Paisagem com um desfiladeiro de montanha

Joos de Momper never needed real mountains to paint them. Working in Antwerp in the early 1600s, he turned out imaginary alpine landscapes like this by the dozen, built on a formula collectors loved: a winding pass tumbling toward you with tiny travellers strung along it, warm browns in the foreground giving way to cooler, mistier blue peaks far behind. That fading from brown to blue was a deliberate device for suggesting deep distance, and de Momper was a master of it. He may well have crossed the Alps himself on a trip to Italy, sketching as he went, but scenes like this are inventions, not records. Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein bought the picture in the 1670s, and it has stayed in the family's collection ever since.