Roelant Savery: 5 works

'The Emperor Rudolf II, for whom Savery worked in Prague, had a zoo and also built up a collection of exceptional stones, shells, mounted insects and other exotic rarities. Savery was invited to Prague as a landscape painter, because he leant towards the tradition of Pieter Brueghel The Elder.'

'Savery painted chiefly landscapes in the Flemish tradition of Gillis van Coninxloo II, in which animals and plants occupied a prominent place within a mythological, Biblical or moralising context. Sometime in 1603 or 1604, Roelant Savery went to Prague, where he was appointed court painter by Emperor Rudolf II, a Habsburg prince who invited several artists to his court in the city.'

'Roelandt Savery emphasized the cloak's volume and shape using a system of cross-hatching with short, hooked strokes of the pen.'

'Roelandt Savery concentrated on broadly outlining the figure's position and the folds of fabric that obscure her body. He ignored more minute details such as the design of her hat or the form of her stool, suggesting only the general form of each.'

'Roelandt Savery probably drew this setting from his imagination, based on places he had seen on his travels in the Tyrol, a mountainous region in Austria and Italy. During the early 1600s, while in the service of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, Savery traveled extensively in the eastern Alps, gathering many of the motifs he would use in his pictures for the rest of his life.'