Flemish school; Last third of the XVII century. "Shepherd with pan flute". Oil on canvas....

Flemish school; Last third of the XVII century. "Shepherd with pan flute". Oil on canvas. Relined.

Flemish school; Last third of the XVII century.
"Shepherd with pan flute".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Size: 45 x 60 cm; 69,5 x 50,5 cm (frame).
In this narrative scene, the author poses two independent images divided by two planes. In the main area, on the left, an elegantly dressed young man seems to rest and enjoy playing the siringa, also known as Pan's flute. In the right area of the scene, a young man leads the cattle. These two images seem contrary to each other, as one reflects the hard work of the countryside, while the other character represents the idyllic life of the countryside. However, the introduction of Pan's flute is the key to understanding the scene, since in Greek mythology, Pan was the god of shepherds and cattle.
While in the 17th century the demand for religious art for churches radically ceased in the northern provinces, today's Holland, in Flanders a monumental art in the service of the Catholic Church flourished instead, partly due to the necessary restoration of the ravages that the wars had caused in churches and convents. In the field of secular art, Flemish painters worked for the court in Brussels and also for the other courts of Europe, producing a painting with classical, mythological and historical themes that was to decorate brilliantly the Royal Sites of Spain, France and England. Thus, there was a proliferation of works of medium and small format, with different themes perfectly framed in a wide range of genres, treated by specialized painters who often collaborated on the same work. In this work the landscape shows artistic characteristics based on the pictorial tradition of the Netherlands in the 15th century, which developed artistically in later centuries. Thus, in the 12th century the use of the landscape as a background for the works came to occupy a much more important place as an artistic element than that occupied by the landscape in other schools of the same period. As far as the representation of the narrative is concerned, the landscape of the Flemish primitives plays an essential role, not only as the natural environment of the characters but also to separate and set the various episodes of the story narrated in the work. As for the imitation of nature, the Flemish painters of the fifteenth century sought to represent in a plausible way in the landscapes of their religious paintings the fields and cities of their native country, detailing their flora with botanical precision and even giving an idea of the time of day and the season of the year in which the scene takes place as. thus establishing a pictorial pattern that continues until the seventeenth century as can be seen in this painting. This special interest in the representation of the landscape increased as the 16th century progressed, when a new type of landscape for sacred scenes was developed and popularized: the panoramic view.