Berglandschaft mit Schloss

Around 1605 in Antwerp, Joos de Momper was turning out mountains for a city that sits on flat, wet ground near the sea. Flemish painters had built a whole speciality out of these towering imaginary landscapes, following Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who really had crossed the Alps and brought the memory home. Momper's peaks are half-invented, arranged for effect. Look at the thread of a road cut into the cliff face, with travellers toiling up and down it, dwarfed by the rock, and a castle perched at the top with a fine view and a long climb. The colour cools and turns blue as it recedes, an old trick of the eye that carries you back into country no traveller could quite reach.