The tradition of the Flemish landscape art started probably with the frozen landscapes used as background images in the portrait paintings by the Flemish primitives.Concentrating on prints the mark point are the landscape prints by Pieter Brueghel who produced fabulous series of small and large landscapes. Engravers like The brothers Van Deuticum made striking engravings of his designs.
Hans Bol was another artist so important for his landscape drawings. His work was captured in print by Hieronymus Cock who also signed for some stunning series of the Roman antiquities.
The attraction of the Flemish landscape is mainly in the rustic setting including scenery showing the common life of the period. Village feasts and year markets give us a glimpse of the highlights in the life of the local crowd.
Another aspect was the connection with the humanistic themes popular in the 16th century. The times of the day, the seasons, the ages of men... all this resulted in splendid series of prints. At the end of the 16th century several engravers like Hans and Adrian Collaert added new work in this field.
This leads us to 'technically' the most genius engravers of all times. The quality achieved between 1560 and 1640 was unsurpassed with the Wierix brothers as the highlight. Some landscape and humanistic themes survived but the core production moved towards the religious theme which resulted in a countless amount of prints without diminution of the quality. But that is another story.
Select 'landscape' as subject on my website and discover some prints for sale