View from the Albrechtsburg in Klosterneuburg

Brand painted this from the remains of the Albrechtsburg, a castle that Duke Albrecht I had built in 1288 in a corner of the town walls of Klosterneuburg, just up the Danube from Vienna. By 1787 the old defences were crumbling, and the picture is full of them. A rough brick mass rises at one edge, broken stretches of pinkish masonry cross the middle, and a white building with a pointed roof stands among old houses opposite. Beyond, roofs lead to a church with a tall spire and a wide, hazy country. Three people stand talking on the path with a dog, and a figure bent under a bundle climbs out of the hollow. The Belvedere singles out the clouds and the shifting colours of the foreground as signs of Brand's study of nature. Most of the town walls were cleared in the 1860s.