Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Joachim Patinir
Netherlandish; 16th-century
Antwerp, Belgium: Royal Museum of Fine Arts
81%
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt. 1516-1517. Oil on panel
The less focus these Netherlandish landscapes have, the better. Because this was such a new genre, with such an absence of convention, it seems closer than even Turner or, earlier, Ruisdael, to the severity of the actual natural world — those rocks at left jut with special intensity because of how arbitrary their relationship is to the consuming space beyond them. The painting's proximity to the true stuff of nature abides despite all its abstracting, for instance in the zealous atmospheric perspective and the suggestive swaths of color that make up the foliage and the shrubbery between stones in the foreground. Whether Patinir used Bible stories as an excuse for painting "landscapes," or whether the enormity of the nature in his pictures metaphorizes religious content, is an academic question — regardless, there is profundity to the way the violence of Herod's armies is dwarfed to the point, almost, of invisibility near the cinched waistband of the scene. (TFS, 2026)
Antwerp, Belgium: Museum Mayer van den Bergh
80%
Saint Jerome in a Rocky Landscape. Before 1524. Oil on panel
This painting hangs in Antwerp beside met de Bles's slightly later Emmaus landscape, which overpowers it, though not by all that much. Patinir's picture is less violent and suggestive than his successor's, perhaps because it's less in the business of subordinating its subject (Jerome) to his surroundings. It's less of a pure landscape, that is, and more yoked to tradition and therefore to the necessity of depicting Jerome. This necessity is why the painting's key visual feature — those two opposed rocky outcroppings in the fore- and midgrounds, respectively — seems somewhat hemmed in by its symbolic directness: the one is orderly to represent civilization, the other discombobulated because it's a sign of Jerome's penitence. The contrast is productive but somewhat contrived, which could also have to do with the fact that this is one of several versions of this scene by Patinir and/or his studio. What's worth noting are the browns and greens and dilating blues: Patinir's all about the way each of his colors is just a thin version of some hue elsewhere in the painting. (TFS, 2026)
Ghent, Belgium: Museum voor Schone Kunsten
...%
The Baptism of Christ. Early 16th century. Oil on panel
... (TFS, 2026)