Classical Landscape with Figures(Jean-Victor Bertin)
In this carefully constructed capriccio view the artist has balanced the tightly grouped trees at the left with a group of crisply defined buildings on a hilltop, perhaps based on Civita Castellana, with a larger house below. In the center a man in classical dress is attempting to persuade a frightened horse, whose rider seems unable to control it, to ford the stream that flows into the small lake below the hill. On the other side of the lake a fisherman is preparing to moor his boat, pulling it shoreward with a rope attached to a pole. In the distance two indistinct figures walk together among the trees. Bertin has not defined the subject clearly and it appears to be a classical fantasy rather than a historical or mythological story that he is illustrating. Typically he has employed naturalistic details in a scene which otherwise bears little connection to nature.
(Click on image above)