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Mountain Road with Travelers
Joos de Momper, II (Flemish, 1564-1635)
c. 1615
- Medium
- Oil on cradled panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 50.2 × 80 cm (19 1/2 × 31 1/2 in.); Framed: 76.8 × 106.1 × 7.6 cm (30 1/4 × 41 3/4 × 3 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The landscape specialist Josse de Momper the Younger painted dramatic panoramas that framed the wildness of nature against grand vistas. On the right, adventurous travelers pause along a road winding through the hilly landscape, which would have been understood by contemporary viewers as a visual metaphor for the journey of life. Similar compositions can be found in earlier Northern landscapes, but De Momper populated his scenes with more figures, especially peasants, than his predecessors—a reflection, perhaps, of the increased popularity of paintings that depicted everyday life.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0