Mountainous Landscape with Staffage
- Date
- 1st half of the 17th c.
- Object type
- painting
- Technique
- oil
- Material
- metal
- Dimensions
- 21,0 x 32,0 cm
- Acquisition date
- 1795
- Location
- Not on display
- Place of Origin
- Augsburg (Germany)
- Owner
- National Museum in Warsaw
- Acquisition name
- deposit; inv. no. 164028 MN
- Museum number
- Dep 944
Kurt Erich Simon (‚Ausländische Kunst in Polen‘, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, II, 1936, pp. 140–50, p. 146) believed it to be a copy of an unknown prototype by Adam Elsheimer. … Andrzej Chudzikowski (Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie: Galeria malarstwa obcego: Malarstwo austriackie, czeskie, niemieckie, węgierskie 1500–1800, ed. A. Chudzikowski et. al., Warsaw 1964, no. 47) published Mountainous Landscape as by a follower of Adam Elsheimer, suggesting it may have been Johann König. …
Chudzikowski pointed to the manner of rendering the foliage with light impasto dots over darker paint and the composition of the Łazienki landscape, which are characteristic of König’s style. The synthetic, simplified forms, ‘dome-shaped’ clumps of vegetation and the rounded outline of the crown of the tree clearly indicate that it is by a painter influenced by Elsheimer’s work. …
In the case of the Łazienki painting, its graphic, somewhat mechanical ‘pointillism’ and the lack of the feeling of light […], as well as the manner of rendering the staffage (cf. e.g. the figure of the pilgrim in the painting in the Historisches Museum in Frankfurt; inv. no. 683) could point to König… . [D. Juszczak, H. Małachowicz, The Stanisław August Collection of Paintings at the Royal Łazienki. Catalogue, Royal Łazienki Museum, Warsaw 2016, no. 55, pp. 217–218.]