Jacob Grimmer and Gillis Mostaert

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 6 May 1998, lot 102 (as Gillis Mostaert the Elder);

With André Gombert, Paris;

From whom acquired by Baron and Baronne de Giey;

Thence by descent.

This monumental canvas is the result of collaboration between the landscape painter Jacob Grimmer and Gillis Mostaert, who painted the figures. Set within an extensive mountainous landscape, the composition is anchored by a tall, centrally placed tree, whose verdant foliage spreads across the upper register of the composition. Grimmer’s masterful handling of perspective guides the viewer’s eye from the bustling foreground into the sunlit valley, where a meandering path and clusters of buildings recede into the distance. The foreground is animated with a variety of scenes of everyday life, including groups of colourfully dressed travellers feasting by a path and shepherds tending their flocks. At the centre of the composition, a man in a red shirt climbs the large tree, possibly intent on gathering wood for his companion below.

Amid these lively rural scenes, in the middle distance, the Holy Family appears travelling down a path, with Mary seated on a donkey led by Joseph, their quiet journey subtly blending into the landscape. In the sixteenth century, before landscape had become a fully distinct artistic genre, the integration of a biblical narrative into a genre painting provided artists with a pretext to indulge in the depiction of elaborate landscape settings. This tradition finds its roots in the works of Joachim Patinir (c. 1480–before 5 October 1524) and Herri Met de Bles (c. 1510–after 1550), the earliest practitioners of this genre in The Netherlands.

Mostaert and Grimmer are known to have frequently collaborated on numerous landscapes and this canvas ranks among one of their most ambitious.