Information

The Museum of Navarra possesses a collection of twelve paintings on copper made by the Flemish painter Jacob Bouttats, which are on permanent display. Although the years of his birth and death are unknown, he is known to have been active in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries and to have focused primarily on painting landscapes with animals. These were largely based on biblical passages: his father had introduced him to the Netherlandish tradition of landscape painting with biblical themes.

The series, dating from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, depicts scenes from Genesis. The artist executes with meticulous brushstrokes the details of the vegetation, the inclinations of the trees, and the illuminated landscape settings. All these characteristics epitomize the seventeenth-century school to which it belongs, and the series constitutes a magnificent testimony to the narrative sense that was such a strong feature of Flemish painting in that period. The original frame has been preserved.

Marta Arriola Rodriguez