Italian Landscape with Cattle 1640 - 1669

"Italian Landscape with Cattle" is a painting by Nicolaes van Helt Stockade, a Dutch artist who, like many of his contemporaries, never actually visited Italy. Instead, Stockade synthesized the fantasies of the South that dominated the Dutch imagination. The painting depicts an idealised bucolic scene. On first glance the painting seems like a harmless window onto the past. However, it is worth remembering that the economic prosperity of the Dutch Golden Age was built on colonial exploitation and trade. These paintings offered viewers an escape from an increasingly urbanized existence, whilst conveniently omitting the violence that made such leisure possible. The woman crouched milking the cow, and the shepherd looking on, both represent rural existence. What stories do they have to tell? Do they have agency? As we reflect on the imagined landscapes of the past, it is worth asking what realities were ignored or actively suppressed.