Landscape with a Shepherd and a Watermill

Pastoral landscape -- regular in structure, ideal in form, poetic in tone -- was an invention of early 16th-century Venetian art. Its early popularity was due to drawings by Titian and Campagnola, and prints after these by other artists. This etching, close in character to the drawings and signed with the monogram “DC”, is the only one that can be plausibly attributed to either artist. Unpracticed in its printing, therefore grainy in its line, and exceedingly rare, therefore unmentioned in the extensive literature on such landscapes, it seems to have been a unique experiment.