Italian Landscape with a Young Shepherd Playing with his Dog

A shepherd boy lies stretched out on the ground, playing with his dog, while his horse grazes close by and his food waits, ready to eat. Karel Dujardin, who went to Italy more than once, made the heat of this southern resting place almost something you can feel. The difficult part was the boy himself. Dujardin laid him straight back into the picture, at right angles to its surface, a pose that forces awkward foreshortening, and the Mauritshuis judges that he solved the perspective excellently. The panel is small, about 31 by 38 centimetres, and was painted around 1660 to 1665. A century later pictures like this were prized in Paris. This one belonged to the Comte de Vence and then to the Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV's foreign minister, who sold it in 1772, and five years later it passed through the Conti sale. It came to the Mauritshuis in 1919 as a gift from the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.