Excursion in the Countryside of Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia

The woman being carried through the fields here is Isabel Clara Eugenia, a daughter of Philip II of Spain, who by around 1600 was governing the Spanish Netherlands from Brussels. The scene is set on her summer estate at Mariemont, her palace just visible at the upper right, while in the foreground peasants rake and cart the hay. The picture is a collaboration. Joos de Momper laid in the wide landscape, and Jan Brueghel the Elder, famous for his fine touch, painted the small figures. It was one of a set of Flemish paintings shipped to Madrid to decorate a tower of the royal Alcázar, which is how a Brussels hayfield ended up in the Spanish royal collection.