The Shepherd with Three Cows

In the sixteenth century, most Northern travelers to Rome came in search of either antiquities or the art of Renaissance masters. That all changed a century later with several generations of Dutch Italianate artists, including Karel Dujardin, who were motivated by an interest in Italian landscape for its own sake. Farm animals are frequently seen in the graphic work of Dujardin, an Amsterdam native who is believed to have lived in Italy from 1653 to 1656, and from 1675 until his death in 1678. The rocky crags at left would have appeared foreign to a Dutch viewer.