Landscape and Autography

Departing from the famed “Lugt Group” of early landscape drawings created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, his son Jan Brueghel the Elder, and other Bruegel followers, this essay considers the special relationship between the increasingly independent landscape genre and the acceptance of drawings as objects worthy of preservation. This essay provides an exploration of how landscape subjects lent themselves to the development of drawn autography in the early modern era, and it will argue that the site of landscape drawing often served to register the artist’s individual style rather than simply to document his or her powers of observation.