Paysage avec figures

1612 falls inside the Twelve Years' Truce, the pause from 1609 to 1621 in the long war between Spain and the Dutch rebels, and for Antwerp it meant trade again. Jan Brueghel was court painter to the Habsburg governors in Brussels, Albert and Isabella, and his minutely finished little landscapes were what that market wanted, pictures to be held and looked at closely rather than hung across a wall. This one is 41 by 34 centimetres, with a cart standing still on a road and travellers strung out along it. Carcassonne registered it in 1894, and the curators there note the canvas has been cut down, most of all along the right edge, so the road once ran further than it does now.