Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx
Joachim Patinir, 1520 — 1524
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
This magnificent panoramic landscape is a key work by the Antwerp painter Joachim Patinir. In the center of the painting, Charon paddles down the river Styx with the soul of a deceased person depicted as a tiny man. We see the moment when he has to choose between the difficult road to Paradise, a narrow channel with rocks on the left, or the easy road to Hell, a large navigable channel on the right, heading towards a false paradise that conceals Hell. With these elements from different traditions, the painting represents the choice between good and evil at the very moment of death.
In this painting, it is the magnificent landscape that most captures our attention. The painter showed a bird’s-eye view with a high horizon and the river Styx is used to vertically divide the composition, running straight from the bottom to an infinite distance. Patinir was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre. While he generally collaborated with other Antwerp artists, this painting was entirely executed by his own hand, down to the smallest details.
— Véronique Bücken, Curator, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
Object details
Charon Crossing the River Styx ca. 1520–1524
Oil on panel | 64 x 103 cm | Inv. no. P001616
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Joachim Patinir
Dinant 1475/1480 – 1524 Antwerp
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