In short

During the second half of the 17th century the Flemish followers of Jan Brueghel I and II often painted warmly lit Italianate landscapes. Here Schoevaerdts has gone one step further, puzzling together elements from a Flemish town at left with a view of the Pantheon in Rome (at the centre) and a typical Italian Renaissance palazzo with its fountain at right.

Pieter Bout has perfectly incorporated his vivid figures into this seemingly exotic town view.

About Mathys Schoevaerdts

Flemish painter
Brussels circa 1665 – after 1702 Brussels

Townscape and landscape painter.

Pupil of the landscape painter Adriaen Frans Boudewijns  (Brussels 1644 – 1711 Brussels) in 1682.

Schoevaerdts entered the Painters’ Guild of Saint Luke in Brussels in 1690; he was dean from 1692 until 1696.

His last dated painting is from 1702. It is supposed that he might have died soon thereafter. There is a document from 1712 that states that by then he was dead.

In his early works he was inspired by the market views and other picturesque crowded scenes in delicate light blues and greens of Jan Brueghel I. Later in his career he underwent the influence of Italianate painters. 

His unsigned paintings can be mistaken for the cooperations of his Master Adriaen Frans Boudewijns with Pieter Bout. 

Schoevaerdts often included imaginative ruins or buildings in his landscapes, often decorated with foliage to emphasise their dilapidated state. 

It would seem Schoevaerdts kept drawings of his figures and architecture to be re-used in different combinations in his landscapes.

The medieval character of the architecture, the small scale of the figures and the variety of their activities are very much in 17^th century Flemish tradition.

His river landscapes and the sunny open vista are reminiscent of both the Flemish and Dutch Italianate painters, the so-called Bamboccianti.

About Pieter Bout

Flemish painter
Brussels 1640/45 – 1689/1719 Brussels

Figure and landscape painter. 

Bout frequently cooperated with contemporary landscape painters, adding the figure staffage in their landscape and townscape compositions. He did so for Ignatius van der Stock, but most frequently for his pupil Adriaen Frans Boudewijns, and also for Boudewijns’ pupil, our Mathys Schoevaerdts. Amongst other Brussels landscape painters whom Bout worked for I should mention Jacques d’Arthois and Lucas Achtschellinck.

Bout married in 1667 in Brussels.
He joined the local Painter’s Guild in the year 1670/71.

Why should you buy this painting?

Because this composition combines the best of both worlds: a rather unique mix of Flemish and Roman townscape elements dating from the last quarter of the 17th century.