RUISDAEL, Jacob Isaackszon van
(b. ca. 1628, Haarlem, d. 1682, Amsterdam)

Landscape with Shepherds and Peasants

1660s
Oil on canvas, 52 x 60 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

One of the greatest of the Dutch landscape painters, Ruisdael satisfyingly balanced allegory and plausibility in this very likely invented rural scene. Beneath a Baroque sky, with its implication of heavenly grace, a flourishing tree anchors the composition. Though Protestant Amsterdam shunned overtly religious subjects, a work such as this might answer to spiritual sentiments.