The Royal Palace in Brussels

The building on the ridge is the Coudenberg palace in Brussels, and around 1627, when this was painted, it was the seat of the court that governed the Spanish Netherlands. Archduke Albert had died in 1621, so his widow, the Infanta Isabella, was governing alone. Both painters worked for that court. Sebastiaen Vrancx was a specialist in figures and horses, and the figures are what the picture is really about, a coach drawn up on the bank, riders in red livery, women in stiff ruffs walking out along the water, a child crouching in the grass. A Spanish inventory of 1857 put it just as flatly, a palace beside a lake, and in the foreground on the bank a coach and a crowd of people. The palace burned down one night in February 1731. Its foundations are still under the Place Royale, and you can walk through them.