Animals Grazing beneath Trees

Lucas van Valckenborch painted "Animals Grazing beneath Trees," a small oil on panel, sometime in the late 16th century. It depicts an idyllic scene of rural life, but it also gives us insight into the social and economic structures of the time. Van Valckenborch was part of a Flemish tradition of landscape painting that often incorporated scenes of everyday life. In this work, we see peasants tending to animals in a lush, wooded area, but in the background is the suggestion of a town, perhaps a market center for the farm goods. The painting idealizes rural life, but in doing so it also reveals the economic relationship between the countryside and the town. The rise of this kind of art coincided with the development of merchant capitalism in the Netherlands and the growth of towns and cities. To truly understand this image, one might research the economic history of the region, the development of landscape painting as a genre, and the changing relationship between rural and urban life. Only then can we appreciate the social and cultural forces that shaped this work.