Shipping on the Schelde off Antwerp

This painting shows the celebrations in Antwerp at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. Cannons are being fired from land and sea, crowds are on the shore, and a flotilla of ships brimming with passengers sails towards the city. The largest vessel is the State Yacht and the figure in red on its deck is the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Next to him, in black, is Don Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, a Spanish diplomat.The artist specialised in marine and landscape painting and worked in Antwerp.