Flemish school; Last third of the 17th century. "Shepherd with pan flute". Oil on canvas. Re-framed. Size: 45 x 60 cm; 69,5 x 50,5 cm (frame). In this narrative scene, the author poses two independent images divided by two planes. In the main area, on the left, an elegantly dressed young man seems to be resting and enjoying playing the siringa, also known as Pan`s flute. In the right area of the scene, a young man leads the cattle. These two images seem contrary to each other, as one reflects the hard work of the countryside, while the other character represents the idyllic life of the countryside. However, the introduction of Pan`s flute is the key to understanding the scene, since in Greek mythology Pan was the god of shepherds and cattle. While in the 17th century the demand for religious art for churches radically ceased in the northern provinces of what is now Holland, monumental art in the service of the Catholic Church flourished in Flanders, partly due to the necessary restoration of the ravages that the wars had caused in churches and convents. In the field of secular art, Flemish painters worked for the court in Brussels and also for the other courts of Europe, producing paintings with classical, mythological and historical themes that were to decorate brilliantly the Royal Sites of Spain, France and England. As a result, there was a proliferation of small and medium-sized works on a wide range of genres, painted by specialised painters who often collaborated on the same work. In this work the landscape shows artistic characteristics based on the 15th-century Netherlandish pictorial tradition, which developed artistically in later centuries. Thus, in the 12th century, the use of landscape as a background for works came to occupy a much more important place as an artistic element than that occupied by landscape in other schools of the same period. As far as the representation of narrative is concerned, the landscape of the Flemish Primitives plays an essential role, not only as the natural environment of the characters but also to separate and set the various episodes of the story narrated in the work. As for the imitation of nature, 15th-century Flemish painters sought to depict the countryside and cities of their native country in their religious landscapes in a realistic manner, detailing their flora with botanical precision and even giving an idea of the time of day and the season of the year in which the scene takes place, thus establishing a pictorial pattern that continued into the 17th century, as can be seen in the present painting. This special interest in depicting the landscape increased as the 16th century progressed, when a new type of landscape was developed and popularised for sacred scenes: the panoramic view.