View of an Italian Port

Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem

National Gallery of Art

A man and woman on horseback are on a strip of land also occupied by livestock, dogs, and seven other people in front of a body of water and towering cliff in this horizontal landscape painting. The couple on horseback is in the lower left quadrant of the composition, and they both have pale, peach-toned skin. The man’s silvery-white horse pulls its head down and back toward its front legs, mouth open. The man sits with one hand holding the reins and the other planted on his hip, palm facing out. He wears a white cloth tied around his neck, a tan-colored jacket, loose, nickel-gray pants, knee-high brown boots, and a wide-brimmed, peanut-brown hat with plumes of mauve-purple feathers. The man has shoulder-length, dark, curly hair and a goatee. A curved horn hangs from a strap looping across his torso, and a scarlet-red cloth is bunched over the saddle. Behind the white horse, the woman’s brown horse faces us. The woman wears a dark yellow dress with white sleeves and a white cloth along the neckline. Her hair is loose under a wide-brimmed, brown hat with dark yellow and white feathers. A falcon perches on her glove-covered hand. The mounted man talks to another man who stands next to the white horse. That man also has peach-toned skin, holds a lance, and wears a dark, royal-purple coat. A clean-shaven, pale-skinned young man sits and hunches toward two dogs at his feet in the lower left corner of the picture. Two more men wearing long robes stand a short distance away behind the boy. One has their back to us and the other, facing us, has dark brown skin and wears a turban. He holds one hand out, palm up. The person on this side sits in a boat near the left edge of the painting, looking off in that direction. He has dark, peach-colored skin and also wears a turban and robe. Six dogs spaced across the picture from the left edge to the mounted couple have brown or black fur with white spots. In the lower right corner of the composition, a person wearing tattered brown and red clothes sits facing away from us next to a cow and two sheep, all of whom lie down. The cow looks in our direction, head held low. Three goats mill about, and two sheep lie in a pile by the water’s edge as two men coax another goat onto a rowboat already laden with at least two cows. A two-masted sailing ship sits askance in low water to the right. A sailboat edges into the scene from the right edge, and a ship with sails unfurled sails near the cliff face to the right. That rocky outcropping comes almost halfway across the picture and is painted in tones of earthy brown and marine blue. Blocky structures along the top of the outcropping are hazy in the distance. The body of water stretches back to the horizon, where there are more outcroppings on the right and a church tower on the left. Mounds of white, puffy clouds against a vivid blue sky fill the top three-quarters of the composition behind the rock formations.