The Summer

The pair of paintings by Van de Venne (see also Kat.Nr. 741B), is based on traditional seasonal paintings and demonstrates a crossover between landscape and genre painting. Story-like moments and depictions of the domestic landscape are balanced. The flag of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, hanging on the mast of the sailboat, sits in the centre of the winter painting, immediately drawing attention to it. Another ship, that draws the gaze to the horizon, also displays the tricolore. The painting proclaims the pride for the fight for independence from the rule of the house of Habsburg in 1581. In this sense, it is a political landscape. A group of people of different social classes have gathered in the foreground. While the fisher men on the right arduously hack open the ice in order to do their job, an elegantly dressed couple on the left are skating in their free time. Comical elements only become apparent on closer inspection: On the left, a boy hides under the bridge from his friend, who is holding a snowball. On the snowy road also on the left a man has fallen and is now pulling himself up on the trunk of a tree. Accordingly, in the scene “Summer”, at the bottom of the windmill a woman lifts her hand to strike the man who seems to have dropped a basket with eggs. A child watches with wringing hands. The Delft-born Adriaen van de Venne was a successor of the Flemish Jan Brueghel the Elder. In his early years, he created many detailed landscapes with a myriad of figures. The Berlin paintings are his first dated works of this kind.| Britta Bode