Spanish school; 17th century.
"Hunting scene".
Oil on canvas. Re-tinted.
It presents restorations, repainting and losses on the pictorial surface.
Measurements: 78 x 127 cm.
The author of this work resorts to a theme that became popular during the 17th century, however, in spite of being a common scene, the singularity of the piece lies in the fact that one of the figures of the hunters is shot, when the normal thing was to show the dominion of the human being over the animals. The taste for the anecdotal is shown in the number of figures and details with no apparent relationship between them, and in the absence of an important theme to justify the landscape, something that is characteristic of both the period and the school to which the painting belongs. In the present work, a very violent movement can be seen in the central group of hunters, where, moreover, marked compositional diagonals are clearly visible. This style of painting was particularly notable for its peculiar interpretation of the landscape: idyllic and idealised, with no attempt to recreate specific landscapes, as if evoking a pastoral Arcadia. This was the name given to an imaginary country, created by poets and artists, where happiness, simplicity and peace reign, inhabited by a population of shepherds who live in harmony with nature.

In the West, landscape did not appear as a fully independent genre in art until almost the 17th century and thanks to Dutch painting (especially Jacob van Ruysdael). It was treated as a mere backdrop in the Middle Ages until the Renaissance began to show interest in it. It is striking to note the large production of the period, which was aimed at the increasingly wealthy urban bourgeoisie, an abundance of works and a proliferation of pictorial genres. One of these genres was landscape, which developed greatly from the 17th century onwards, a time when it had not appeared as an independent theme, without needing the presence of an anecdote to exist. Like other genres that gained great popularity during the 17th century, landscape painting has its roots in the Dutch painting tradition of the 15th century. The background landscapes in the religious works of Van Eyck, Bouts and van der Goes occupy a much more important place as an artistic element in these works than landscape painting in Italian painting of the same period. With regard to the representation of the narrative, the landscape of the Flemish Primitives plays an essential role, not only as a natural setting for the characters but also to separate and set the various episodes of the story narrated in the work.