A Landscape with Shepherds and Flocks c.1600-30
Oil on canvas | 115.9 x 96.5 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 405735
-
Two shepherd boys lead a flock of animals into the picture along a winding road. A man on a packmule and a goat follow behind. On the right is a tall tree; to the left are cottages, and in the distance the sun is breaking through clouds behind a mountain range. The mountain range resembles the Dolomites, but the painting is unlikely to represent a specific viewpoint. The painting appears to be a ‘pure landscape’ - a rare subject in Italian painting of the sixteenth century. However, it is equally possible that the subject is a hitherto unidentified pastoral narrative - it is iconographically indistinguishable from woodcut illustrations in Francesco Sansovino’s edition of Sannazaro’s ‘Arcadia’, which represents two shepherds, Montano and Uranio. The motifs in the painting are consistent with a number of prints published after Titian’s designs, and it is likely that the composition is a seventeenth-century copy after a lost work by Titian from c. 1530. This could have been a drawing or perhaps a painting – contemporary documents seem to attest to the existence of landscape paintings by Titian, although these references are somewhat ambiguous, and no ‘pure landscape’ paintings by his hand survive today.
Provenance
Acquired by George IV from Mr Renagle in September 1821 for £700; added to the inventories of Carlton House dated 1816 (no 588) and 1819 (no 583); in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1841 (no 174)
-
Creator(s)
(nationality)Acquirer(s)
-
Medium and techniques
Oil on canvas
Measurements
115.9 x 96.5 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
145.1 x 125.9 x 7.2 cm (frame, external)
1353 x 1155 x 51 mm (frame, external)
Category
Object type(s)
Other number(s)
Alternative title(s)
A pastoral landscape, previously entitled