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67 Jan Wildens Antwerpen 1584/1586–1653 Antwerpen Winter Landscape with Hunter 1624 Inscription bottom left: JAN.WILDENS.FECIT.1624 Oil on canvas; 194×202 cm First mentioned in the 1722–1728 inventory as a decoration for the Moritzburg hunting lodge near Dresden Gal. no. 1133 Landscape painter Jan Wildens first surfaces in the historical records in the second decade of the 17th century, in his capacity as an assistant in Peter Paul Rubens’s workshop, responsible for painting in the background landscapes in many of the most important histories by the great Antwerp master. Under the influence of Rubens, his painting style became more harmonious and monumental in scale. Even so, it was not until the mid-1620s, some time after his artistic collaboration with Rubens had come to an end, that Wildens accomplished his finest, independently executed landscapes. The Dresden winter landscape – probably his best-known and most compel- ling composition – is, in every respect, exceptional within his oeuvre. Wildens depicts a hunter in the company of his hounds, a life-sized figure shown from an impressively close vantage point. He is walking through a winter scene dominated by a stand of trees, bare and compact, that fills the left half of the canvas. The cluster has a decorative character, almost like a still life, and provides a curious contrast to the mood of the flat, snow-covered landscape that stretches hazily into the distance. The elegant, young aristocrat, in an expensive fur coat and leather hat, presents the spectator with a slain brown hare. A Dutch poetry collection from the early 17th century draws parallels between the rabbit hunt and a suitor’s pursuit of women. Therefore, Wildens’s contemporaries might have also construed the overt display of the hare as an erotically charged allusion.  |  un