Willem van Nieulandt the Younger

In this fantastical landscape—the product of artistic imagination rather than topographic representation—the winding path invites the viewer to enter (and meander through) the serene scene. Although Willem van Nieulandt the Younger spent most of his career in Northern Europe, his few years in Rome in the early seventeenth century proved formative. Likely painted around 1610, soon after his return to Antwerp, the present work depicts an Italianate landscape using a Northern visual language, one characterized by a cool tonality and precise manner of depiction.