Mountain Road with Travelers

The landscape specialist Josse de Momper the Younger painted dramatic panoramas that framed the wildness of nature against grand vistas. On the right, adventurous travelers pause along a road winding through the hilly landscape, which would have been understood by contemporary viewers as a visual metaphor for the journey of life. Similar compositions can be found in earlier Northern landscapes, but De Momper populated his scenes with more figures, especially peasants, than his predecessors—a reflection, perhaps, of the increased popularity of paintings that depicted everyday life.