# Landscape with Grotto [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MOMPER, Joos de]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on wood, 61 x 93 cm ## Commentary Landscape with Grotto c. 1600 Oil on wood, 61 x 93 cm Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn Joos de Momper may well have undertaken an Italian journey and been deeply impressed by Alpine vistas. His grandiose, sometimes phantasmagorical mountain scenes frequently include a grotto, as does the present painting. While in other artists' work grottoes usually figure as elevated sites of religious pilgrimage, in this painting the motif becomes the focus of the composition. One of the three accessory figures is characterized as an artist, down on his knees and drawing the rocks in front of him. Although this is not the first appearance in Momper's work of the figure of the artist in the great outdoors, it is indicative that here he deals with the phenomena of the mountain realm. This enthusiasm corresponded with the emergence of Alpinism, represented in the sixteenth century especially by Swiss naturalists and litterateurs. ## Related artworks - [Christ Healing the Blind Man]() - [Extensive Mountainous Landscape]() - [Flemish Market and Washing Place]() - [Helicon or Minerva's Visit to the Muses]() - [Landscape]() - [Landscape]() - [Landscape with a Mountain Pass]() - [Landscape with the Temptation of Christ \(detail\)]() - [Landscape with the Temptation of Christ \(detail\)]() - [Landscape with the Temptation of Christ]() - [Large Mountain Landscape \(detail\)]() - [Large Mountain Landscape]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()