Landscape with Travelers Attacked by a Gang of Robbers (1602): Art, History and Details

Landscape with Travelers Attacked by a Gang of Robbers (1602) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan van Londerseel (Dutch, 1578–1625); David Vinckboons (Dutch, 1576–1629).

The work and its context

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

The subject of waylaid travelers was a popular motif for Netherlandish artists, especially around 1600. As a consequence of the war with Spain, displaced mercenaries and army deserters occasionally formed bands of robbers and victimized travelers and rural inhabitants. In this engraving after a drawing by David Vinckboons, a variety of incidents take place at the edge of a dark forest interior. As women and children flee their captured wagon, two bandits aim their guns at another traveler escaping on horseback. The ominous silhouette of a dead man hangs from a tree warning the viewer of possible perils encountered in the forest. Like Coninxloo, Flemish painter David Vinckboons left Antwerp after 1585 and settled in Amsterdam in 1586.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with Travelers Attacked by a Gang of Robbers
• Date: 1602
• Creator attribution: Jan van Londerseel (Dutch, 1578–1625); David Vinckboons (Dutch, 1576–1629)
• Culture: Netherlands, early 17th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1995.79

Collection credit

Gift of 27 members of The Print Club of Cleveland's 1995 Low Countries Tour

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.