Large Mountain Landscape with Travellers

Joos de Momper painted landscapes for more than 50 years, and of all of them, the Alte Pinakothek says, this is the only one that carries a date in his own hand. The date is 1623. That makes the canvas a fixed point for his late work, painted when he was about 59. Over his career he had worked up a set of motifs, grottoes and fantastic rock landscapes with waterfalls, and he used them almost like a trademark. A picture more than three metres wide was furniture for a grand room, and the museum cites a cycle of six such landscapes that belonged to the Marqués de Leganés, a Spanish nobleman who served his king in Brussels and was one of the great collectors of his time. This canvas turned up on the English art market and was bought in 2008 by the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, a German foundation, which lends it to the museum.