Landscape

By 1601 Jan Brueghel was one of the busiest painters in Antwerp, elected that year to head the city's Guild of Saint Luke, the association of painters. He was a son of Pieter Bruegel, famous for his peasant scenes, and he carried the family trade into a new century. Around this time his landscapes were changing. The high fantasy mountains of earlier Flemish painting were giving way to flatter, closer country you might actually have walked through, roads and villages under a wide sky. His touch was so fine and enamel-smooth that collectors nicknamed him Velvet Brueghel. For much of his life he worked hand in hand with other painters, one man laying in the setting while another added the figures.