Joachim Patinir, “Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx”, 1515–1524, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
“Landscape with Charon Crossing Styx” fits into common Northern Renaissance and early Mannerist trends of art. The 16th century witnessed a new era for painting in Germany and the Netherlands that combined influences from local traditions and foreign influences. Many artists, including Patinir, traveled to Italy to study and these travels to the south provided new ideas, particular concerning representations of the natural world. Patinir’s religious subjects, therefore, incorporate precise observation and naturalism with fantastic landscapes inspired by the northern traditions of Bosch.
Patinir utilised a Weltlandschaft (“world landscape”) composition with a three-colour scheme typical of his work, moving from brown in the foreground, to bluish-green, to pale blue in the background. This format, which Patiner is widely acknowledged as popularising, provides a bird’s-eye view over an expansive landscape. Furthermore, the painting uses colour to visibly depict heaven and hell, good and evil. To the viewer’s left is a heavenly place with bright blue skies, crystal blue rivers with a luminous fountain and angels accenting the grassy hills. On the far right of the painting is a dark sky engulfing Hell and the hanged figures on its gate. Fires blaze in the hills. The foreground of the painting consists of brown rocks in Heaven and brown burnt trees in Hell.
In the middle-ground is the river and the grasslands in bright hues of blue and green. The background, which is cut off by the horizon line of the darker blue river, is a pale blue sky highlighted with white and gray clouds. This compositional form is applied here by the crowded left and right sides bracketed by hills, which pushes the viewer’s eye into the open space in the middle and reinforces that the men in the boat are the main focus of the painting.