This is a perfect example of the Dutch vision of Italy. It shows how carefully these artists observed the spectrum of coloured light which occurs in the clear skies of the Mediterranean: an intense yellow surrounding
the setting sun, changing through white to an equally intense blue in the top right hand corner. The transition is imperceptible, the paint surface miraculously smooth, as if a sunset has been sealed in glass. Evening
light affects the way we see the earth as well as the sky, right up to the ground in front of our feet. Pynacker observes the way it picks out individual elements - the reeds, the bark and the fringes of the right-hand
bushes - and sets them aglow as if on fire. No artist can suggest better than Pynacker the sensation of space, of the air circulating round every branch, and the thickness of the evening atmosphere, with its smell
of dust and moisture. Dutch painters saw the Italian landscape as heroic as well as idyllic. This is an ancient Roman bridge, noble even in decay; these shepherds are the descendants of those described by Virgil.
Pynacker pays homage with a suitably abased view-point, looking dramatically up through the arch, the figures silhouetted against the sky. An early work displaying the influence of Both. Harwood proposes a date
of 1653/4 (in Williamstown/Sarasota 1994–5). A copy was formerly in the Gemaldegalerie, Dresden (Harwood, no. 32a).
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