Eight Bohemian Landscapes: Landscape with Log Bridge over Cataract

The dramatic forest interior, ornamental foliage, and diminutive figures in this engraving are all hallmarks of the imaginary landscape tradition brought by Flemish immigrants to the northern Netherlands at the turn of the 17th-century. Pieter Stevens (about 1567-after 1624), the designer of the print, worked in Antwerp until 1594, when he was named court painter to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. While in Rudolf's employ, Aegidius Sadeler engraved a number of his drawings, such as this work. Enormous trees rise above a scene of peasants and mules who cross a manmade bridge to reach a distant mill. In the foreground corner, a group of figures stand along the rocky river bank while a man fires a flintlock across the river.