A Pastoral Scene

Jan Thomas van Yperen was accepted as a master by the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1639-40. He is thought to have worked in the studio of Peter Paul Rubens before copying and amending paintings by Rubens in his house following the master’s death in 1640. Van Yperen resettled in Vienna in around ¹⁶⁵⁶⁄₅₈, where he worked for Emperor Leopold I and Archduke Leopold William.

Alongside large format religious histories, he also painted numerous landscapes with pastoral or mythological scenes. His proximity to the style of Peter Paul Rubens is typical of van Yperen’s oeuvre, and highly evident in the present work. Pastoral motifs - that is, idyllic scenes of shepherds and romanticised countryside subjects such as grazing animals - were already used in the murals of antiquity, and later experienced their apogee in the art of the Baroque and ensuing Rococo periods.