Italian Landscape with Travelers

Jan Both · c. 1650

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

49.5 × 61 cm (19 1/2 × 24 in.); Framed: 69.2 × 81 × 5.4 cm (27 1/4 × 31 7/8 × 2 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

*Italian Landscape with Travelers* is one of the finest examples of the Italianate landscape tradition that swept through Dutch painting in the seventeenth century, bathing a sun-warmed southern scene in the kind of golden afternoon light that northern Europe rarely sees. Jan Both spent formative years in Rome during the late 1630s, absorbing the luminous pastoral compositions of Claude Lorrain and bringing that sensibility home to the Netherlands. Where his contemporaries painted the grey skies of Holland, Both rendered ancient trees, rocky outcrops, and winding paths lit by a Mediterranean sun — a vision of Italy that Dutch collectors found irresistible. His technique layers warm glazes to build depth, and his staffage figures, small travelers threading through the landscape, give the vast scenery a quiet human scale. Both died in 1652 at around thirty-four, leaving a relatively small body of work, which makes surviving canvases like this one all the more treasured by institutions that hold them. The hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas replicates Both's characteristic warm tonality and layered glazing by hand, allowing the same interplay of light and shadow across the foliage and stone that has made the original a standout in the Art Institute of Chicago's Dutch collection.