mountains. Towards the background, as was customary for this artist, the panoramic view includes large mountains totally divorced from the reality of Flanders´ flat land. In De Momper’s landscapes, distance is defined by a succession of different planes, which are defined by a different use of colour ranging from browns in the front, to greens in the middle part and deep blues for the most distant mountains. The high position of the horizon shows the influence of earlier generations of landscape painters, such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder (ca. 1525/1530-1569). It is known that Joos de Momper collaborated with several artists who painted the figures in his landscapes such Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and his son Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678), Sebastiaan Vrancx (1578-1647) and Hendrick van Balen (1573-1632) amongst others. A beautiful example of such a collaboration is ‘The visit of Minerva to the Muses on Mount Helicon’ in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (inv. 957) which is signed by the three collaborating painters: De Momper, who painted the landscape, Van Balen who painted the figures and Jan Brueghel I who painted the flowers and plants in the foreground and the birds in the sky. It is most likely that the present painting is a similar result of a collaboration in which the landscape and figures are created by two different artists. Thanks to the archives of the Guild of Saint Luke - called the ‘Liggeren’ - we know De Momper had a large workshop employing several coworkers and students such as Hans de Cock (1599), Fransken van der Borch, Loys Sollen (1594) en Peer Poppe (1599). De Momper's studio was very productive and managed to produce according to the high demand for his work amongst the European aristocracy and nobility. 40 x 64 cm (53 x 78.5 cm) Lit.: tent. cat., De uitvinding van het landschap. Van Patinir tot Rubens 1520-1650, KMSKA, Antwerpen, 2004, cat. nr. 54 (voor een gelijkaardig werk) Condition: Geparketteerd.