This magnificent small-format copperplate is an important addition to the catalog of Gottfried Wals, reconstructed in only nineteen examples by the scholar who wrote his monograph forty years ago (A. Repp, Goffredo Wals. Zur Landschaftsmalerei zwischen Adam Elsheimer und Claude Lorrain, Cologne 1985), but it was certainly much more substantial if contemporary sources already mentioned sixty examples (including paintings and drawings) in the collection of the Flemish merchant Gaspar Roomer, who was active in Naples and since the 17th- and 18th-century inventories of many other private collections record his works under the name Goffredo or Goffredo todesco. The overall quality of the painting, the mastery of the composition, the definition of the details, and not least its perfect state of preservation, make it a very original, valuable, and rare example.
A. Repp, Goffredo Wals. Zur Landschaftsmalerei zwischen Adam Elsheimer und Claude Lorrain, Cologne 1985; M. G. Roethlisberger, From Goffredo Wals to the Beginnings of Claude Lorrain, in “Artibus et Historiae,” 16, no. 32, 1995, pp. 9-37; G. Capitelli, Gottfried Wals, in La pittura di paesaggio in Italia. Il Seicento, edited by L. Trezzani, Milan, 2004, pp. 380-382; A. Repp, Nachträge zu Leben und Werk des Goffredo (Gottfried) Wals (um 1590/1595 - 1638/1640), Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 67, 2006, pp. 231-274.
