Birds in the Wild ll.

The artist based these pendant compositions on the themes worked by the painter Roelandt Savery, Netherlandish by descent, who created similar scenes at the Prague court of Rudolf II around 1600. Both works attract by the immensely careful and accurate brushwork with which all the flora and fauna are depicted, so that their species can be identified. The painter was very systematic in his work - besides his own numerous drawings of animal motifs, which eventually served him as a kind of sample notebook, his interest in ornithology is also obvious. The paintings can be seen as artworks of high-quality execution, and at the same time, as material for scientific study, and last but not least, as a valuable document of the compos - ition of birds in Central Europe of that time. Scenes of forest corners thus conceived represent a kind of microcosm and attest to the natural processes.