Galerie Ratton-Ladriere

The Savery family, originally from Flanders, emigrated to Haarlem in 1591 and then to Amsterdam, where Roelandt studied with the landscape painter Hans Bol. He probably went to Bohemia for the first time in 1600, and his presence in Vienna is documented in 1602. In around 1604, Rudolph II summoned him to Prague, where he drew animals in the imperial menagerie, together with views of the city and its surrounding area. He stayed in Prague from 1607 to 1610, and at Rudolph II’s death in 1612, remained in the service of his successor, Mathias II, who moved the court to Vienna. He returned to the Netherlands in 1616. His lively landscape drawings with their extremely precise rendering are strongly reminiscent of those by Pieter Bruegel, to whom they have often been attributed – like the one here, as witness an inscription on the mount. The highly particular shape of the barn roof makes it possible to locate the scene somewhere around Prague, and thus to date the drawing between 1607 and 1610.