The courtyard of a renaissance palace, viewed from a portico, with a lute player in the foreground

This small, luminous work on copper is dated to 1608, during the artist’s early maturity in Antwerp, and before his departure for London in 1617, where he remained at the English Court until at least 1637. More commonly associated with church interiors, van Steenwijk also produced a number of carefully rendered capricci of palaces and courtyards. The painter used a similar composition to the present oval much later in his career in 1635, including the figure of the seated musician, in a rectangular work on panel now in the Historisches Museum, Frankfurt (inv. no. 593).