Mountainous Landscape with a Bridge and Four Horsemen

Joos de Momper worked in Antwerp around 1600, painting towering mountain scenery for collectors who would likely never see a real Alp. This one is pure invention: a peak dissolving into the sky, a high bridge, and down in the lower right four horsemen and a dog hurrying along a trail while the leading rider sounds a horn. Momper belonged to a tradition of Flemish world landscapes, panoramas built in the studio to feel vast rather than to record any actual place. The Louvre keeps this canvas together with two others by him. The tiny figures are there mainly to give the cliffs their scale.