Lucas van Valckenborch

Court painter to Archduke Matthias, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands in Brussels, he later migrated to Austria and then Germany, where he joined members of his extended family of artists who had moved there for religious reasons.

Here, he also got to know the prominent painters, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1528-1569) and Hans Bol (1534-1593), who both played important roles in the development of landscape painting in the Low Countries.

[7] His style was close to that of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, but he modified this influence in a personal manner and was not a slavish copyist.

[2] Van Valckenborch worked largely in the tradition of the so-called 'world landscape' of panoramic vistas shown from a bird's-eye viewpoint.

This style of landscape painting was developed in Antwerp, in the first half of the 16th century by artists like Joachim Patinir, Herri met de Bles and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Joris Hoefnagel is believed to have used his topographical drawings, for instance the drawn View of Linz, for his designs for the six-volume atlas, the Civitates orbis terrarum, published by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg between 1572 and 1617.

[2] Lucas van Valckenborch based many of his imaginary landscapes on drawings he had made directly from nature during his travels.

[2] In their mixture of fantasy and accurate topographical details, van Valckenborch's landscape paintings offer a view of the world and man's relationship to it.

An example is the Rocky Landscape with Travelers on a Path (c. 1570, Sotheby's 6 July 2016, London lot 3), where the distant goatherd and the silhouettes of his charges seem ant-like in comparison to the vast distance, and the vertiginous perspective of the scene.

The work of Pieter Bruegel the elder, who had painted a series of 6 on the times of the year, was influential on van Valckenborch.

Lucas van Valckenborch moved away from the tradition of painting the landscape in three cascading distances that were rendered in three different colours: brown, green and blue for each receding plane.

[4] Lucas van Valckenborch regularly returned to the subject of the Tower of Babel, which was also depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and later by a whole range of Flemish artists.

The subject of the Tower of Babel is usually interpreted as a critique of human hubris, and, in particular, of the Roman Catholic Church which at the time was undertaking, at great expense, large-scale construction projects such as the St. Peter's Basilica.

It is clear that these portraits' role was to show the power of Archduke and to flatter his ego as he is depicted invariably in a regal and imposing position and dressed in the latest fashions.

In the Landscape with a Rural Festival (1577; Hermitage), he included portraits of his friends Abraham Ortelius, Joris Hoefnagel and himself among the throng of revellers.

[9] In the series, van Valckenborch particularly developed the tradition of art market scenes pioneered by Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer.

The fishmonger is shown slicing off pieces of salmon, while his wife is taking smoked fish from a hook.