Page from an Astrological Treatise

ca. 1750

This painting comes from a series that depicts the constellations in the form of figures walking through a landscape. We do not know which constellation is represented here, but it appears to be a composite creature made up of a woman, an elephant, and possibly some other animals. The landscape has been divided into bands, with a decorative foreground of poppies and lotuses, a plain midground, and miniature buildings in a hilly background offering a rudimentary sense of spatial depth.