Landscape with Travelers Attacked by a Gang of Robbers

1602

after David Vinckboons

(Dutch, 1576–1629)

Culture

Netherlands, early 17th Century

Medium

engraving

Credit Line

Gift of 27 members of The Print Club of Cleveland's 1995 Low Countries Tour 1995.79

Catalogue raisonné

Hollstein 84

State

II/II

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Location

Not on view

Description

The subject of waylaid travelers was a popular motif for Netherlandish artists, especially around 1600. As a consequence of the war with Spain, displaced mercenaries and army deserters occasionally formed bands of robbers and victimized travelers and rural inhabitants. In this engraving after a drawing by David Vinckboons, a variety of incidents take place at the edge of a dark forest interior. As women and children flee their captured wagon, two bandits aim their guns at another traveler escaping on horseback. The ominous silhouette of a dead man hangs from a tree warning the viewer of possible perils encountered in the forest. Like Coninxloo, Flemish painter David Vinckboons left Antwerp after 1585 and settled in Amsterdam in 1586.