Landscape Art Of The Masters

The 17th century saw the emergence of a new genre in European art: pleasant country landscape scenes. Prior to it, backgrounds for other religious and secular scenes were used instead of landscapes as their own subjects. The landscape, which was cherished by Dutch painters, grew, and by the middle of the 17th century, it had become the most frequently made and collected type of paintings and prints.

One of the earliest painters to investigate and elevate landscape imagery into its own subject area was Pieter Bruegel. The portrayal of the natural landscape then developed into a distinctive and significant genre. Following suit, a large number of artists painstakingly recreated the rural vistas around them, from the rolling fields of the Dutch countryside to the rocky, mountainous terrain of Italy.