Rocky Landscape with a River Jan Brueghel the Elder

This small landscape is from the early period of the painter’s career. Executed in accordance with the principles of the World Landscape made up of real elements from nature, although it is not a topographically authentic vista, but rather the essence of the Earth’s versatile lands.
Brueghel employed a delicate technique to paint the rich natural details in the foreground and the contrasting misty infinity of the middleground and background. The silvery strip of river traversing the land forms a bond connecting the trees, the mountains and the clouds in the sky, all rendered in the most diverse shades of blues and greens. Everything merges into a spectacular yet harmonious whole, of which the travellers in the bottom left corner, with their fully laden donkeys, are just as much an integral part as the birds soaring on high.