Lodewijck van Ludick, 'A River between Rocky Cliffs', about 1670

In the seventeenth century, several Dutch artists went to Rome and brought back paintings and sketches. They, and others like van Ludick, used these works as a basis for imaginary paintings of the Italian landscape with a mountainous background and a softly lit Mediterranean sky. Such pictures proved very popular with Dutch collectors and were a strong contrast to landscapes of the flat Dutch countryside – like Jan van Goyen’s A Windmill by a River.

Here, van Ludick shows a high, craggy cliff with a castle on one side, the round tower of which seems to reach the clouds. On the other side the cliffs are only slightly lower, and the two seem to threaten the tiny travellers wading through the water in the chasm between them. Two elegant riders pace back and forth, perhaps waiting for them, perhaps waiting their turn to cross. Only the warm gold of the sky eases the sense of danger that van Ludick evokes.