Leafy Landscape
First half of the XVII century.On display elsewhere
Once again, expressive force and scenography prevail in this composition and lend it a strong dramatic character similar to that of works by early 17th-century Flemish masters, with which Collantes was undoubtedly very familiar. The components are clearly and almost symmetrically arranged on the surface of the canvas. On the right and left, the painter has backlit two masses of dense greenery, which cover two thirds of the painting and are silhouetted against a clear sky with scattered clouds. The rays of light penetrate dense branches and illuminate the rocks in the foreground. The compositional axis consists of a clearing in the forest in which mountains and vegetation are situated at different heights across a low horizon that gives way to the light coming from the sky. The richness of the composition – with its multiple levels highlighted by the effects of light and the rigorous study of perspective and the accumulation of elements – lends variety and decorativeness to the depicted scene.
The masters of the Flemish school frequently repeated gradations between different shades of ochre, green and blue, in that order. Such gradations were often employed in the time before the aesthetic revolution of Rubens, who converted landscapes into dynamic compositions. He carried out this change without having to use these tonal gradients.
The painting comes from the Spanish royal collections. In their 1983 text on painting in Madrid from the second third of the 17th century, Angulo and Pérez Sánchez identify this canvas as a ‘landscape with a wooden bridge of a yard per one yard and a quarter’, although its current measurements are slightly smaller. This text appears in the inventories of the Buen Retiro Palace, whereas the Museo del Prado’s old inventories record the same measurements as today’s. Nevertheless, it is possible that before the painting entered the Museum, its size may have been reduced as a result of restoration.
Esplendores de Espanha de el Greco a Velázquez, Río de Janeiro, Arte Viva, 2000, p.217
