KEUNINCK, Kerstiaen de

This intricately wrought scene combines the elements of the imaginative landscapes, for which Kerstiaen de Keuninck was best known, with a discernible Flemish realism. The fantastical landscape with its winding paths and striking curvature, is a backdrop for the story of Jacob’s dream.

The serenity and soberness of the landscape genre gave way in the work of the transitional figure Kerstiaen de Keuninck to action and drama. It is primarily the richly carved spring which catches the eye in his Landscape with Diana and Actaeon in which Actaeon comes across Diana while she is bathing. The fertile imagination, the fanciful rock formations and the clear separation between the different areas of the painting later gave way to greater unity.

A number of de Keuninck’s works depict religious anecdotes set within evocative landscapes such as Tobias and the Angel.

The realism in De Keuninck’s landscape compositions is combined with fantastic elements.

This intricately wrought and almost theatrical scene combines the elements of the imaginative landscapes, for which Kerstiaen de Keuninck was best known, with a discernible Flemish realism. In de Keuninck’s paintings, the fantastic and overwhelming landscape appears to be the main objective.

Kerstiaen de Keuninck specialized in fantastic panoramas with dramatic lighting effects, executed with lively brushwork. The Calamities of Humanity belongs to a 16th-century tradition of paintings in which natural disasters allude to the turbulent times.