Landscape with Wild Animals

In 1617, when he painted this panel, Roelant Savery was between two lives. The imperial court where he had made his name lay behind him, and he was living in Amsterdam, on the Sint Antoniesbreestraat. A year later he would settle for good in Utrecht. Savery often borrowed a story as a reason to crowd a landscape with animals, Orpheus charming the beasts with his music, or Adam and Eve in paradise. Here there is no story and no people at all. Lions and leopards lie near deer by a rocky grotto, flocks of birds cross the sky and a swan flies past. At the right sit a parrot and a red macaw. Macaws came from Central and South America, and in Europe at that time they were a rare sight, kept in a few princely collections.