Landschap met vissers 1633 - 1657

Claude Goyrand produced this print of a landscape with fishermen sometime between 1620 and 1662. It shows a scene in which figures occupy the foreground and middle ground, while the background shows buildings atop a large hill. The image creates meaning through the visual codes and cultural references of seventeenth-century landscape art in France. The French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded in 1648, established a hierarchy of genres that placed history painting at the top, with landscape considered lower in status. This print, like many landscapes of the period, incorporates classical or pastoral elements that elevate the genre. The figures are generalized, and the scene idealized, imbuing it with a timeless quality. Further understanding comes from studying period treatises on landscape painting, prints, and the biographies of artists and patrons. Art is always contingent on the social and institutional context in which it is made and viewed.