Landscape with a Road to a Castle on an Island in a River (1554): Art, History and Details

Landscape with a Road to a Castle on an Island in a River (1554) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hanns Lautensack (German, 1524–1566).

The work and its context

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

Like Augustin Hirschvogel, Hanns Lautensack populated his images with traces of human activity that serve to characterize the features of the land rather than suggest a narrative. In several of his etchings, Lautensack used a vertical, rather than horizontal, format, emphasizing the strong verticals of mountainous terrain. This verticality was a particular feature of artists working in the Danube River valley and not often repeated by landscape artists in later centuries.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with a Road to a Castle on an Island in a River
• Date: 1554
• Creator attribution: Hanns Lautensack (German, 1524–1566)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching
• Dimensions: Image: 17 x 11.9 cm (6 11/16 x 4 11/16 in.); Sheet: 17 x 11.9 cm (6 11/16 x 4 11/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1993.221

A detail from the museum

The print demonstrates the qualities of etching that appealed to Lautensack, namely, the freely drawn lines and spontaneity that was similar to drawing.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in honor of the Club's seventy-fifth anniversary

Further reading listed by the museum

• “1993 Annual Report.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.

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.