Heroic Landscape with Rainbow

This Heroic Landscape affords a wide view into an idealizes cosmic landscape. It is timeless and placeless, as if a curtain had been raised in a theater on a vision of archaic history. We are shown and ideal that is remote from reality, with shepherds, whose works appears to be effortless. This is the dreamlike, original state of golden age. By abandoning aerial perspective, Koch is able to give a clear view into the distance, and both the peaceful rural scene in the foreground and the town with its temple in the middle ground are overarched by the rainbow, the symbol of eternal peace after the deluge.

Koch painted several versions of the motif, and he himself thought very highly of it.