Village Road,

1612

Like the paintings on the wall opposite this case, these four works show varied approaches to depicting the landscape in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. Savery’s drawing of the Tyrolean Alps reflects a sixteenth-century taste for expansive views of often exaggerated mountainscapes, punctuated by miniature scenes of figures along a path that the eye traverses as it recedes into the background. Visscher’s village road reveals a turn to more domestic and quotidian views of rural life that became popular in the early seventeenth century. In contrast to Visscher’s sleepy boulevard, Ruisdael’s and Rembrandt’s etchings heighten the drama of the Dutch countryside, casting a massive, gnarled tree as a central protagonist, or—in Rembrandt’s case—staging three silhouetted trees backlit against the pageantry of an approaching squall. While the passions of the natural landscape take center stage, Rembrandt hid a barely discernable pair of lovers in the shadows at bottom right.