Mountain Landscape with Castle

Mountain Landscape with Castle is an oil-on-panel painting by Flemish painter Joos de Momper. It was probably completed in the 1600s.

Painting
The painting depicts the exotic, imaginary landscape typical of de Mompers' oeuvre and his circle. A warm-colored foreground gives way to a less warm background with bluish highlands seen from a distance. Several people are traveling up and down a winding path dug into a cliff, on top of which there sits a castle. In the foreground, there moves a group of travelers with two donkeys. Among them there are two horsemen, one of whose horses stands beside a dog. In his early work, de Momper often collaborated with Jan Brueghel the Elder, who generally painted staffage figures for him.

Provenance of the painting
The painting became property of Arthur Seyss-Inquart, an Austrian Nazi leader responsible of crimes against the Dutchmen and humanity. The painting was acquired in 1942 by Dr. Schubert-Soldern, and became part of Vienna's Gemäldegalerie collection in 1942.