LANDSCAPE WITH CHARON CROSSING THE STYX (1515-1524) by
Joachim Patenir. Museo del Prado, Madrid
Among the many subjects Leonardo da Vinci studied and wrote about, he had this to say on painting and the colour blue:
In an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therefore you should make the building… wall which is more distant less defined and bluer… five times as far away, make five times as blue.
The Flemish artist Joachim Patenir was an early master of landscape painting and his work exemplifies the Leonardo’s theories on atmosphere and distant things, most beautifully. This painting with its distant blue mountains is typical of Patenir’s work, with the landscape dwarfing the figures and the ostensible subject of the painting.
