Landscape with a rainbow; pastoral scene

In the foreground we see a pastoral with a shepherd, playing a shepherd’s pipe, and two rural couples. In the background an Italian landscape with a village and a rainbow. For his painting, which now hangs in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg (Russia) and which was the model for this print, Rubens was inspired by graphic art of the Venetian artist Campagnola. Rubens’s landscapes are not realistic or idealising, they are rather visionary. Light phenomena such as rainbows, moonlight or thunder storms and groups of clouds play a large part. Although we know for certain of one single landscape that Rubens took the initiative to transfer to an engraving, it is clear that Rubens understood how important the art of print-making had been in the past for the development of landscape art of the Low Countries. It may have been his intention to publish a larger series of landscapes, and Bolswert made that dream come true after Rubens’s death. This print too stems from the series of the 20 small landscapes.