Landscape with a Moated Village (1559–61): Art, History and Details

Landscape with a Moated Village (1559–61) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the Small Landscapes (Flemish).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The so-called small landscapes published in Antwerp in the late 1550s constitute a turning point in the history of landscape as a genre. This drawing and its related print (1964.404) from the series present the local countryside in a simple, unembellished composition from a level point of view. The artist portrayed the rustic village, pasture, and country road in a straightforward and immediate fashion. The title page for the series, issued by publisher Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp, advertised that the views were made “from the life” (naer d’leven), thus are real places directly observed. Such humble sites would define the golden age of Dutch landscape in the following century.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with a Moated Village
• Date: 1559–61
• Creator attribution: Master of the Small Landscapes (Flemish)
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink; framing lines in brown ink (bottom)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 16.7 x 31.2 cm (6 9/16 x 12 5/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Flemish
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1929.552

A detail from the museum

The false signature "P. BREUGHEL" refers to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1529–1565) but reverses the usual order of "u-e" in the artist's name.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund by exchange

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.