Prado paintings in La Lonja, Zaragoza

Yesterday we went to La Lonja, a jewel of a building built in the 1500s in high Renaissance style and now used for art exhibitions. The latest is a collection of 43 paintings called “Rubens, Brueghel, Lorena. El paisaje nórdico en el Prado.” By "nórdico" from the perspective of Spain in the 17th century, one should understand the Spanish Netherlands (the name given to the Southern Netherlands when they were ruled by the Archduke Albert VII (of Austria) and Archduchess Isabela Clara Eugenia Infanta of Spain. This couple were patrons of the arts in an effort to legitimize Hapsburg rule during the peaceful period after war between Spain and the Dutch Republic ended in 1609.

The exhibit was divided into nine sections, showing how a realist representation of the landscape became an important, even central feature in genre, maritime, mythological or allegorical paintings, and in works clearly intended to display the new peace and prosperity, as well as the property, of the rulers. My favorite work was Winter Landscape with a Bird-Trap, one of five copies Pieter Breughel the Younger made of a 1565 painting originally done by his more famous father (Pieter Bruegel the Elder).