Lattaie con bestiame in un paesaggio, "La fattoria di Laeken"

Around 1618 Rubens was the busiest painter in Antwerp, running a workshop that turned out altarpieces on contract and carrying out diplomatic errands on the side. Landscapes were the one thing nobody ordered from him. He painted them for himself and kept them in his own house, and a good number were still hanging there when he died in 1640.

This is one of those. Two milkmaids fill the foreground, one kneeling with a large jug, another milking further back on a mound of cows, with fruit and vegetables heaped beside them. The farm is not a real place. The name comes from the church in the distance, which resembled one at Laken outside Brussels. Doves sit above the group as an emblem of peace, and the truce that had held between the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic since 1609 had about three years left to run.