Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America

When Jan Mostaert painted this wide panel in Haarlem around 1535, the Netherlands and Spain's new lands across the Atlantic belonged to the same ruler, the emperor Charles V. Mostaert had never seen the Americas, and he built the scene from what reached Europe. On one side the Spanish advance with lances, halberds, guns and cannon. On the other the inhabitants, naked, defend a rocky hillside with bows and arrows, sticks and clubs. A great rock rises over the landscape, and a monkey, a porcupine and parrots signal how far away this is. The Rijksmuseum reads the picture as siding with the peaceful people against the violent newcomers. It once belonged to the Amsterdam dealer Jacques Goudstikker, was taken for Hermann Göring's collection during the war, and entered the Rijksmuseum in 2013.