Marten van Valckenborch

In Aachen, the two brothers were also joined for two years by Hans Vredeman de Vries, friend and fellow artist.

[2] Marten's subject matter was principally landscapes populated with religious or allegorical themes or depicting agricultural or mining scenes.

[3] In his early works, Marten showed a preference for landscapes of uniform terrain with shallow undulations, in which he always placed oak trees as an articulating element.

He also often included large or numerous incidental figures, as he did in the 11 paintings representing allegories of the months (all in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

[3] He thus represented the final iteration of the panoramic, so-called world landscape combining linear and aerial perspective as developed by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

[10][11] Marten 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.