Joachim Patenier

Joachim Patinir is often called the first landscape painter. In his pictures the religious story is small and the world is huge: jagged rocks rise from the plain, rivers wind to the sea, and the colours move from brown in the foreground to green and then pale blue in the far distance.

He was probably born near Dinant in present day Belgium and joined the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1515. Albrecht Dürer met him in Antwerp and called him a good landscape painter. Only a few signed works survive, among them Landscape with Saint Jerome and the Temptation of Saint Anthony in the Prado, and Charon Crossing the Styx, also in the Prado. His “world landscape” shaped Flemish painting for generations.

Look for the tiny figures in his Flight into Egypt and Rest on the Flight, dwarfed by the panorama around them.