Pastoral Landscape with Ruins
Adriaen van de Velde (Dutch, 1636–1672)
1664
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 67 × 78.4 cm (26 3/8 × 30 7/8 in.); Framed: 81.3 × 92.4 × 6.4 cm (32 × 36 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Holland
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Sidney A. Kent Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
With its warm southern sunlight and leisurely interactions between herders, this painting of the Italian countryside would have affirmed urban Dutch perceptions of rural areas as places of innocence and peace. The son of a painter, Adriaen van de Velde was also inspired by the cattle pieces of Paulus Potter and the Italianate pastoral scenes of Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem. He achieved a harmonious balance of elements by studying the landscape from life as well as by sketching the cattle in the pasture and the human figures in the studio.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
