A typical Dutch painting from the 17^th century, when the lessons from painters who had travelled to Italy had already been assimilated. 

While it is not possible to identify the place depicted in this scene, any such concern becomes irrelevant when one observes the treatment of the trees, so characteristic of Dutch painting, and the arrangement of the space, with two-thirds occupied by the sky and one third by the earth.

Here we have an exemplary use of diagonals in landscape painting as a way of instilling a sense of depth. The lines of the bridge on the left and of the ruins on the right were conceived to converge at the point with the most intense light, where the figures can be glimpsed in the distance.

According to a label on the back, the provenance of this work is the British market.