Mountain Landscape with a Castle (Christ on the Road to Emmaus)

Artist/Maker

DatesMade: Made c. 1616

Material / Technique

Dimensionsh x w: Mått 22 x 25 cm h x w x d: Ram 35 x 39 x 5 cm

Inventory numberNM 6737

AcqusitionTransferred 1981 Kongl. Museum

Other titlesTitle (sv): Landskap med borg Title (en): Mountain Landscape with a Castle (Christ on the Road to Emmaus) Previous: Landscape with a Fortress

DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 148: Technical notes: The painting’s support consists of a copper plate with a thickness of less than 1mm. The plate is completely flat and has slightly irregular parallel sides; it is free of any clue as to manufacture, such as hammer marks or rolls and has incised parallel lines on the verso, probably from polishing. Provenance: Transferred in 1981 from the KM. Bibliography: NM Cat. 1990, p. 58 (as circle of Jan Brueghel I). This painting depicts a sweeping panoramic view across a rugged mountainous region, still essentially conceived as a “world landscape” in the early 16th-century pre-Bruegelian Netherlandish tradition, characterized by fantastical steep geometric rock formation and an unnaturally high horizon, the planes sharply separated by the standard three-colour scheme (brown-green-blue) and dramatically charged harsh light effects. The painting depicts the Biblical story of Christ’s journey to Emmaus, one of the occasions on which Christ appeared to His disciples after the Resurrection, a theme popular in earlier Netherlandish landscape paintings, by artists such as Herri met de Bles, Lucas van Valckenborch and Gillis van Coninxloo. 1 According to the detailed account in Luke (24:13–27), the two disciples, on their way from Jerusalem to the neighbouring village of Emmaus, were met by Christ who walked with them. They told the Saviour, whom they failed to recognize, of the recent death and supposed resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and were rebuked by him for their slowness in apprehending the teaching of the Prophets in this matter. The fact that the painting represents the Journey to Emmaus was previously overlooked as the tiny figures of Christ and the two disciples are shown in a less prominent place, on the road winding through the village in the middle ground, while the right foreground is occupied by larger staffage figures of a couple of pilgrims resting on their journey.2 Christ, his head encircled by a halo of light, is shown walking between the two disciples, who are dressed as pilgrims, wearing hats and carrying staffs. This is explained by the words of one of the disciples, Cleopas, asking if Christ is a stranger in Jerusalem, in the Latin of the Vulgate, “Tu solus peregrinus es…?” As the Latin name for the village of Emmaus is “Castellum”, it is sometimes, like here, depicted as a fortified castle. The present picture is a close variant version of another small painting on copper (Fig. 1) attributed to the Antwerp landscapist Marten Rijckaert, which was on the Belgian art market in 1993.3 Both paintings are stylisti- cally comparable to works by Rijckaert such as, for example, the Mountain Landscape with a Waterfall, signed in monogram and dated 1616, which was on the New York art market in 1998.4 In all these paintings, Rijckaert’s richly detailed, almost miniaturist style and meticulous precision is immediately recognizable in the depiction of the sharply outlined fantastical rock formations and frothing water, as is his characteristic rendering of foliage as compact, softly rounded boughs. The painting shows connections with the work of Flemish landscapist Joos de Momper II. Indeed, the composition and many details of this picture and its variant, including the fortified castle atop a rocky promontory, some of the houses in the village below, the watermills and the characteristic terraced waterfall, were copied after a painting, the Mountain Landscape with Castle and Watermills, attributed to De Momper by Ertz and dated c. 1590–1595.5 CF 1 For the paintings by Herri met de Bles and Lucas van Valckenborch in Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Hamburg, Kunsthalle, see Franz 1969, nos. 94, 95, 255. And see the engraving by Nicolaes de Bruyn after Gillis van Coninxloo, in Hollstein, vol. 4, no. 107. 2 The male pilgrim is wearing a typical short cape, the female pilgrim a mantle, both decorated with pilgrim’s signs, the crossed keys of pilgrims to Rome (and the scallop shells of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela?). The same signs decorate the headband of the man’s tall hat, made of straw or felt. A pilgrim’s flask hangs from his belt, while the woman carries a rosary draped across her chest. Both carry tall staffs. Cf. Roelant Savery, Hermit and Pilgrim in a Forest Landscape of c. 1605, Prague, Narodni Galerie v Praze; see Müllenmeister 1988, no. 31. 3 Oil on copper, 22.0 x 29.0 cm, formerly Brussels, De Jonckheere, 1993, now in a private collection; see A. Egger, Tableaux de maîtres flamands et hollandaise des XVIe et XVIIIe siècles, XXIXe exposition, hiver 1993/1994, and a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 4 Oil on copper, 26.7 x 36.8 cm, signed by a monogram “M R” and dated “1616”, sale, New York, Christie’s, 22 May 1998, lot 164, see photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 5 Oil on wood, 46 x 65 cm, sale, Amsterdam, Galerie Muller, 26 November 1940, lot 39, see Ertz 1986, no. 245, fig. 55. [END]

Exhibited

Motif categoryLandscape

Collection

MaterialCopper (Metal), Oil paint

TechniquePainting

Object category

Keyword

External links