Lot 1306 Dα

The Brussels' painter Pieter Bout lived in Paris for several years where he painted town vistas with generous staffage. He appears to have been in Italy as well, this could not be proved, however. In many of his pictures, as here, he presents landscapes with southern architecture. The southern landscape style was widely used by Netherlands' painters of his time - even by artists never having been in Italy. Pieter Bout apparently did not sign most of his works. When comparing our painting with signed works in museums (Frankfurt, Antwerp or Vienna), a traditional attribution to him is very convincing. Characteristic is the lively and petite figural staffage distributed in larger clusters across the painting. Although Bout often applied figural staffages to paintings by A. Boudewijns the Elder, our painting can be counted among those created solely by his own hand.