Joachim Patinir

Before Joachim Patinir, landscape in European painting was mostly a backdrop. He made it the main event. In his panels a vast panoramic world, jagged blue-grey rocks, winding rivers, a horizon melting into distance, spreads out while the religious story, a flight into Egypt or a baptism, shrinks to a few small figures in a corner.

He worked in Antwerp in the early 1500s, and this new kind of picture, later called the 'world landscape', would shape Flemish painting for a century. Albrecht Dürer met him on a trip to the Netherlands, praised him warmly and called him the good landscape painter.

Because he set such tiny figures loose in his sweeping scenery, later writers made a nickname of it. Few paintings are firmly his, since he rarely signed.