Mountain Road with Travelers (c. 1615): Artwork and History

Mountain Road with Travelers (c. 1615) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Joos de Momper, II (Flemish, 1564-1635).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The landscape specialist Josse de Momper the Younger painted dramatic panoramas that framed the wildness of nature against grand vistas. On the right, adventurous travelers pause along a road winding through the hilly landscape, which would have been understood by contemporary viewers as a visual metaphor for the journey of life. Similar compositions can be found in earlier Northern landscapes, but De Momper populated his scenes with more figures, especially peasants, than his predecessors—a reflection, perhaps, of the increased popularity of paintings that depicted everyday life.

Object facts

• Title: Mountain Road with Travelers
• Date: c. 1615
• Artist attribution: Joos de Momper, II (Flemish, 1564-1635)
• Place of origin: Flanders
• Medium: Oil on cradled panel
• Dimensions: 50.2 × 80 cm (19 1/2 × 31 1/2 in.); Framed: 76.8 × 106.1 × 7.6 cm (30 1/4 × 41 3/4 × 3 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1067

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.