Landscape with Obelisk

Govert Flinck's Landscape with Obelisk (1638) is an unusual and important work now housed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Until 1990 it was attributed to Rembrandt, under whose direct influence Flinck was working at the time. The moody, Rembrandtesque tonal landscape, with its dramatic obelisk silhouetted against an approaching storm, demonstrates Flinck's capacity to absorb his master's approach to landscape — ominous skies, strong light-dark contrasts, architecturally dramatic elements — with convincing skill. The reattribution to Flinck prompted a major reconsideration of the Rembrandt circle's landscape production.

The painting employs Rembrandt's characteristic approach to landscape: a dark, pressing foreground, dramatic clouds building against a lighter sky, and an architectural element (the obelisk) as a vertical accent. Earth tones dominate the foreground, with the sky rendering showing considerable atmospheric ambition and fluid, spontaneous brushwork.