The exhibition will display a group of 80 paintings by the so-called Dutch Italianate Masters seventeenth century Netherlandish artists who turned to the Italian campagna for their subject matter. Jan Both and Nicolaes Berchem brought back with them seductive visions of mountains and peasants basking under golden skies to a flat and cloudy Holland that could not get enough of them, inspiring Cuyp, Wynants, Wouwermans and Weenix towards their own
interpretation of a landscape they may never have seen.
The exhibition will trace the development of the genre starting with its origins in Italy during the last decade of the sixteenth century in the work of Paul Bril. The genre flowers in the seventeenth century amongst the 'first generation' of Dutch Italianates - Cornelis Poelenburch and Bartholomeus Breenburgh, who worked alongside Claude and Poussin. The Osecond generation¹ is also represented by Jan Both and Nicolaes Berchem, and there are masterpieces by Aelbert Cuyp, Karel Dujardin, Philips Wouwermans and Adam Pynacker. Finally, the exhibition will examine the less well-known Othird generation, with such artists as Isaac de Moucheron and Jacob de Heusch who provided a coda to the movement¹s decline in the last quarter of the 17th century.