Landschap met vierkante toren 1649 - 1673

Adam Pijnacker created this landscape with a square tower through etching. The tower is a cultural reference, one that would have brought to mind the vogue for Italianate landscapes in the Netherlands. Pijnacker spent time in Italy. We might consider this image as part of a Northern European tradition of fantasizing about the South. Etchings like this one were often made as reproducible images, which allowed a wider public access to new aesthetic categories. The landscape presents the viewer with an image of the Italian countryside, made accessible by this technology. It also presents a composition that would have been considered quite modern at the time. Understanding the art of the past requires a lot of historical and cultural context. Art historians make use of archives, libraries, and digital resources to get a better understanding of works like this one.