PATENIER, Joachim
(b. ca. 1480, Bouvignes, d. 1524, Antwerpen)

Crossing the River Styx

1515-24
Oil on panel, 64 x 103 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Patenier, working in Antwerp, was a landscape specialist, often providing the backgrounds to the figures of other masters such as Massys or Isenbrandt. In his own work the landscape becomes the dominant element, so that the figure subject which justifies it becomes sometimes no more than a tiny incident in the foreground. The impression is sought of vast panoramic vistas, which are seen not from a natural but from an artificially high viewpoint. Typically the landscape is enlivened by dramatic effects of wheather or the outbreak of fire, in a manner influenced by Bosch.

According to classical tradition, Charon, the boatman carried the souls of those entering Tartarus or Hades across the River Styx in his boat. In this painting the artist constructed a deep vista of a river and its two banks. Because of the bird's-eye view and horizontal picture format, the world seems to unfold beneath us. In spite of many naturalistic details, this is a highly contrived landscape; the perspective is applied inconsistently and the movement through three distinctive colour zones is formulaic. Nevertheless, the painting, independent of its subject, is alluring.