A wooded river landscape with elegant figures on a path

Though this painting was previously attributed to both the Flemish landscapist Anton Mirou and the Flemish-born Dutch landscapist and still life painter Christoffel van den Berghe, Marijke de Kinkelder has more recently advanced an attribution to Mattheus Molanus. Born in Frankenthal, Molanus moved to Middelburg, where he became a master in the city’s painters’ guild in 1625. Molanus specialized in small-scale landscapes in the ‘Middelburg-Brueghel’ tradition that developed in the city in the second decade of the seventeenth century. Consistent with landscapes painted in Middelburg in the period are the fancifully attired figures as well as the crisp, refined handling of paint, particularly evident here in the minutely rendered foliage.