Stormy coast landscape

A fortified town near the sea is located at the foot of the mountains. A thunder storm breaks. In the left foreground there is a flock of sheep and a man and a woman, fleeing from the storm. The Latin text under the print is a moralising explanation for the representation of the landscape scourged by the tempest: it is compared to the adversity that is caused by discord among people. The shepherd on the left calmly looking on stands in his turn for the stoical mentality: that of imperturbable observation. This print is part of a series of small landscapes, a series of 20 engravings after work by Rubens. The small landscapes that Rubens painted were a private affair: he kept most of them until his death. They greatly influenced on the work of English landscape painters such as Thomas Gainsborough. Bolswert’s print goes back to a painting by Rubens that was in the collection of the Counts of Brühl in Dresden (Germany) in the 18th century.