View on the Rhine

Seen from a bird’s-eye view, this landscape unfolds as a series of separate tableaux, from the groups of busy peasants in the foreground to the turrets of distant castles that punctuate the mountains beneath a hazy blue sky. The composition makes use of the principles of aerial perspective, with a warm and detailed foreground contrasting with the cool, hazy tones of the mountains, giving a sense of distance that draws the viewer through the monumental vista. Painted in the mid-seventeenth century, the light-filled view combines the Italianate style of Dutch landscapes with an earlier tradition of everyday settings populated with colloquial characters, similar to the earlier pioneering style of the Dutch painter and printmaker Pieter Breughel the Elder (c.1525-69). Here, Dutch artist Herman Saftleven (1609-85) has used the Rhenish slate mountains as his setting, providing a dramatic backdrop of vertiginous cliffs and rugged peaks that define the edges of the river valley. Once the eye has become accustomed to the scale of the setting, the tiny figures that are scattered through the foreground start to reveal themselves. Villagers are gathered together dancing, drinking, working and resting, with a tiny dog sleeping against an abandoned mill stone, serenaded by a man playing the violin in the lower left-hand corner. Paths direct the eye through terraced vineyards to distant dwellings, while a multitude of boats traverse the river, setting sail from a community of boat people living on the shore. For such a sweeping view, the dimensions of the painting are relatively small, cleverly combining the grand vista with intimate snapshots of peasant life.  

Born in the Netherlandish city of Rotterdam, Saftleven lived and worked in Utrecht, producing over 300 paintings and 1,200 topographical drawings throughout his career. After visiting the Moselle and Rhine valleys in the 1650s, he turned his attention from genre scenes to imaginary Rhineland views, sometimes incorporating religious and mythological subjects.