Title:
Landscape with Mountains and a plume of smoke
Creator/Contributor:
Jean Francois Millet (artist)
Date:
circa 1660
Identifier:
1968.25
Format:
oil on copper panel
In seventeenth-century France, a moral struggle was thought to exist between logic and emotion. This struggle was often depicted
in landscapes where figures from classical mythology inhabit an idyllic, timeless setting.
Contemporary viewers understood landscapes such as Millet's to refer to heroic moral virtues. This type of carefully wrought
landscape would then suggest the rational posture the viewer must adopt in the face of chaotic human passions.