Landscape with Travelers

A son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan traveled in Italy in the 1590s and later enjoyed a successful career in Antwerp, where he eventually became court painter to the Habsburg regents. As a painter, he specialized in floral still lifes and landscapes, sometimes collaborating with his friend Peter Paul Rubens. His drawings, however, are almost exclusively landscapes. Bruegel intended them to be sold as independent works, rather than as preparatory studies for paintings. The date indicated in the lower left corner of this sheet may be correct, but, along with the artist's name it seems to have been added by a later hand.