El artista en el paisaje como figura del “otium”

Abstract

Jan Both’s Italian Landscape with Draughtsman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) provides the basis for the posing of two problems: namely the representation of the artist in 17th-century landscapes, and the meaning behind this type of representation in the specific case of Dutch Italianate landscape painters. If, in the pages that follow, the researcher has chosen to devote his attention to some scarcely remembered works, it is because he believes them to be crucial in resolving these questions and in recalling the development of an intradiegetic landscape art that is virtually forgotten today. While it is perhaps the case that staffage played only a secondary role in the content of many rural and urban landscapes, the representation of the artist themselves has always been an altogether more substantial topic of debate, no matter how small they may appear.