A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church, Jacob van Ruisdael (1665)
Although it is reminiscent of the countryside around Haarlem, where van Ruisdael grew up and trained as an artist, no one has been able to identify the main church or an exact location for the panorama. Most likely it was an idealised view, evoking and reflecting ideas that van Ruisdael and his customers had about how Holland should look. The productive nature of the landscape is represented by the shepherds, the corn and the windmill; a sense of history by the ruined castle. The church that dominates the horizon stood, in their eyes, for eternal certainty.
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