Landscape with Shepherds

In 1613 the poet Scipione Francucci wrote a long poem in praise of Cardinal Scipione Borghese's picture collection. One passage may describe this canvas, though the museum treats the match as uncertain. If it does, the landscape was already in the cardinal's rooms about a decade after Paul Bril and his workshop painted it, around 1602. The scene splits in two. One side is a steep wooded slope, where the leaves of the big trees catch hard light against deep shadow. On the other, open country runs off towards a small church standing in sunlight. Between them, two shepherds on a rock look up at a dark, stormy sky, with their goats and sheep below. A Fantastic Landscape in the same collection has the same size, 66 by 90 centimetres, and may once have been its pair, though this canvas is the more sombre of the two.