A rare German Renaissance landscape painting emerges from a private collection

Art historians identified a 16th-century oil painting by Albrecht Altdorfer that remained in a private Swiss collection for nearly 70 years.

The work, titled A Thickly Wooded Landscape With a Rainbow Behind the Trees and a Distant Outcrop to the Right Beneath a Cloud-Laden Sky, depicts a dense forest with castle ruins and a rainbow following a storm. The painting dates to around 1520 and represents one of only three pure oil landscapes the artist ever produced.

It features tangled evergreens and mossy undergrowth without any human figures. This discovery adds to the known body of work by Altdorfer, a German Renaissance artist who was among the first to make nature the primary subject of a painting rather than a background for religious or mythological stories. Sotheby’s plans to auction the painting in London on December 9.

The work was inherited by its current owner from a father who bought it in 1957 from the House of Harrach, an aristocratic Austrian family. Experts expect the piece to sell for up to $6.6 million, though they note that no Altdorfer painting has appeared on the market since 1980.